Explore how chemicals and materials companies can achieve ROI from AI by focusing on people, not just technology, in this insightful podcast episode.
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Two-thirds of companies report using AI. Fewer than one in twenty use it systematically, and the P&L impact is lagging adoption by a wide margin.
If you're living in that gap, you already know it isn't a technology problem. The pilots ran, the licenses got bought, and the tools do what they say. What's missing is harder to name. The organization hasn't changed how it works, and the value everyone promised is still sitting on the other side.
My guest was Paul Gibbons, AI adoption strategist, author of Adopting AI: The People-First Approach, and one of the clearest voices on why AI transformation succeeds or fails on people rather than technology.
What we covered:
- Why the productivity gains your people are genuinely getting stop at the department line, and why that is structural rather than a failure of your rollout
- Paul's three modes of adoption, personal productivity, vendor AI on the stack you already own, and agentic workload redesign, and why only the third one reaches the P&L
- Why the mode that pays is less than a year old, and what that means if you set your AI strategy in 2023, 2024, or 2025
- The harness rather than the model: persistent memory, working context, guardrails, and connection to the systems where work actually lands
- Why your organizational memory, scattered across drives and formats and locked down by access controls, is the real gate
- Why organizations whose senior leaders build with AI are twice as likely to see positive returns
- Who actually takes the business from an incumbent, and why it probably isn't the competitor across the street
Who this is for:
- BU and division leaders in chemicals, materials, and process industries who own a P&L and are being asked what AI does for it
- Commercial and R&D leaders deciding where AI actually belongs in their function
- Executives past the hype and past the dismissal, who want a grounded conversation with peers who think the same way
Show notes:
Video replay
Executive Summary
Guest contact: paul@paulgibbonsadvisory.com
Paul Gibbons on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulggibbons/
Paul Gibbons Advisory: https://paulgibbonsadvisory.com/
Kendall Justiniano on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendalljustiniano/
Join the Executive Roundtable: https://www.growth-arc.com/roundtable
About Paul Gibbons:
Paul has spent 30 years helping leaders work through the human side of technological change. He's the author of nine books, including Adopting AI: The People-First Approach (rated AI Book of the Year) and The Science of Organizational Change, the first to bring behavioral science into change management.
- Ranked among the top voices to follow in AI, and a member of the Anthropic and OpenAI partner networks
- Former leadership roles at IBM Consulting, Deloitte, and PwC
- Creator of the Adaptive Adoption, AI Leadership Delta, and RIST Trust frameworks
Until next week,
Kendall -
Find me on LinkedIn or Book a 1:1 call
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