The mission and the mountain | Greg Larkin
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In conversation with the OG Punk, Greg Larkin.
In this episode the Solutionists get stuck into where we’re getting stuck with automation, value and values with Punks and Pinstripes founder, Greg Larkin.
Warning : sacred cows were slaughtered.
If your organisation is overwhelmed by AI hype, struggling to tell real value from slop, or watching transformation efforts die before they start, this episode is for you. Bronwyn Williams and Sharon Pearce are joined by Greg Larkin, CEO of Punks and Pinstripes and veteran of 34 Fortune 500 product launches, for a frank conversation about why AI is not the problem, the slop was always there, and what courageous leadership actually looks like in practice.
Greg, Bronwyn and Sharon dismantle the myth that AI is taking your job, arguing instead that most of the work being automated should never have existed in the first place. They use call centres, investment banking, and the Zappos customer-moment-of-truth model to show the difference between automating dysfunction and genuinely solving problems. Greg's three-part filter for evaluating any AI investment (grow sales, minimise costs, mitigate risk) cuts through the hype cycle noise and gives leaders a practical lens that survives every bubble.
The conversation goes deep on why transformation really fails inside large organisations: not because the technology is wrong, but because innovation always starts a civil war, and political survival determines outcomes more than technical merit ever does. Greg introduces the first mountain versus second mountain leadership framework to explain why cultural transformation trusted to the wrong leader will fail every time, and what the tell-tale signs are from the outside looking in.
Bronwyn and Sharon bring their own hard-won perspective from South Africa and global corporate transformation work, connecting Greg's frameworks to graduate unemployment, the structural gap between education and the labour market (via Harvard economist Claudia Goldin), and the urgent need for a solutionist movement that develops contextual, integrative human judgment rather than single-track specialisation. This is the episode that shows what Bronwyn Williams and Sharon Pearce can bring to organisations that are ready to stop marking their own homework and start solving the right problems.
In this episode the Solutionists get stuck into where we’re getting stuck with automation, value and values with Punks and Pinstripes founder, Greg Larkin.
Warning : sacred cows were slaughtered.
If your organisation is overwhelmed by AI hype, struggling to tell real value from slop, or watching transformation efforts die before they start, this episode is for you. Bronwyn Williams and Sharon Pearce are joined by Greg Larkin, CEO of Punks and Pinstripes and veteran of 34 Fortune 500 product launches, for a frank conversation about why AI is not the problem, the slop was always there, and what courageous leadership actually looks like in practice.
Greg, Bronwyn and Sharon dismantle the myth that AI is taking your job, arguing instead that most of the work being automated should never have existed in the first place. They use call centres, investment banking, and the Zappos customer-moment-of-truth model to show the difference between automating dysfunction and genuinely solving problems. Greg's three-part filter for evaluating any AI investment (grow sales, minimise costs, mitigate risk) cuts through the hype cycle noise and gives leaders a practical lens that survives every bubble.
The conversation goes deep on why transformation really fails inside large organisations: not because the technology is wrong, but because innovation always starts a civil war, and political survival determines outcomes more than technical merit ever does. Greg introduces the first mountain versus second mountain leadership framework to explain why cultural transformation trusted to the wrong leader will fail every time, and what the tell-tale signs are from the outside looking in.
Bronwyn and Sharon bring their own hard-won perspective from South Africa and global corporate transformation work, connecting Greg's frameworks to graduate unemployment, the structural gap between education and the labour market (via Harvard economist Claudia Goldin), and the urgent need for a solutionist movement that develops contextual, integrative human judgment rather than single-track specialisation. This is the episode that shows what Bronwyn Williams and Sharon Pearce can bring to organisations that are ready to stop marking their own homework and start solving the right problems.
