#85: Bringing Humanity Back to Business with Drew Fortin

Lead the People

Drew Fortin is a people-first, values-driven leader with nearly 20 years of growth strategy and team-building experience across retail, marketing technology, local media, and HR tech. He spent eight years at The Predictive Index, where he was Chief Growth Officer responsible for the company's strategy to build the world's first talent optimization platform. Drew is obsessed with the shift that AI, robotics, and web3 have on the employer-employee relationship and the good things it means for humans in the future of work. This led him to found Lever Talent. He is also co-creator and host of "The Lever Show with Drew Fortin."

Top 3 Takeaways

1. Business is human. In our earliest days, commerce was intensely human. While we’ve recently learned to boost automation and scale, business remains human when we get it right.
2. Play the long game. While splashy headlines abound, realizing the benefits of technologies like AI is going to take time. Don’t rush your strategy and implementation, but opt for steady progress.
3. Seek leverage. I’m fascinated by Drew’s recognition that technology has the potential to help us renew our humanity by freeing us up to spend more time and energy on what matters most. Let’s lean into this.

From Our Sponsor

The Predictive Index (PI) is an award-winning talent optimization platform that aligns business strategy with people strategy for optimal business results. More than 60 years of proven science, software, and a curriculum of insightful management workshops make PI the solution for any company looking to design great teams and culture, make objective hiring decisions, foster engagement, and inspire greatness in their people anywhere in the world. More than 10,000 clients and 480+ partners use PI—including Nissan, Citizens Bank, Subway, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Omni Hotels—across 90+ countries. Learn more at predictiveindex.com.

From the Source

“We rarely talk about the human element and every business has some element of a defensive moat internally. How can we actually bring that to life?”

“If you think about the essence of business, it predates investor evolution, right? Two individuals sharing goods, sharing value and realizing that, ‘Hey, if I give you this and you give me that, it creates more value in my life than I could ever bring it to myself.’ And in turn, it creates more value in the world than we could ever create individually. That is human.”

“If we can continue to help businesses realize that this macro level shift is happening, we can empower more individuals while also helping businesses succeed in this new future and in turn at a really high level, making business more human because that is the differentiator.”

“The next big platform shift, which we're on the precipice of right now, is this evolution of AI and ‘What does this mean?’”

“As the proliferation of automation and AI takes off, the need for human judgment increases because we have more things that are automated and out there running on their own. So you need more checks and balances. You need humans involved.”

“There are examples of tech companies, especially larger ones, saying ‘We're going to mandate that we're going to cut because we're investing in AI. So we're just not going to backfill the positions.’ They almost need to prove that AI is working.”

“You have time to plan for the impact that AI is going to have in your business and to plan it in a positive way. And you don't need a strategy right now, today. You need to develop a strategy over the next two to three years so you can start to build.”

“The gift of the last platform shift—which is digitization, the ability to create automation—is allowing us to implement technologies internally that can make it so that we can customize the employee experience, tailor it not just to the individual's needs, but to the business needs.”

“The imperative today really comes down to ‘What data are we actually collecting? What is our strategy and plan?’”

Connect with Drew

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewpfortin/

Website: https://levertalent.com