Editor's note: Libby Rodney is chief strategy officer at Harris Poll and one of the sharpest minds in understanding consumer and social trends in business today. She will be the keynote speaker at the Leadership Summit this November. Learn more and join >
We live in a big confinement.
Now every meeting begins with the same question. What is the ROI? What's the reward? Did that dinner actually lead to a deal, did that conversation convert, and how much is this worth on the balance sheet? We have become very good at measuring things. We are finding it increasingly difficult to recognize what kinds of things are worth measuring. Everything is reduced to zeros and ones, and we are like robots auditioning machines that come to do our job.
I've been thinking about that all week at PTTOW!, a network of culture-shaping leaders and a space built for the one thing AI can't imitate.
A woman in the bathroom said this to no one in particular. “This is great, but I don't know how to explain ROI to the company when I come back.”
I couldn't answer her. At first it wasn't. Then it landed: the fact that you can't do it Clearly explain why ROI is important. She tried to enter the most valuable items in the building into a spreadsheet, but it didn't work.
AI is about to make the stenosis even worse. it is super charge That instinct optimizes our already transactional culture to be so frictionless that every interaction feels soulless (we're already seeing this backlash with luxury travel, for example).
Because to bots, a transaction is a transaction.
I have a question PTTOW! This year's theme is for me sage and seeker: If bots own transactions, what do humans own?
The answer is not to outperform computers' computational power. You will lose.
it is to get He is fundamentally superior as a human being. That is our superpower. We are super-connectors of people, ideas, and concepts that would never have met otherwise. But none of this is possible without trust, the connective tissue that gives meaning to connections. And those who already know this are not talking about it in the abstract. Nadja White, CEO of M&C Saatchi, said it clearly: “You can't judge ROI without determining trust.” Additionally, trust is not built overnight in a transactional environment. It's built when you set the table and invite people. At dinners and conversations, people show their true selves and share the things that make them a little more vulnerable and more human.
Nadja named the principle. Sam Rapoport built an entire pipeline on top of that.
“I know someone.”
Ten years ago, Sam Rapoport stood on the sideline of MetLife Stadium, looked left and right, and asked: Where are the women on the football side of the NFL?
There was almost nothing.
So she decided she was going to change that.
This is the part that stopped me. When Sam asked NFL general managers where they actually found entry-level coaches and scouts, the answer was no. resume or Applicant tracking system. It was the golf course, the cigar lounge, and the social interaction. They exploited human emotions in precious moments. “I know a guy.”
So sit down. We are racing in opposite directions. The AI agent launches 100 applications and screens resumes, algorithms optimized for robots. The entire recruitment funnel is transactionally automated. And who is actually doing the hiring? they are still progressing I know someone.
So Sam didn't fight the system. She built a better room. She assembled 40 of the brightest women in college coaching and scouting, most of them women of color, and brought them face-to-face with recruiters. Don't lecture. To impress them. “I know a man” became “I know someone.”
As a result, all 32 NFL teams now have female coaches. Women in football roles have increased by 190% in five years. The NFL has more women coaching than any other men's professional sports league on the planet, more than twice as many as the second-place league.
And what would be the reconfiguration to make it work across the political spectrum? she never said hire women. she said that anti-competitive Ignoring half the population. Tell the head coach he's anti-competitive and watch how quickly he becomes competitive. She turned a polarizing issue into a win-win and had the courage to ask people to share. While others are automating funnels, work still moves through individuals.
can't use bots
I keep thinking about this line that Keki Palmer said. “What we lack now is not innovation; it is the wisdom to innovate.”
She would know. She was born through the old machines of Disney and Nickelodeon and treated like a former version of herself that was archived before she finished growing up. Then the internet handed her a pen. Both systems made her. The old ones gave her discipline and skill. The new one gave her freedom and scope. The problem, she argues, is that we have maintained our reach and abandoned the technology.
We have built the largest unorganized creative economy in history. Hundreds of millions of people are building viewers faster than they can. themselves. As Keke said, people cannot exert influence without initiation. Every healthy culture once had a janitor, a Quincy Jones, a Dick Clark, an Apollo, a conservatory, an educational institution. discover talent, they developed people. It is hollow connective tissue.
And here's the trap. The instinct now is to let bots fill the gap, automate mentorship, scale coaching, and let models grow the next generation. But you can't do that with bots. Development is a relationship, not a transaction. That's someone who sees your potential before the metrics and stays in the room until you grow into it. Tissues are grown, not generated.
So what to do with this
We hosted three town halls at PTTOW. He spoke about three very different themes: career uncertainty, the insane pressure secretly placed on executives, and the hatred that drives the nation. Every room landed in the same spot. No one asked for a better tool. they wanted each other. And the data shows they're right: A recent study I worked on with my fellow PTTOW! Samantha Matlin, a member of St. Jude Children's Hospital, found that 68 percent of Americans still feel hopeful about their future, and 91 percent say the driving force behind that hope is “helping others.”
So while everyone else is scared of losing their jobs to AI, let's do something counterintuitive. Invest more, not less, in people.
- Instead of building more funnels, build more rooms. Like Sam, we design social interactions where trust is actually formed. Work moves through people.
- Reframe polarizing issues as win-wins. Anti-competition trumps moralization. Find a version of the question where everyone's interests are already aligned and have the courage to ask others to share it.
- Steward, don't just hand it out. We don't just discover talent, we develop it. You can't botify how to become someone.
- Create two scorecards. Let bots handle efficiency and transactions. Keep your people on another north star: trust, meaning, relationships, culture, and co-creation. That's work that competitors can't copy and paste.
The lady in the restroom was right when she said “PTTOW is not allowed”! on the balance sheet. She was wrong to think that was the problem.
It's not a bug. When everything that can be measured becomes a commodity, what cannot be measured becomes a moat.
