RANT: Why Bot Coaches Don't Work (And What Works Better)

The Culture Code

Five years ago, I wrote a check for $1 million to launch an AI-powered coach using IBM Watson.

We then created the world’s first executive coach bot (long before Chat GPT).

And it DID NOT work.

Here’s why:

Even though the leaders liked the tool…

The BUYERS—CPOs, CHROs, CLOs—DID NOT.

The issue was this: Occasionally the bot would make a mistake. And this put the Buyers at risk.

Sure, the mistakes were small, uncommon, and not costly. But, any risk when it came to a coach was too much risk.

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So here’s what we realized: People didn’t want a Bot coach. They wanted affordable, text-based access to a coach.

And here’s what we did to meet that need: We put together a staff of on-call, ICF-certified coaches to interact with leaders by text.

Like a call center of expert coaches.

Learners can message an expert at the exact moment they run into a challenge or a question.

That was the balance between scalability and impact that people wanted.