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At the Intersection: Insights for Thriving at the Crossroads of Change
At the Intersection is a podcast for CEOs and leaders navigating one of the most important shifts in modern business: the rise of Human + AI organizations.
Hosted by Craig Francisco, CEO of AI23, the show explores the crossroads of leadership, strategy, and artificial intelligence — where executive decision-making, organizational alignment, and emerging technology meet.
Through short solo insights and candid conversations with experienced operators, Craig focuses on the questions leaders are asking right now:
• Where should we actually start with AI?
• How do we align our leadership team around strategy?
• Where can AI create meaningful leverage in our organization?
• What does a realistic path to becoming an AI-enabled company look like?
This podcast is designed for leaders who want clarity before launching AI initiatives — not hype, tools, or scattered experimentation.
If you're a CEO or senior leader trying to make sense of AI inside your organization — where to start, what to prioritize, and how to actually create momentum — I offer a focused 1:1 advisory session where we work through this together.
You can learn more here:
https://stan.store/craigfrancisco/p/ai-strategy-session-for-business-leaders-ifb4xrz8
At the Intersection: Insights for Thriving at the Crossroads of Change
Why AI Adoption Will Shift From Tech To People
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AI is getting cooler by the week, but I think the next big shift has nothing to do with the newest model or the slickest demo. After spending time at a packed AI event in downtown Cleveland where 500 people chose between four different workshops, I walked away with a clear takeaway about what leaders want today and what they’ll desperately need tomorrow.
Right now, most attention goes to the technology. People gravitate toward sessions with “Gen AI” energy because it’s thrilling, tangible, and it feels like a shortcut to transformation. Meanwhile, human centered conversations about how teams actually partner with AI tend to get less love, even when the content is practical and grounded. I get it. The tech is impressive. But the moment companies try to scale beyond experimentation, the real friction shows up fast.
My prediction: within the next 12 months, that preference flips. Organizations are going to feel overwhelmed by AI implementation and start “starving for support” on the human side. How do you get teams to understand the tools, trust them, and use them well? How do you structure the organization for adoption, governance, and real value? That is the work that determines whether AI becomes a competitive advantage or an expensive curiosity.
If you’re navigating AI strategy, change management, or scaling AI across your business, this short episode is built to challenge your assumptions and sharpen your focus. Subscribe, share it with a leader who’s wrestling with AI adoption, and leave a review with your take: are we heading toward a human first AI era?
Hey everyone, this will be a short episode, so tune in and really listen to this one because this is going to be my opinion on something, just an insight that came to me this week that I believe will come true in the next year, and we can revisit this when it does. My partners and I, we were downtown Cleveland this earlier this week at the Greater Cleveland Partnership Association, put on an AI event at the Hilton downtown. 500 people attended. It was fantastic. Lots of panels, breakouts, uh, great keynote, just you know, really great half day of material. We were one of four sessions at a certain time slot
A One Year Prediction
SPEAKER_00where those 500 people could choose to go into whatever room, and they all based it off the title, right? So you had a title of your workshop, and ours was really focused on actually, I think it was like the potential era, how humans partner
Cleveland AI Event Takeaways
SPEAKER_00with AI. It was very human focused. Okay. The other three were very technology focused, a lot of tech, like a genet AI, something, you know, super cool stuff, don't get me wrong. And as expected, our room would have been the least attended of all of those. Not because it wasn't exciting, but
Why Tech Talks Drew The Crowd
SPEAKER_00people are still so focused on the tech, and they're they're just blown away by what that looks like, and they're trying to figure out how that could work in their business. And I think it's awesome, it's great. Here is my vision. Here's what I think will happen in the next 12 months. I predict that if we had that same lineup of workshops 12 months from now, people are all of a sudden gonna flip to the human side because what's gonna happen, companies, organizations, they will not know how to implement AI effectively into their business. It's gonna be overwhelming. It really will be because the tech's cool, but if you can't get your teams to understand it and be a part of it, and like what value is that for them, and how should you structure your organization to be most effective? All of that at the core is the most important thing for a company to be successful in this new era, the era we call the potential era.
The Coming Shift To People
SPEAKER_00So AI and humans together amplify what's possible, create amazing results. So
Making AI Work Inside Teams
SPEAKER_00we'll see. We'll see if I'm right. We're in uh June of 2026, a year from now. I truly believe companies are going to be starving for support and help and anything they can get that will be be of value to them as they look to continue AI implementation into their business. Have a great, great.