The Intersection that Matters Now: AI Alignment and Partnership at the Top

Stacie Baird (0:07)

Hey, humans, welcome to The HX Podcast. This is Stacie Baird, and we are finishing up our series on the intersection of human experience, technology, AI, and what's coming. And I couldn't think of a better way to finish this conversation, than to have a guest with us today who I've been wanting to have on for quite a long time. So Anita Grantham is with us. Welcome.

Anita Grantham (0:32)

Thank you.

Stacie Baird (0:33)

We both have been chiefs in town in Arizona. We're in Phoenix if you're not in this market. And we've both had been chiefs other places as well, other states. But you want to give a little bit about your background and what you're doing now. And then we're going to jump in to this conversation about where we think this is going from both of our perspectives.

Anita Grantham (0:51)

Yeah, so grateful to be here. So historically, I was with BambooHR and Pluralsight and Infusionsoft. I left about 18 months ago to spend more time with my family and optimize work I really care about. So now I partner with four to five different CEOs and help them grow their businesses.

Stacie Baird (1:08)

Awesome. So like many of us, we end up kind of flowing into fractional stuff. I think some of my thesis is we need to grow more talent in the HR space, which you and I have discussed, because we need people to take those seats. And I love also working with multiple CEOs. I'm doing the same thing right now, and it's bringing me a ton of joy to be in that space and to help multiple companies.

And I think from my perspective, and we prepped a little as we always do, and the three episodes that came before this, these shorts, one big thing is, and I guess we'll start with this question, it feels to me like this is such an opportunity for our practice. I don't know how many people are jumping in with both feet, but what are your thoughts on that? Do you feel like this is right place, right time? That's my thought.

Anita Grantham (1:59)

I think it is right place, right time, if you're willing to take the plunge. And I don't think enough people are willing to get into it. I was meeting with CEOs, five of them, last week, and they put it in a way that has been sticking with me. If you aren't using AI to eliminate your job, you haven't fully deployed it in your life yet.

And it's only that point where you get to bottom and you're like, OK, I have automated my entire job and now I want to go build.

Stacie Baird (2:29)

Yes.

Anita Grantham (2:30)

And so I don't know if we're not thinking about it that way. We haven't hit it yet. And I think there's this new counterfeit of I'm fully proficient in AI. I use it in everything that I do.

But you haven't eliminated yourself out yet. Yeah.

Stacie Baird (2:42)

And starting from a very basic level, Jen and I, on the way into the studio, we're talking about this because you hear, you know, two years ago when we started talking about this, and our oldest son is AI full time, right? And he'd been talking about this for three or four years.

And, you know, the big tagline was it's all about the prompting. And then as I've used it and iterated and iterated, it takes a lot of reps, a lot of reps to really understand what that means. And I let's talk first about this partnership with the CEO, because one thing I mentioned is the companies that are doing the best are not the companies that handed this to the CIO. God bless y'all. Like, we need everybody.

Anita Grantham (3:29)

Totally.

Stacie Baird (3:29)

But isn't like, here's your job, do this.

It's really an executive team that's integrating this. So what are your thoughts on on partnering with CEOs around this challenge? And to me, if you don't have a person in the CHRO Chief People Officer seat that's proficient, maybe there's someone else that's proficient, Chief of Staff or a PMO or whatever. Maybe it's one of those people. But how do we start to have better partnerships with our CEO to understand that this is a, it's really a top-down bottom-up holistic approach and process improvement?

Anita Grantham (4:07)

Yeah, there's a lot of good things in what you just shared. So I think in the first place, how do we partner with our CEOs to get there? Every successful CEO I'm working with right now is integrating themselves into building their product. So if they were like a go-to-market CEO, they're now becoming a technology AI CEO, and they are building and shipping product, primarily because they're competing with this other thing, which is like preservation of self.