Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work

A handful of genuinely interesting ideas emerge - non-deterministic vs. deterministic change, agents bypassing org-chart politics, and the irony that AI tools need the old artefacts (user guides, scripts) to function well - but they are buried under lengthy biographical tangents, mutual admiration, and recycled leadership platitudes about love, play, and unlearning.

“what we used to make becomes invaluable and what we used to make becomes invisible at the same time”

“the agents don't experience org charts, they don't experience hierarchy, they don't experience politics, they certainly don't experience emotions”

The non-deterministic-change framing and the concrete scenario of AI agents routing around human org-chart relationships are fresh angles for the change-management space; however, the surrounding content - intelligence vs. wisdom, unlearning, leaders need to play more, read fiction - is well-worn coaching territory.

“the most consequential technology and culture change I think we're facing is non deterministic. Which means we cannot use the same models, we cannot use the same playbooks”

“every playbook you learned. I learned every methodology, like pick it up and literally drop it out the window”

Bill Kirst has genuine practitioner experience - two decades in enterprise transformation and hands-on chatbot builds he can cite with a resolution-rate metric - but he is ultimately a consultant, self-published author, and keynote speaker rather than a scale operator; the host is also essentially a peer consultant rather than an interviewer, which dilutes the episode's authority.

“I've built chatbots and they've been very successful. The only reason they're successful is because I eyeballed every piece of data that went into that chatbot. So I can say with certainty and with confidence that it's holding a 93% resolution rate”

“Drawing on more than two decades of leading enterprise transformation, Bill offers a practical and deeply human perspective”

There are a handful of real anchors - a named 93% chatbot resolution rate, 6,000 newsletter subscribers, specific tools (Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, MCP), and a concrete agent-workflow example - but these are sparse in a long conversation that otherwise operates at the level of metaphor and generality.

“it's holding a 93% resolution rate because I know what it's looking at”

“about two years later, after writing two years worth of articles that had about 6,000 subscribers”

The host repeatedly redirects the conversation to his own book and experiences, inserts a mid-episode promotional advertisement complete with a phone number, and asks exclusively open-ended, non-probing questions; there is zero pushback, no challenging of claims, and several tangents (the dental file story) go completely unmanaged.

“wherever you want to go with this. Bill, what do you see as the role of change, the future of change? Uh, who gets to play in change? However you want to take this”

“I work with CEOs, founders, senior executives and boards who are leading through uncertainty...Call country code 1 917-653-5198”