Human-Centered AI: Keeping People First in a Tech-Driven World with Ben Johnson

True innovation is kind of one thing first. The people around you are not really there to make you more successful. I think that you're there to make them successful.

So early in my career, I had a great mentor. Probably wouldn't be acceptable for behavior in today's culture, but he took the keyboard out of my computer and he said, hey, when your team is being productive, then I'll give your keyboard back. Right. And it was just this lesson in, like, making sure that everybody is aligned, everybody has the same mission, vision, and values. Attention, E commerce sellers. Is fulfillment a headache for you?

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My pleasure. So let's get right into it. So, Ben, looking at your journey, you've clearly mastered the art of. Of bridging the gap between abstract strategy and tangible results. What's the one aha moment that. That really shifted your perspective on how businesses truly innovate? I would say true innovation is kind of one thing first. The people around you are not really there to make you more successful. I think that you're there to make them successful.

So early in my career, I had a great mentor. Probably wouldn't be acceptable for behavior in today's culture, but he took the keyboard out of my computer and he said, hey, when your team is being productive, then I'll give your keyboard back. Right. And it was just this lesson in, like, making sure that everybody is aligned, everybody is. Has the same mission, vision, and values.

And then we can go innovate when we know what we're, what we're targeting, what we're targeting, what is the mission, where are we headed? And then innovation is much more possible. But if we're all kind of off on our own or don't have have that leadership, then innovation becomes impossible. Wow. Powerful lesson there. And I've never heard of that one, taking the keyboard out of a computer. Okay, so now Ben Particle 41 focuses on unlocking the potential of organizations.

So based on your experience, what's the most common lock that you see holding businesses back? And what's the simplest key to turn it. Yeah, I think what we see is just that the teammates inside the company are really are blocked by the current problems or the problems created by the past. And so there's kind of a set of either skill blockers or just really a reimagination of like the what are we trying to target? And is it possible that Reimagination of what's possible?

Our teams typically come in and can help work on kind of the horizon, two story or the next generation, while the current team is handling customers on the previous generation. So we help businesses really accelerate their roadmap and target, you know, target where their customers really need them to be. And especially in today's fast changing environment, that's critical now more than ever.

Okay, so now your LinkedIn showcases really a diverse career. So from academia to consulting. Like when did you realize that, you know, a traditional career path wasn't enough and what ignited the entrepreneurial spark in you? Well, I had a paper out when I was 13 and I had that much through my junior high years into high school. And you know, really I wanted to be in control of my own destiny. And I love, I just love creating something from nothing.

And so had a, had a paper route, optimize the paper route. And then each business I went in, I really tried to think from my boss's perspective or from my co founders or partner's perspective, if they were me, you know, if they wanted to tell me what, what I could do to help them, what would that be? And then I went and did what it would be that helped them most.

So even if it was a somebody, a superior or a co founder, I really tried to think about the world from their lens rather than putting them in a box or putting myself in a box and just having them be like an object of performance or an object of outcome, really trying to figure out like what were their challenges and what outcomes did they need. And then that guided how I implemented technology. So, you know, I had a Commodore 64 when I was young.

I'm kind of dating myself, but I always loved solving people's problems with, in the digital space. So how could I optimize my paper route? I had a spreadsheet, I organized it, I made sure that my collections process was buttoned up, so everybody paid me my seven bucks. And, and that, that desire to organize the details of a business and help create really was fulfilling a purpose for me.

I'm a Christian and so if I think of how God created the earth by separating the land from the sea and the the night from the day. He's really organizing very complicated systems. When we look at our biology, it's a very complex system, but it's broken up into the circular system and the nervous system. And so when we create digitally, we get to imitate God. We're not being God, but we get to imitate God in a way by organizing the details of a business and creating order amongst the chaos.

And I feel all people in STEM fields really serve that purpose. They're able to imitate God's order in the work that they do. Ah, creating order amongst chaos. I like, I like that analogy, Analogy. And I, I think you also dated yourself with the paper route as well. I'm old enough to remember what a paper route was, but I, I don't know about some of the, the, the, the young college kids today, because paper routes are certainly a thing of the past, but.

Okay, now you've worked with numerous clients on complex challenges. Can you share a specific instance where a client's initial problem was just the tip of the iceberg? And how did you navigate those deeper and more impactful issues? Yeah, we totally see that on a regular basis when folks start to do more with their data. So in modern AI solutions, it sounds, so. It sounds, it's very alluring. It sounds so easy.

I'm just going to, I'm just going to ask AI questions and I'm going to get answers and it's going to be awesome. What we're finding is to really customize what AI can do for people. And in this context, I'm really talking about leveraging the LLMs, ChatGPT and Claude and all those things that we're available to us in the market.

We often need to pair them with their own proprietary data, and oftentimes the organizing and classification and indexing of proprietary data so that it can be leveraged in an AI conversation like a chat bot or an internal operations assistant. That, that work is still really. The AI bits are kind of the cherries on top. That caring for and ordering the data that you've been collecting over many years in business is the challenging part.

And so I find people are realizing that, wow, I have data that I could leverage in these use cases, but I don't know how to organize it. I don't know how to make it useful because I can't simply pass all of it to the AI every time it doesn't fit in a prompt, it needs some order. And so maybe you want to create that new customer service bot. Well, then you need to organize all those question and answer emails that you've collected over many years or finally create really good FAQ content.

That's all still very necessary for you to create a solid way to start automating customer support. So yeah, the data requirements of modern businesses are a lot heavier than what I think people originally feel that they are. Okay.

Now Ben, you also emphasize human centered solutions. So in a world increasingly driven by AI and automation, how do you ensure that the human element remains at the core of your strategic work? I think that's by focusing on the customer. The customer is really the center. It's the one constant in all businesses. What does the customer want, what does the customer need and how can I best serve them?

With whatever solution, whether that be AI, traditional programming, good ui, ux, all of those things are still very front and center of how we're, how we're advising our customers and, and then what do our customers want? Do they want AI driven coding folks that understand that we're still in a place where the AI result still has to be heavily scrutinized. You know, you can't just have it write an email and hit send.

You really need to observe, is this the right message that I want to deliver to my customer? Is this the right way I want to communicate? Because whether AI helps you or not, you own the output and I think a lot of people are just using AI to the fast way to move fast and so therefore there are a lot of errors or is it a fast way to get to quality and how will the person feel when they're receiving this output? So interesting you mentioned that. How big of an issue do you think that is?

Right, Because I mean we're, we see that everywhere, particularly in social media. Right. Where you know, people just fast track it with, with some AI and, and have it do the work. But I mean how big of an issue was it like essentially making, you know, having the opposite effect where it's, it's making people lazy as opposed to, you know, creating higher quality content. Yeah, you know, I'll give my own personal example.

So I'm in a men's group Bible study with a couple of guys and on the second session the, the task to, to come. Our homework for the second session was to write a personal psalms, like a poem about you. And so I took a bunch of personal bits and I put it into chat GPT and it produced a really cool psalms and I was like, cool. I completed the task. I didn't spend very much time on it, but I did put some Good personal. So it was, I was proud of the work. I felt like it had produced good work.

But then I got into the session and the second guy that went got emotional around what he had written. He was really authentically and emotionally tied to, to his work output. And then when I got to me, I read mine, you know, task completed, but I feel like I accomplished the result but missed the point. And by seeing one of my peers be so emotionally connected, I started to feel like what I had done was less authentic and didn't, didn't really accomplish the point.

And so whenever we use machinery, we're going to get a synthetic result or a less authentic result result. And I think we just have to be really careful of that, especially in marketing messaging. The human brain is connected to the human heart and we're all people with souls. And I think we can tell when the output is disingenuous.

And so just a word of caution on things that are supposed to connect with people emotionally, when we, when we involve synthetic writing systems in those processes, we're often going to just miss that heart connection. Yeah, yeah. Let's be real for a second. Entrepreneurship isn't a 9 to 5 gig. It's late nights, early mornings, and that unavoidable midday crash when your brain checks out but your to do list doesn't. That's where Energy Rocks comes in.

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What's the biggest misconception people have about change management and how do you address that? Yeah, that's always a an interesting thing. The way I address it is with a particular lens, the efficiency of change versus the essence of change.

So I want people to give me feedback when I am making, when the organization is making changes too quick, when we're not training enough, when we haven't given advance notice, when we haven't warned and communicated and trained and done all those necessary bits. Because I want the change management to be efficient. I want it to be effective for people. But there is also an essence of change. And so oftentimes people are just change adverse. It's just part of their personality.

They want to, they want to have, they want to have a sense of control. And so I think as professionals, especially in the modern age here, we need to understand that there's this essence of change and it's the one constant we have the customer and we have the way we're going to change to meet the customer's needs. And so being really good at change, being really good at self learning. When somebody says, hey, here's the training video, you need to go watch it, you got to go watch it.

Because then your feedback will be in full view of the, of the organization's attempts to bring you along. Often organizations just surface the, the change adverse feeling within the organization, the, the maturity around change. And so I think there's, there's kind of a couple of things that go along with that. As a leader, it's my responsibility to be understood. I don't want to blame shift to my folks for not understanding. Okay, cool, I need to explain better. That's what I'm here to do.

And always be open to that efficiency deficit, but also encourage people that change is going to happen and you need to be good at it. So that's the lens in which I look at organizational change. Both the organization's responsibility to be effective at change, but also that the people in the change process need to understand the essence of change like it's going to happen and they need to be ready to adopt. Reminds me of that quote, the only person that likes change is a wet baby. Right?

Sure. Okay. So working with diverse organizations, you've likely seen patterns. So what, what do you see as one universal truth about business strategy that you believe every entrepreneur should understand? One universal truth about business strategy. I would go very kind of traditional, like the, the amount of time that you spend on your values, your mission and values. I think there's one thing that I, in a diverse organization that I want to micromanage and that's the culture.

So I want to make sure that I look over my internal messaging just as carefully as my external messaging, that the way that the team feels Inside the organization is one of my most important factors. What they understand, you know, who we are, you know, people like us do things like this, People like us don't do things like that. And I want to continue to broadcast that message.

I'm also in 100% remote organization, so I need to be creative in the way that I communicate the mission and the values. Because, you know, getting everybody together in person is very challenging and very expensive. So in a globally diverse and remote organization, making sure that they see me digitally and get that message is really important to me. And so I think the traditional mission, vision and values and making sure everybody understands that is still at play.

But what is changing is how we communicate that, how we deliver that, and how we need to be multimedia in the presentation of that. I think that is the new, the new requirement that folks might not be adopting or might not be understanding very well. Okay. And Particle 41 seems to focus on the why behind strategy. So in the world that it's obsessed with the how, what's the value of taking a step back and understanding the why first? Well, the why is, is going to be your North Star.

It's going to give people direction. It's the difference between being goal oriented and task based. And so if you're a task based and you start to do digital tasks, it's very management heavy. You have to make sure everybody knows their specific tasks and how those tasks are going to impact each other. But if you're clear about the why, then folks can be autonomous and make individual decisions that contribute to the why, to the main vision and goal.

And they can be free thinkers and they can be creative. But if you start talking about the how to, soon you will rob people of creativity and you won't get the most out of your team. Okay, and from your experience, what's the most undervalued skill that most entrepreneurs need to develop? I would say most entrepreneurs don't feel as if they are marketers. And I would challenge every entrepreneur to say I am a marketer and to identify any of their false beliefs around that.

You know, you are a marketer, you're going to be the spokesperson and the, the founder of that idea. And so, you know, you need to be on podcasts, you need to be out in social media, you need to be the evangelist of your value proposition. And so the skill of how to write that messaging, how to understand who your ICP is, how to be a marketer is really, really important.

Many people are become entrepreneurs because they're really good at a thing, but then they need to become really good at communicating that thing's value. And that's often a big gap for most entrepreneurs. And I love supporting people through that transition.

And, you know, having been a CTO and a technical co founder and now a CEO, that's been one of the, you know, one of the big jumps for me is to realize that I am a marketer, and it's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to delegate that evangelist role to other people. So true. All right.

And being Ben, that you've actually navigated that path, like for entrepreneurs out there that maybe are very good at technical aspects of the job or product development, but maybe they're in that founder role and they're uncomfortable with having to be that marketer, that evangelist.

I mean, what's one piece of advice that you would give them to help make that transition? Yeah, so two aspects of that. One is for right now, you're probably trying to figure out how to close business. And so one of my mentors said, figure out who already owns your customer and, you know, go partner with them and talk with them. And partnering is often. And referral partnering and figure out where are my customers already? Who are they already paying to offer them an adjacent service?

So who owns my customer? And then often a fast track to get to some early revenue is to figure out what could I do for them as a partner and how could we exchange the people we know. Build a lens, a lead exchange network within your industry that allows this collaboration. That's often a really fast way to get into some revenue. And then I would say knowing how to communicate, not about yourself, where you're the hero. So Story brand Donald Miller.

This is a very good way of figuring out how you're going to message your value proposition where your customer is the hero and you're guiding them towards the value that you provide for their benefit. And really getting that right was a huge jump for me. So just understanding that I'm here to serve customers. I'm not here to be the expert or the best provider of a service. I'm really here to guide my customers towards. Towards my value proposition.

I know I said a lot there, but hopefully that's coherent in just the. The idea of building that communication skill, building the partnering skill, and then building that communication skill that, that, that makes the customer feel the focus of what you're trying to provide. Absolutely. Okay.

And Ben, you've built a career on helping others unlock their potential. So what's one thing that you're still striving to Unlock in your own journey. I'm very much wanting to figure out. You know, we love, we love putting a whole team in place, but I very much love advising people in their journey. Like I love startups. Startups need funding. This is a challenging market for them to find funding. And so I love accelerating businesses and I'm trying to figure out the right service offerings.

We're launching a AI workflow as a service. This, this idea of even if you're a small business and you just want to automate like your recruiting process or you want to automate your sales process and you have some ideas and maybe you're even using some cheap GPTs to kind of enhance that. We want to find a way of offering our service to a couple of different tiers or a couple of different people who are at different stages in their journey.

And so we're very much interested in that 0 to 5 million range and offering a very special suite of services for those folks. And then of course our traditional service offering for the 5 million to $100 million businesses. And so I'm constantly trying to just establish the right way of engaging and adding value, sometimes even in small bits. Okay, all right.

So Ben, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about the work you do, learn more about Particle 41 and how it could potentially help them, what's the best way people can reach out to you? Yeah, I'm very easy to jump on a 30 minute conversation with. My website, particle41.com has a book appointment link right on the website, my LinkedIn. Unfortunately my parents and God gave me a very familiar name so Benjamin r. Johnson on LinkedIn.

Also I have a book appointment link on my LinkedIn page. So I would love to talk to you face to face, as they say, over zoom and just understand what your needs and challenges are and how we might be able to. Able to help you accelerate. All right. All right, well Ben, we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone and we greatly appreciate you taking the time to share all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our audience. So thank you very much.

Thanks Dave. It was great questions, I appreciate it. Okay. And that is all the time we have for now. We will see you next time. Sam.