75% of Employees Don't Trust Their CEO — and AI Made It Worse | Diane Weaver

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly formatted; a speaker-labeled version will follow.

And we know that high-performing executives and elite athletes, they all have this one habit in common, which is they set their intention for the day and they don't stop there. They visualize it and they verbalize it. They say it out loud.

The staggering stat that sticks with me is that less than 25% of people in the workforce say that they trust their CEO.

The current opportunities right now in AI are just massive.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the signal room. Today I get to talk to somebody I'm genuinely excited about sharing with you. Diane Weaver is one of those rare people who can see the whole system and still say stay laser focused on the humans inside it. She grew up in a long line of entrepreneurs which I think you'll hear in the way that she talks about building things. She spent time in big edtech at places like Pearson and Waterford. She co-founded Corset tune to help make the hidden structure of learning and outcomes visible. And now she's a co-founder of Varians, an AI company focused on what it actually means to flourish at work. The through that I see in her work is this. Meet people where they are and help them get where they want to be. Whether that's faculty and students, teams inside organizations, or leaders trying to do the right thing by their people. Diane keeps coming back to that center. Diane, I am really glad you're here and thank you so much for agreeing to join me here on the signal room.

Thank you so much for having me, Chris. It really is such a genuine pleasure and highlight of my week to be here.

Wow. I I couldn't I couldn't wait. We we had such a wonderful conversation recently. Like we we we have to do this and let some other people in on all the great stuff that you're doing. So, I want to kind of get right into some of the some of the things that I'm sure our listeners are going to want to know. As a fifth generation entrepreneur and a systems thinker, I mean, maybe talk a little bit about the progression. I mean, you've done some really interesting things, but maybe talk about where you started and and how you ended up where you are now. And first, I'd love to hear a lot more about your work as well, but I kind of want to hear your personal story if I can. Oh, absolutely. It's my pleasure to share it. So, if I start at the very beginning, right? You know, typically when you grow up and you're a dreamer and a builder and a creator, you often have this like moment of inspiration. For me, it happened pretty young. My grandfather was a television pioneer, a radio pioneer, and a television pioneer, Pat Weaver. He did things like create the Today Show and the Tonight Show and what we and my favorite thing that he created was the 30 secondond commercial. And he would often talk about how every new piece of technology has two purposes. to help with communications of great ideas and to help educate and disseminate those ideas as much as possible to kind of democratize that that information insight to benefit humanity.

And so he always talked about, you know, leaving the world better than how you found it. And he al also always talked about um how he wished he had one more life to just see where it all goes. where will we end up with all of this tech that's you know emerging constantly in in these waves right

so I start there because he was a huge inspiration for me right

and also my parents had the they created this very unique uh upbringing for me and my siblings my parents were like the quintessential country mouse and city mouse so my dad came from this background And my mom was a farmer's daughter. And so I spent my summers growing up working on the family farm and getting chased by the paparazzi. And I got to see Yeah. Great combination.

It was it was a very interesting childhood and I got to see the best of both worlds, right? And

part of that deep desire to meet people where they are is is it started with that very early understanding of multiple ways of life and multiple ways of of having a good life regardless of your material means and uh and and the opportunities and um and privileges that you have of creating for yourself a good life. Everyone is entitled to that. And so often we get stuck and you know challenges hit and every human being I I really believe that every human being you know experiences the full spectrum of of you know emotions and experiences available to to us as humans which is a really special thing. So, I like to keep it human and keep humans at the center. And I like to pursue big ideas that help people really cultivate a feeling of agency in their lives and cultivate a growth mindset and to really help you know foster more of an entrepreneurial spirit within everyone which is probably my western upbringing and you know all of that too. So early on, oh, I'll just

I don't mean to like go on and on here, but

I mean, we had some similarities, you know, working on the the family farm and the paparazzi. Well, maybe not the paparazzi thing, but I did happen to do some work on a farm growing up, so I can appreciate, you know, what what that how that impacts you. you know, the the motivation, the drive that you have comes from learning how to how to work at a, you know, at a young age. And it's I I just love hearing that your your inspiration really came, you know, from your own family. I think that's amazing. I think we have some similarities in in that aspect that led us to do what we're doing. Uh but but yeah, please I I definitely want to hear some more because you started to talk to to me yesterday about a couple things that were, you know, really exciting to me because the conversations that are being had generally right now when it comes to AI, they're a lot more focused on the tech and do you trust it? Is there hallucinations? But that's not where you're hanging hanging out. You're you've got some very specific things that you're you know criteria basically that determines where you're going to spend your time and your energy.

No, absolutely. And you're right. I mean the current opportunities right now in AI are just they're massive. It's we're we're transforming so many of our systems, you know, just globally uh around this as we bring AI, you know, closer in. So there's personal human transformation that's happening and then transformation within groups of humans whether it's you know teams at work or organizations you know or nonprofits etc cities and communities coming together and really figuring this out and then whole you know global corporations and things like that. So it's it is like a mountain. You you do have to figure out like where and how am I going to focus my time because there's no way I'm going to do all of it, right? So truly, you know, I think that one of the most important pieces here as we're building AI is building trust. And I'm not talking about trust between people and technology. I'm I'm talking about trust between people between people within the system. And so truly um as we think about like what does it mean to evolve right now with AI? What do what does AI enabled human uh roles and responsibilities look like? And I I often think about um because of my edtech background, I think about the skills and the durable skills that we need, but also this idea that every person needs to shift from being a technology user to a technology steward and that really keeps humans at the helm of of what we're doing here.

Can you dig in on that a little bit? I mean the the I think it's an important distinction because everyone is being uh pulled along or pushed along one way one way or the other to adopt this technology and there's a really significant difference between understanding what you're using it for what it's what's possible and also having an understanding what your role is and how it's used. There absolutely is and I think this is just it's an unprecedented ask that we are you know requiring of of everyone right now. If you think of like the evolution of the workplace and and our education leading up to how we function in the workplace, it has very much followed you know industrialization's uh methodologies. A lot of our workflows and sequences, now I'm talking about the systems here, are really they really kind of echo the old conveyor belts of the factory. And so you like in our current system, you have interests, you start to pursue them in formal schooling and you kind of get on this track and if you get this degree, then you're going to get the credential that puts you in this place in that factory conveyor belt line, right? and you you see the job description and you and you evaluate whether there you meet enough of that criteria to apply and you are onboarded and handed your you know your tasks and your job descriptions and then you execute right this is very typical of the kind of North American h like working experience and it's archaic it's old and it doesn't work for a lot of people actually is broken in many many ways. And so in this shift, you know, as uh as companies are implementing AI, it typically starts in the leadership level and then it and then it kind of like comes down the line, right? But there's a huge disconnect between leadership and the the frontline experience and my day-to-day and what actually matters uh to to accomplish the things that I need to accomplish. So if people are already maxed out um trying to get their productivity KPIs uh in their in their roles like they've kind of uh increased significantly and on top of it now you have to reimagine your role with AI,

right? Yeah. I mean it's it's a whole different thing. I remember like back in the 90s when the we were all like we knew that the internet was was cool. We were doing some interesting things with it but we had no idea that it was going to be so much a part of the core activities that we do every day.

Yeah. Just it's it is such a part of it's it's in the fabric of everything, right? And this is this is how AI AI is and will be even even more so. It's really being identified or called out as um almost an energy source like electricity. Yeah.

I'd love to get you to to kind of dig in on this because you mentioned this the trust piece of it. They think it's really important and obviously it's a big reason that you know you burials now is a a a real uh it's a system and a platform that you you're already moving with and having some some great successes and I think it's it's an important thing to understand because when you're talking about uh executives and the the different levels of of team members that they have that trust is a big issue. I know we talked about this a little bit recently, but the erosion of trust in human relationships is a really significant thing. U for anyone that's been listening to the podcast, you've probably heard a couple of different uh discussions around this. Dr. Larry uh had did some fantastic research that he shared and the the staggering stat that sticks with me is that less than 25% of people in the workforce say that they trust their CEO. Uh so what do you do? Uh if you're in a situation like this, you're running a company, who do you talk to? How do you figure out where there's where there's errors you can reinforce and how do you fix it? What's involved in all of that? Uh but I mean if you dig in on that because I think that's how you ended up uh forming this company and all the vision that you've got start you kind of came from these relationships to being you know over time kind of degraded. I think we probably lost a lot of skill sets along the way that we need to figure out what to do about.

Yeah, I I think you're right. I mean this is a whole we're we're dancing around kind of a whole ball of yarn here. So let's start pulling on the threads. So trust trust between the humans really truly is the issue here. And when we're talking about the system that has evolved over time that is like the workplace system or the systems that the industry kind of the workplace sits within the systems of the industry or within the regulations you know and standards and accreditations of that industry. And this has, you know, just it's evolved over time to the point where oftent times leadership will say things that they can't do, if that makes sense. And if we boil down the concept of human trust and how do we build and establish trust with, you know, a relationship of trust with humans, it it really comes down to doing the things that we say we're going to do. It is that simple. If we have a track record of doing that, then there is more trust because I hear what this person is saying and I trust that they're going to do it because I have all of this evidence that they've done that in the past. So, it gets really hard because in some of these leadership positions, you you enter the position and once you're inside of it, you really see how your options are locked down. And then it becomes very hard to communicate anything new or or or different. And it's it becomes hard to even talk about the changes that need to happen because those changes there's not a track record of making changes like this in the past. And so there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknowns, not only for folks across the organization but also for the leadership team too. Um yeah, so we so we did we built we built barons to really help address this issue uh not not just for one group within the organization. If you think about historically executive coaching has been uh limited to just the seauite or just the CEO and it's extremely expensive but the return on it is like is like a 7x return for every dollar on executive coaching. we know it works. And so what we've done with the Berian's experience is there's there's four different really powerful uh concepts that you encounter in your Berian's experience. And executive coaching is just one of them. And the reason why we did that is and why we started there is because we wanted to democratize this incredibly valuable resource for everyone across the organization. But because we're human first and we're building human first AI, you know, we still recommend that you that you have your human executive coaches and that your baronss is that daily touch point between the human touch points and that you have mentorship between the humans across your organization. A mentorship program even within the organization can be extremely powerful. And it's interesting because the everything kind of pivoted really really harsh when the when the pandemic kind of kicked in and you know I think these probably are things that were much more uh common to to occur just naturally than than they are now. I mean I don't even know you know what percentage of businesses in the country are not uh not fully remote. There's just so many that are that just complicates things. So I mean I I I could see why, you know, this this is such a a huge need. I want to hear some little bit more. You still going to talk about this this daily touch points and is it AI that we're going to be communicating with or is it a person or is a combination of this? I'm curious. This is a fascinating thing because it it just seems like it's filling a gap that's just been massive over the last several years.

Thank Thank you for that. It's it is an AI and it's just on your cell phone because we wanted to we wanted to really create the entry point into this experience with a piece of technology that everybody already has and knows how to use. And uh and so with just placing a phone call to your barriion, you can't all describe the a day in the life of you can any any position across the company can start your day. If you're a shift worker, it might be at night that you're starting, but that first phone call that you place to your bearing on, it's about 2 minutes or less. And we know that high-performing executives and elite athletes, they all have this one habit in common, which is they they set their intention for the day and they don't stop there. They visualize it and they verbalize it. They say it out loud. That that's that's really an interesting observation. I I guess you know that they you know that they have you know some pretty significant habits. Um but you're you're talking about doing something very specific, very intentional. This doesn't we're not talking about like go to working out at the gym for 4 hours. I

mean this is really really practical.

It's so practical. It's much simpler, right? And it and it's just dialing a phone number. In fact, when you sign up for Barian, if you go to berian.com, you can sign up um on online right now. You don't have to wait till your employer gets it for you. But once you register your barriion, it will text you a contact card and then you save that contact and then your Barryon is one of your contacts. Mine's in my favorites so that I can just pull it up and then click and go. And that twominute conversation, you sometimes I I have that conversation, I know exactly what I want to focus on that day. Other times I don't. Maybe I woke up at 3:30 in the morning with like a running list in my head like we often do, right? And maybe I and or maybe I woke up just feeling like, you know, untethered or unground, you know, um and and unsure where to start. So even if you don't know what to say, you can call that number and your barriion will talk you through how to set that intention for the day. And in the process of of talking through it with your barriion, you're automatically doing the the the neuro work, basically the neuroscience work with your brain, right? Because in the process of telling explaining to your baron what the most important thing is for you that day, you're having to think about it, do a moment of reflection and you know and and do all that. If you if it doesn't come to you easily, it will remember your past conversation, whether it was yesterday or last week or whenever.

It will remember where you left off and it it might make some suggestions.

That's actually for for for me. I'll tell you what, that's really important because if you ask me what I had for breakfast, I think I I have to pause and think about it. So, that alone is a really really important feature. I love that. Before we go past it, you know, you're talking about barrier. It you have a barrier. Tell us what the term means. I think that I should have asked you that before.

It's a quantum term. It's it is the term that we use to uh to name and talk about um subatomic particles. So, we all know that habits happen, you know, at a very small. The more micro you can get with your habit stacking, the more successful you'll be. So, we really wanted something that connotates the subatomic shift, change, growth, and development that's happening with each experience with your barriion. Yeah, that's that's really it. It's um it's the quirks. If we want to get really really scientific with the physics, there are the quirks where uh there and that's one of the one of the smallest uh measurable things where movement begins. So when we're stuck and we want to achieve flow again, we really have to get grounded and into those kind of u address the micro habits. Otherwise, it's a band-aid. We're going to get stuck right back there again. So, one of the things that that I've that I've picked up on that you've talked about is I mean it's it's a stat u I think we inherently know as an issue but twothirds of the global workforce is disengaged. I mean, at what point did you realize that this was something that you had to do? And what was it about the moment that you that you're you pulled together these these wonderful people you're working with to tackle this? And you know, when you're talking about flourishing, because you talked about that earlier, what does that look like from a vision standpoint and from where you are where you're where you're taking the taking the the the company and and what you're trying to accomplish because I mean this is like twothirds of the global workforce. That's crazy. That that that's a lot or people that they that need help.

It is. It is a lot. A lot. And I so uh so back to the origin story of of uh of Barerian, I want to kind of revisit that because the Barons team that I'm working with right now are so incredibly unique and special and just well suited for for building this and bringing it into the world. Mike Ruska. He's our CEO and he has been doing organizational psychology and organizational systemic scientific work for over 20 years. And he comes from a a NIST background and he thinks about things very differently and very creatively. Brooks Canesi is our chief product officer and he just has this voracious appetite for learning all things technical and he's a unicorn because he's also a great communicator about it. So he has equal experience not only developing software but selling software which is really powerful and unique to bring into that chief product officer uh role and so we're we just feel really you know lucky there and Ryan Kringek is our chief technology officer and he comes from he was a VP of uh technology for acueeather and So he is used to building just in intricate systems and uh

a lot of scale is

at scale. Yes. that can handle, right? Uh they can handle like a a billion events, you know, uh synchronously and and that's tremendous. Not only like from a you know all of those uh all of the people hitting uh those websites at the same time but also the amount of information that has to be gathered from multiple sources to bring it back serve it up in a way that that is understandable and and handle like such a huge flow in demand. So we knew we want we were at at like really tackling such a big problem in in in this idea that we wanted to build something that's ready ready for scaling, you know, from the get-go. So this really is like such a perfect team. And I found them because um Mike Gusco was an early friends and family investor on my last startup uh course tune. So he came in through one of my other co-founders um networks and when uh after uh so with course tune we had this really great really amazing experience the most amazing customers ever and then we were acquired and the through the acquisition we doubled the number of universities using course tune and then they doubled it again within a year. So it was a tremendous home for that whole you know transformative platform. It was just phenomenal. So I stayed on for a year to oversee the merger and acquisition and then I closed my laptop. I got in a plane and I cried somewhere for three days and I came back and two months later OpenAI released chat GPT and I said okay hold the phone. This changes everything. And the inquiry started coming into me about what am I going to do next? And I had some ideas that I wanted to pursue. All of them really big ideas. And what I kept hearing from other folks was um I like to call it putting the yellow pages online. So, right,

just hailing back to the beginning of the internet, right, the dot era. And I'm like, I don't want to put the yellow pages online. I don't want to rebuild the new fax machine, right? I want to do something that we've never been able to do before. I want to really, you know, spend my time working with really great people and bringing something, you know, uniquely new uh into the world. So I reached out to Mike Rusa, CEO of Problem Solutions out of Pennsylvania, and I said, "Hey, Mike, how are you thinking about this?" And he shared with me, and he was also thinking about it in, you know, big transformational terms and like this is a moment in time that where we need to show up with even more in intention, good intention than we ever have. and uh and really, you know, really put some great things out there. So, he introduced me to Brooks and I was like, this all right, this is great. I I just want to work with you guys. So, we started working together and, you know, within within the year we had uh put in place, you know, a way to spin off a software company from the problem solutions uh services company and we created barons. So, and problem solutions is still doing amazing work out there also geared toward AI transformation and creating rapid prototypes and stuff for companies. So,

want to I want to kind of get into a couple different things on the on the on the product itself, too, because I think people don't uh I don't think people quite quite understand the direction that we've kind of headed it had been heading into that's kind of put us on a collision course for this whole trust deficit that we're dealing with. How does how is this different? Uh because when you're trying to get people to interact but they're interacting with AI, we see that a lot. We and the log the workflows are actually pretty deep and wide and they take a lot of time. What's so different about your approach? you you've clearly said some things that are really cool for me because it's not a lengthy interaction you have every day, but what are some of the things that you're you're you're trying to address in that and getting people back connecting to each other?

Yes. Yes. Okay, great. So I really mentioned just one of four modes within barons and I'm going to come back to a couple of those to help answer this question of like how do we re-engage people in the workplace and the so often that disengagement happens because of a dissonance or a misalignment

and perhaps it's a misalignment in what I would what I as a person really want to be doing or spending my days doing versus what I'm actually doing. Sometimes it's a misalignment in that I like what I'm doing, but my the KPIs that have been set for me or with me, right, are not aligned with my favorite parts of that work, right? Yeah.

Or I'm doing really well on my KPIs and my KPIs are the wrong KPIs for the company. So even though I'm very successful, I'm not seeing an impact at for within the business or within the outcomes of the business or I'm not getting the, you know, the recognition that I feel like I deserve for, you know, for doing so much. It's because I'm doing a lot that's not really moving the needle over there. So there are layers of like expectation, reality, disappointment and misalignment,

you know, and we like to talk about this as like birectional. And so we're not just seeing we're not just seeing, you know, um middle management check out or we're not just seeing like front lines check out. We're seeing leadership also check out, right? It's it's across the board. That twothirds number is appalling

in part because it seems to be affecting really every position across the organization. And so

there is a real disconnect between like who we feel like we are as a person and if we are getting uh purpose and meaning and relationships and experiences that we enjoy out of our work, right?

And for most people most people can't say yes to that. Right? So under like within the core of the barons platform, we've really built it on the science of positive psychology. And there's so much research out there about the different domains that that provide a a wello for lack of a better term a welloiled you know working system

um that flows that allows people to flow within it. things like the um things like the communication is uh is communication culture all of these different things really come into it. And so we have um we've built upon that science and we've created we're patent pending you know we've created this system to uh to really uh take a look at these conversations that are happening at the individual level and then within a team and it's all AI there's no there's no like humans don't ever see the conversations it's AI and it helps to surface

the themes and the topics that everyone one's talking about. So, when you're using the Barryon system, you have your check-in call, you have a checkout call as often as you would like to do it. And that checkout call really is it's under five minutes usually. And it helps you kind of reflect on your day and do a little bit of cognitive offloading so that you can move on to, you know, your evening plans. Whether that means that you're talking to your barriion while you're walking your dog so you can clear your head and then go to the gym or so that you can clear your head and go and spend time with your family or friends um and show up to that in a ready to connect way. And then the two other type of conversations you can have is at any point in time if you're stuck at work, we know from years and years to decades of executive coaching research that when people get stuck at work, it's often because of a personal issue that needs resolution. And so when you're stuck at work, you can give it a call and we um and you can talk to your mentor. You can give it tasks to to do for you. It will it syncs with your it can send you emails. It can start different tasks of work um and and then send them to you uh via email. It can schedule calendar uh invites for you and and different things like that. So, it can actually help you with your work and your productivity, but it can also help you think through the problems that you're trying to solve and your the situation.

And then the fourth way is what we call the flourishing partner and that really taps into these what does it mean to be a you know what does human flourishing really mean um for all of us. is a very personal thing and you determine what that is and it just helps guide you along the way. And those calls we we on our team and each company can implement this the way that they feel like suits their employees the best. But on our team, we like to call out flourishing Fridays. So we have a flourishing session with our berion on Fridays and it's actually such a refreshing moment to just kind of pause and reflect and what does flourishing actually look like? Well, maybe it's when I can have a cup of coffee in the morning. That's while I'm sitting outside on my patio and not like looking at email, you know,

maybe that's what helps me feel like I'm flourishing. um when I feel like I can have, you know, take a small uh moment or break in my in my otherwise day. But all of these things really help the individual kind of center their own um thoughts and feelings and emotions that they're having at work to kind of just like center it back to their own inner compass. Um because when we're feeling grounded and balanced and things like that, we tend to be uh we tend to have more of a growth mindset, we tend to see opportunities where before we saw, you know, restraints and and things like that. So it really is these, you know, these small habitual things. But when you're using your baronss, um you do once a week you receive u an email that we call the resonance insights. And so I see an email that says that shows me my level of battery, my energy level. And that's specifically through semantic processing. So what I mean by that is like I I could have only check-ins. Maybe I checked in like three time three times that week, right? And so I had these three little twominut or or less calls. It's going to know even if I said the same exact thing in each call. It's going to know from the tone of my voice and the vocabulary that I'm using and the fluctuations and all of these different things. Like it's it is actually tracking 26 different metrics on just my voice inputs to help determine like do amy level. And that's super fascinating. And often times we're burned out and we don't even know it, right?

Yeah. I mean, that's a that's probably more so the case than than not. I I I don't know what how if everyone uh deals with this stuff without having conversations like you and I are having just about what you what you've been doing. But our conversation's been really, you know, exciting for me because we're talking about things and discovering at the same time that we're both wrestling with with common things. Uh we're not weird. People are I mean we all are struggling with some level of anxiety or you know there just a lot of other noise things. But what's important and I wanted to have you talk about just a little bit because of the nature of what you're dealing whether you're you're you're listening to the for the the tone of the voice you're using semantics you're using a whole bunch of different things here this creates pretty specific models that are tailored on the individual level but you have something you call the sacred space in practice I'd love to hear a little bit more about that so people could understand what you do and what what led you will cross uh the as you're using the AI to really support human beings.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so often when we talk about privacy and safety with AI, we talk about guard rails. And, um, the thing with barons and and what we of course saw early on and why we wanted to do it differently is that the LLMs out of the box will they have each have their own set of guardrails. We've seen the news coverage when those guardrails don't actually, you know, do what they say they're going to do. And so Barons is an agentic system in that there's an orchestrator. There are multiple agents and we're LLM agnostic. So if this task is best done by Claudethropic, guess what? Claude is under the hood doing that for you. if this task is best done by Gemini is doing that for you. And what that enables us to do as well is to create additional guard rails and additional agents that are that are looking for um you know looking for red flags and things like that. So that this truly is a very private place, but then also it's a very helpful place for the humans and it's designed in such a way to help to help the human remember first and foremost if they're using it within the workplace. This is a workplace kind of conversation, right? And if the conversation turns to a situation that a personal situation or even a workplace situation that a person is going through that requires another human being to be uh to be in that loop, then it will actually ask you, oh this sounds like a very difficult situation. Who in your life do you talk to about this? And then you can share in instead of asking you deeper questions because the LLM just out of the box if you talk to your chat GPT it's just going to keep asking you deeper and deeper questions. You're you're going to end up telling it all kinds of things. With your barriion it's going to ask you who in your life do you talk to a human about this? And it starts there. And if there's no one in your life that you talk to about this, then it will start to it will ask you questions. It's asking you questions, right? To help you identify who who can be a resource for you out there in the world. And in that way, you know, we're really uh I can't emphasize this enough that, you know, an LLM or your AI that's just right out of the box. It is designed to keep you going down this rabbit hole and this and and to keep you on the line with it for a long time. And with Barons, we're really wanting to time box something, make it purposeful, and get you what you need and get you back out in the world again, and help you work through the things that you need to work through in order to show up differently with the humans in your life.

You you you're talking about different really important things that you're doing that are so different. with just the fact that this this LLM is actually asking you questions, right? That's that's a really big big difference there. Like that's not that's not how the rest of them do it. Like you talked about going down a rabbit hole that they do I mean they do it just even if you're training it to be your best friend and do everything the way you want it to do. It still goes down rabbit holes takes you places that you never want it to go.

No. Right. Yeah. It doesn't have good boundaries. Right. It's like and so we are intentionally designing a workplace companion that does have good boundaries and that because

another really important thing here too is that the media that we consume the te the technology that we use and consume it affects us. It does

and we start talking like chat GPT right or we start behaving like you know Tik Tok or we start like you know our frame it's not just our frame of references but it is also our behavior our language patterns and things like that

we are designing barons to help you to help you get out ahead of that because everything else in your life is trying to get you to be like that, like it. And we want we want you to be like you. So, yeah,

that's a novel idea. I know, right?

Right. No, it's, you know, we we laugh, but you know, there there's been such a rapid descent into this black hole of AI where you just keep going deeper and deeper into it. The further you go, the more off off course you seem to find that you're you're being led. And, you know, to your earlier point about being a steward, that's kind of a big deal. We just really need people to understand what it really is useful for, what it's not. You you do need to be the one doing the leading and the the one having judgment and providing context to you. It's it's uh it's artificial, which means like means it's not real. You might think twice before you just trust it blindly. That's just my two cents on that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It is our duty as humans to show up with good intention and to you know use our critical thinking and our durable skills which are things like questioning and you know critical thinking and empathy and thinking through the impact of the action based on you know the information that you have and just and also like our intuitive uh uh you know sensory as being humans I mean and especially because so much is remote and we're still feeling very connected in our virtual world to other humans. Um, and there are other they're like different kind of cues like reading a room on a Zoom is so different than reading a room in person, but that's a durable skill that transcends in real life and virtually, right? And so there's all all of these things that make us uniquely human and different and better than the AI. Those are the things we want to really sharpen right now at this moment in time because if we are truly going to be, you know, helping to fact check, regulate, uh, be humans in the loop, build new systems and build a future, a new future, uh, with reimagined with AI in it, uh, we need we need to have these skills and and what's happening cognitively in our brains and our our brain health. And uh you know brain health, mental wealth and brain capital are really important topics and themes right now for a reason because it is it is also human nature to take the path of least resistance. And it is enticing to, you know, think like, oh great, I can just have my AI do that and check out, right? So, um there are other AIs that will actually magnify the current um problems with with uh disconnect and burnout. And then there are AI there's AI use that will um help you get out ahead of it. um and and see those early indicators um early on. Uh so yeah, the insights that that that teams and companies are getting from from everyone uh from all of their employees and their leadership and the CEO using Barons, right? Like everybody's got to use it and it's not an us and them tool, right? It's everybody's got to use it for it to really work. No, I I I really I really love this the whole idea of it and it's it's unique in the in many ways, but the the piece that to me is probably the most exciting is you are pushing people to towards human relationships and interactions that are actually going to improve uh their own life experiences while they're doing doing their work. It could be your personal relationships being improved. Um, but the having conversations with your phone constantly, if that's all we're doing, we're we're instantiating things that are making us less compassionate, less personable. I mean, it's it's just the realities of and I think we've all seen examples and I've even found on occasion that I my first reaction is to look at something on the phone instead of using it for another purpose and calling someone, right? Um, I'm kind of kind of getting to towards the the end, I before I before we go towards the what I call a rapid fire round, which will be fun. You're going to be the first one I get to do that with, by the way. So, very excited about this. Uh, if you could talk a little bit about what you're doing uh right now because I know that you're you're involved in some pretty exciting things. Uh, some events. you're you're you're going to be working in in places where you people can come and see and listen to you and your colleagues. Uh maybe talk a little bit about what what's coming up in the next few weeks and where people can find you.

Definitely. So you can always find us at barons.com. That's b a r yo ns.com. It sounds like carryon and barri those keep calling Barryon. We do often speak um virtually uh across different channels. Next week I'm going to be at the human and tech week. It's the offsite for the h the future of humanity in uh San Francisco. And so not to date this episode, but I'll date this episode. It's May 11th through 15th in 2026. And for all you future viewer listeners, um so I'm very excited about that because this this forum is specifically for the builders. It's it's a room full of founders and entrepreneurs who are building building the future.

So, that's going to be really interesting. There's a lot coming up this summer around Brain Capital and Brain Capital Summits. If you want to get involved, find out if your city or your metropolitan area has a brain capital initiative. A lot of cities and communities do. and we need all of it. We need everyone to come to the table to really do this, right?

Those are the ones I'm most excited about.

Well, thank you for sharing that. And for listeners, uh you'll you you'll start hearing more about this and I'll make sure that we get the get the the sites up for you so that you can see where where you can actually register to attend these events. If if you can get there, you really should. I I've been inspired. We haven't even begun our conversation to be honest with you. There's so much more. You know, Diane and I had a wonderful first conversation that we could have gone for hours and we still wouldn't have scratched the surface. So for listeners, definitely follow up. Look at the show notes. There's going to be a lot of good information there for you. You can reach out to Diane. You can reach out to her colleagues. And this is a time for this kind of human- centered AI support for human beings and using it for that purpose is really what they're all about. And it matters. It matters. We all need to we all need to be engaging in ways that are healthy and and helpful. And having some people that are building tech specifically designed for that is a gift to all of us. So definitely don't don't lose the opportunity there. Make sure you you you reach out to them and I think you probably will be much happier in a few months than you are today because you're going to get some tools that are not complicated. They're actually designed specifically to make things work easily for you. So then let's get into this rapid fire question. Are you ready?

Okay. Oh, I think so. I think I'm ready. We'll see.

Okay. Well, well, let's start with one that that it's for me it's kind of fun. Uh,

I'm sure it is for you, too. If you had your choice and you could pick one buzzword and ban it for an entire year, what would it be?

Oh my gosh. Okay, so there are so many buzzwords right now floating around with AI and I think I would have to say I you know I keep coming back to vibe this, vibe that, vibe this, vibe that, you know, and you know I I want to drop the vibe and just say it's coding. This is how we code. This is the new way of coding. We talk into a microphone and then the code happens, right? like this is this is the way of the future. It the future is voice truly.

What's one thing as you're looking at this reality versus hype thing? What's one really significant tell that kind of tells you whether somebody's got something or if this is just hyper?

H yeah. So you know the question around which LLM do you use for this widget tool t you know task or whatever it is

if they're answering with just one like just run you know you you can use that LM LLM at this point and you can build your own version that's that is yeah that's what I would say

right here's a really tough One. Mhm. Cop air tea.

That is the hardest one of all. No, I one cup of coffee in the morning with my creatine. Got to put a plug in there for creatine, which in my head it's always like a very mus like muscly voice saying creatine. And so, but it's brain it's very good brain food actually. So, one cup of coffee with creatine. And then I do like I do like to create a pot of tea that I just kind of sip from throughout the rest of the day.

So here's a this was a fun one. Can you give me an example of of something that you were sure was going to be really really simple. It ended up being a really hard mess to tackle.

Yeah. So I once worked with a team of folks um who we were tasked to create an AI machine learning course,

right? And I um two of us on the team uh we actually ended up really uh completely damaging our computers trying to trying to get uh trying to get the environment to to perform. Um and so I know this is like a very technical one. I'm trying to keep it like lighter than ever. But truly, it was supposed to be like a browserbased environment and very easy to like set up and and do. And we were writing a course on how to do this. And we kept running into problems and issues when it should have just been very simple. This was a few years back. I'm sure it's all fixed now. Right. Right. you you work across multiple industries uh but I I spent a lot of time with the healthcare uh side of the world here. If you were to based on all your interactions, if you could have every health care executive spend a day in one department in their hospital, what would it be? So this answer I'm going to pull on my personal life um for this answer because my husband works in healthcare supply chain management and so I would say they have to spend a day in the supply chain management because they are when COVID happened we always joked that he was like um the pizza delivery guy that saves the day in the zombie movie. It great visual.

Yes, it is. It's like a role that that seems like it's so simple, but it really is so complex. And there um and talk about having to build a system with a lot of uh humans involved for and the purpose is to save the life of humans, right? to save human lives ultimately. And so um you know I think that there are so many things that just happen um in the flow of work in healthcare you know and especially as like our health professionals are also facing burnout and they're also overloaded and they're also going a million miles an hour and so you know when a supply isn't where they expected or runs out or they they forgot to order it and now why isn't it here? you know, like all of these things, these it's it's often a point of of friction in that flow of work. And so, so there's like layers of systems that typically are are built within within a hospital system to keep the supply chain going and going smoothly and almost invisible. Um, and it works, it's when it works, it's amazing. And when it when it when there are friction points or when it's uh you know god for broken uh then it really does you know cause problems. So just like we saw in COVID when we and everybody was running out of PPE,

right? You know, it's it's it's fascinating because I think the the realities are such that we are redefining dial tone basically on a daily basis because we're adding and automating more and more things and the expectation is just going to be there and when it's not that you know that's when things get loud. uh you know in the space I've operated in with data and analytics the days that you hope are the most prevalent are the ones that no one even knows what you're doing. Uh it's like if you if you're this brown guy at your favorite in your your the Rolling Stones are playing and and you people know who you are that's not a good day.

That was a bad day.

Right. That was a bad day for the wrong reason. Yeah.

Right. But that dial keeps getting redefined. the standards get higher and higher and you know the good technology uh good practice you know you don't have a need to pay attention to certain things and you can take it for granted and you don't necessarily understand what's going on behind the scenes that makes it so that dial tone is you pick up the phone it's it's our you hear a dial to every time anyway it's always been an interesting concept for me because the way the technologies evolved sometimes we forget some of the things that we're using we depend are less than a decade old and it's astounding how quickly we adopt and we're you know getting used to these things but

no fascinating I could have talked for you for hours with you um and we have to do this again absolutely I really appreciate what what you're doing love the focus of your company love the vision love the human first approach absolutely amazing so Chris

on behalf of the listeners the this singer and on my own behalf, thank you. Sincerely, thank you for for taking the time to have this conversation with me today.

Thank you so much, Chris. This has been really important. Thank you.

That's it for this episode of the Signar Room. If today's conversation sparked something in you, an idea, a challenge, or a perspective worth amplifying, I'd love to hear from you. Message me on LinkedIn or visit cigarroompodcast.com to explore being a guest on an upcoming