Melissa Cheals leads Smartly, a payroll and people management platform serving 24,000 small and medium businesses in New Zealand. In this conversation, she shares how AI is reshaping product development, leadership, and how organizations operate.

A key moment comes when her team estimates new features will take 12 months and $1M to build. Instead of accepting it, Melissa pushes back, using AI to better understand her team’s perspective and communicate the need for change more effectively. This becomes a broader shift in how she approaches leadership, using AI to think more clearly and navigate conversations with less friction.

The discussion expands into strategy. Companies now face a fundamental choice: become AI-native or continue building on existing systems. As AI adoption increases, it also exposes silos and bottlenecks. Melissa shares why cross-functional collaboration—and leaders actively engaging with AI themselves—is critical to navigating this shift.

Key Takeaways:

• Becoming AI-native is a defining decision
  It’s not just a technology shift. Leaders need to decide whether to rebuild around AI or continue layering it onto existing systems, and that choice shapes how the company operates.
• AI shifts us from scarcity to abundance
  Many organizations still think in terms of limited time and resources, but AI changes what’s possible and forces leaders to rethink how big they can think and what they can achieve.
• AI is a leadership amplifier
  Beyond productivity, AI helps leaders think more clearly, reframe conversations, and communicate change in a way that is both effective and respectful.
• Leaders can’t delegate AI
  Without hands-on experience, it becomes difficult to challenge assumptions, guide teams, or make informed decisions about what’s possible.

Smartly: smartly.co.nz
LinkedIn Melissa: linkedin.com/melissa-cheals
LinkedIn Smartly: linkedin.com/company/smartlynz/

00:00 Intro: Challenging AI Assumptions
00:28 Meet Melissa Cheals
01:17 The Spark For Change
02:36 Vision And Early Signals
03:48 Hiring For Transformation
06:12 Unlocking Data With AI
08:27 Breaking Silos Across Teams
10:39 Why Leaders Must Learn AI
13:42 Leading With AI And Clarity
17:05 The AI-Native Decision
21:45 Thinking Bigger With AI
25:23 Less Meetings More Writing
26:33 The Self-Disruption Imperative
29:11 Breaking Silos With Value Streams
31:28 Managing Fear And Change
32:50 Learning And Shipping Faster
34:58 Debrief

📜 Read the transcript for this episode: ai-native-or-not-the-defining-choice-for-companies-right-now-with-melissa-cheals-ceo-of-smartly/transcript

For more prompts, tips, and AI tools. Check out our website: https://www.beyondtheprompt.ai/ or follow Jeremy or Henrik on Linkedin:

Henrik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/werdelin
Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyutley

Show edited by Emma Cecilie Jensen.

Greg Shove describes a growing gap between individual and organizational AI adoption. A small group of employees are already using AI effectively, while most companies are still early. AI is generating real productivity gains, but those gains are not being captured at the company level. Instead, they are absorbed by individuals who use AI to work faster, often without changing team outputs or structures — raising a central question: if AI creates time, where does that time go?

The conversation explores why enterprise AI adoption remains uneven. Many organizations lack a clear point of view on AI, and workflows take time to adapt, making it difficult to turn individual gains into coordinated results. At the same time, AI is breaking capability boundaries, allowing people to take on work across roles while companies remain structured around existing ways of operating.

From a leadership perspective, Greg emphasizes that the challenge is not just efficiency. AI creates capacity, but without clear direction on how to use it, that capacity disappears. Leaders must decide how to reinvest the time AI creates if they want to capture real business value.

Key Takeaways:

• AI’s ROI is leaking, not missing
  Companies are generating value from AI, but it’s being captured by employees rather than the organization.
• A small group drives most of the impact
  Roughly 10–15% of employees adopt AI early and use it effectively, creating an uneven distribution of gains.
• AI is breaking capability boundaries
  Individuals can now take on work across roles, but organizations are still structured around fixed responsibilities.
• Most companies lack a clear point of view on AI
  Without direction from leadership, adoption becomes fragmented and employees are left to figure it out themselves.
• Leaders must decide what to do with the time AI creates
  Efficiency gains alone don’t create value. Organizations need to define new, higher-value work or the gains disappear.

Greg's LinkedIn: linkedin/gregshove
Section LinkedIn: linkedin/company/sectionai
Section AI: sectionai.com
Prof AI: prof.ai

00:00 Intro: Entering the Era of AI Chaos
00:31 Meet Greg Shove
01:32 Enterprise AI Is a C Minus
01:51 AI’s ROI Is “Leaking” to Employees
03:04 When Individuals Outrun the Organization
05:44 When AI Breaks Workflows
06:47 Disposable Software and New Ways of Building
09:10 Cut vs Create
12:01 Using the Calendar as a Lever
16:24 Why Enterprises Don’t Move
17:32 When Customers Force Change
21:31 AI Breaks Capability Boundaries
25:44 The Productivity Firehose
27:49 Who Actually Captures the Value
28:45 Why Everyone Needs Good AI
32:00 Adoption Beats Buying More Tools
40:17 Teaching the 90 Percent
43:48 Where Humans Still Matter
48:09 The Debrief

📜 Read the transcript for this episode: greg-shove-on-why-most-companies-are-not-seeing-roi-on-ai-yet/transcript

For more prompts, tips, and AI tools. Check out our website: https://www.beyondtheprompt.ai/ or follow Jeremy or Henrik on Linkedin:

Henrik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/werdelin
Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyutley

Show edited by Emma Cecilie Jensen.

Leidy Klotz has spent years studying a simple but overlooked phenomenon: when we try to improve something, our first instinct is to add rather than remove. He shares the Lego bridge experiment that sparked his research and explains how this additive bias scales from small design decisions to entire organizations. Over time, companies accumulate reporting lines, meetings, software, and policies without questioning what no longer serves them.

Henrik and Jeremy explore how AI tools intensify this pattern. When generating ideas, launching projects, writing code, or producing content becomes effortless, the temptation to add grows stronger. The cost of producing information drops, but the cost of consuming it rises. Without guardrails, organizations risk what Leidy calls “organizational indigestion.”

The discussion moves from insight to implementation. Leidy outlines practical ways to counteract additive bias, including stop-doing lists, default kill dates on projects, and designing environments that make subtraction visible and acceptable. In a world of accelerating AI output, leaders must intentionally decide what to remove, what to protect, and what truly matters.

Key Takeaways:

• We default to adding, not subtracting
  When faced with a problem, our instinct is to introduce something new. Subtraction rarely occurs to us, even when removing something would improve clarity and performance.
• Generative AI amplifies additive bias
  AI makes producing content, code, and ideas easier than ever. Without constraints, this frictionless creation can accelerate complexity instead of progress.
• More organizations die from indigestion than starvation
  Over time, companies accumulate tools, processes, and policies that quietly slow them down. The real risk is often not too few ideas, but too many unexamined additions.
• Architecture beats willpower
  Rather than relying on discipline alone, leaders can design systems that encourage subtraction. Stop-doing lists and default expiration dates make removal expected instead of exceptional.
• Protect what matters before adding more
  Before introducing new tools, workflows, or AI systems, leaders must define what is already working and worth protecting. Subtraction requires clarity about what should stay, not just what should go.

Subtract: amazon/Subtract-Untapped-Science-Leidy-Klotz
In a Good Place: amazon/Good-Place-Spaces-Where-Thrive/
Leidy's Speaking: https://leidyklotz.com/
Clip from Bear: Subtract - this is how you do better

00:00 Intro: Our Instinct to Add
00:28 Meet Leidy Klotz
01:15 The Subtract Idea
02:56 Organizations Get Bloated
03:49 Scandinavian Design Mindset
04:32 New Book: In a Good Place
05:59 AI Abundance and Indigestion
08:12 Curate Context, Not More
11:38 Cues and Stop-Doing Lists
15:00 Default Debt and Kill Dates
17:10 Odysseus Contracts and Biases
21:28 Reengage the Physical World
29:17 Bike Shedding and Priorities
36:10 Making Is Thinking
49:16 The Debrief

📜 Read the transcript for this episode: how-to-subtract-the-most-underrated-skill-of-the-ai-era-with-leidy-klotz/transcript

For more prompts, tips, and AI tools. Check out our website: https://www.beyondtheprompt.ai/ or follow Jeremy or Henrik on Linkedin:

Henrik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/werdelin
Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyutley

Show edited by Emma Cecilie Jensen.