Today, I'm talking with Chris Williams, Head of Operations at Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux.

When Chris joined Walk-On's almost ten years ago, the company had 11 restaurants. Today it has 80, and about 95% are franchisee-owned. Chris started as a general manager after years running restaurants, became a turnaround specialist, led new restaurant openings and training for the whole company, and now oversees training and operations.

In this conversation, we go inside how Walk-On's trains frontline employees who can't step away from guests, how a 13-person opening team trains up to 150 new hires for a brand-new restaurant, and how they keep training and culture consistent across restaurants they don't own. Chris also shares why recognition comes before accountability, why managers should care more about responsibility than authority, and what it takes to build a culture that outpaces your growth.

In this episode, Chris shares:

• Why he always wanted to be the manager, not the player, and how that shapes how he leads
• The "toss the keys" problem: why great individual performers often struggle as managers
• How Walk-On's documents what already works so it can be taught the same way everywhere
• Inside a new restaurant opening: a 13-person team, mock services, and up to 150 new hires
• "If it's not written down, it's not a standard," and how trainers add to the standard without inventing their own
• How to win franchisee buy-in when you don't own or control the business
• Why your culture has to outpace your growth, and what culture means in practice
• Why recognition is the foundation of accountability, and the red-sneaker story that proves it
• A three-pronged approach to frontline training: LMS modules, on-shift workbooks with certified trainers, and proficiency sign-offs
• How shared language tied to core values makes training stick
• Walk-On's University and being the manager your team is pumped to see in the parking lot
• "Your authority matters very little. Your responsibility matters greatly."
• Building a team like a coach: offense, defense, and special teams

Resources mentioned:

• Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux: https://walk-ons.com

Connect with Chris Williams: [add LinkedIn link]

Work With Andy:

Is your organization's know-how stuck in people's heads instead of written down where everyone can use it? Andy's AI Kickstarter Workshop is a hands-on session that helps teams move past fear and into real, everyday AI use, including capturing and standardizing the knowledge that keeps the business running. And his Career Ownership and AI Keynote helps people take charge of their growth in a changing world of work.

Reach Andy at andy@andystorch.com | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andystorch/

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This episode is part of FutureReady, a special series produced in partnership with Emeritus, exploring how organizations are rewiring themselves for performance in the AI and skills economy.

Andy Storch talks with Dr. Carole Bennett, Vice President of Talent Management and Development at Sutter Health, the large integrated health system serving Northern California. Carole leads Sutter Health University, where participation has jumped 120% and senior leaders now teach much of the coursework themselves.

Carole makes the case that managers are where transformation either takes root or quietly stalls. She explains why change and transformation aren't the same thing, why talent development may have lost sight of the "management" side of leading, and how Sutter is bringing AI into leadership development without losing the human heart of healthcare, including an AI agent built into performance reviews that made those conversations feel more human, not less.

In This Episode, You'll Hear:

• Why Carole's PhD research on self-awareness still shapes how she develops leaders, and why self-awareness is "the practice of leadership"
• How Sutter Health University is built around three pillars: leadership excellence, career growth, and continuous learning
• The leader-as-teacher model: why alumni and senior leaders now teach, and how "learn one, do one, teach one" turns teaching into development
• Why managers are the ones who translate culture, strategy, and mission into daily work
• "Change is doing something different. Transformation is believing something different."
• What happens when organizations drive change through senior leaders and email alone
• Why managers need both sides: operational and financial rigor, and the human side of leading
• Why judgment becomes more important the more knowledge AI puts at our fingertips
• How Sutter partnered with its chief of AI to start AI training before licenses were even in place
• The AI agent built into Sutter's performance management system, and what employees said about the reviews it helped create
• Carole's three words for leading with AI: clarity, judgment, and mastery
• A low-cost way to develop managers without a corporate university: learn on your own, then come together to make meaning
• Why talent leaders need to keep changing, but never stop

Resources Mentioned:

• Sutter Health: https://www.sutterhealth.org
• Emeritus: https://emeritus.org
• LinkedIn Learning
• Own Your Career, Own Your Life by Andy Storch
• Connect with Carole Bennett on LinkedIn: [add link]

About FutureReady: FutureReady is a podcast series produced in partnership with Emeritus, featuring HR and talent leaders navigating the shift to skills-based organizations and AI-enabled work. Full episodes are also available on the Emeritus Insights app.

Work With Andy: Are your managers expected to lead AI change without the skills or confidence to do it? Andy's AI Kickstarter Workshop is a hands-on, 90-minute session that helps managers and teams move past fear and into real, everyday AI use. He also delivers a Career Ownership and AI Keynote for audiences figuring out what AI means for their own careers. Reach out at andy@andystorch.com or visit andystorch.com.

Connect with Andy: andystorch.com | andy@andystorch.com

In this solo episode, I'm sharing the biggest lessons on AI adoption from my four most recent conversations — Christa Hill, Giovanni Giamminola, Violetta Drobot, and Clémentine Al-Elimat of Schneider Electric — along with what I'm seeing in the AI workshops and client work I'm running right now.

Whether your organization started its AI journey years ago or is just turning on Copilot, the tools are accessible to everyone, and you can catch up fast. But turning on licenses isn't the same as transformation. Andy covers how to tell real adoption from login counts, why you should bring problems to the technology instead of the other way around, the three stages of AI maturity, why adoption is a team sport, and why the era of prompt engineering is giving way to something more important: teaching people to think. He also shares how to measure whether it's working, so you have a real answer when leadership asks, "Are we getting our money's worth?"

In This Episode, You'll Hear:

• Why HR and L&D need to be in the room for any AI rollout, and why Andy is starting a new client engagement with the HR team first
• Christa Hill's "logins aren't adoption" — and the three levels of real adoption, from individual use to team-wide breakthroughs
• Why you should bring problems to the technology, not technology to the business ("Don't spread AI over the whole company like peanut butter")
• Giovanni Giamminola's reminder that nobody was hired to build PowerPoints — they were hired to make good business decisions
• A simple prompt anyone can use today to find where AI can help in their own job
• Clémentine Al-Elimat's three stages of AI — doing existing work faster, reinventing the process, reinventing the business model — and "AI plus, not plus AI"
• Why adoption is a team sport: AI champions, intact-team training, and pairing early adopters with beginners
• Why leaders need to participate, not just sponsor
• The three fears employees bring to AI, and why leading AI change takes coaching skills
• Why it's time to teach thinking, not prompting — plus Violetta Drobot's two rules for keeping a human in the loop

Work With Andy:

Ready to move from "we turned on the licenses" to real adoption you can measure? Andy helps organizations run focused AI pilots — starting with one team, mapping and redesigning key workflows, and training people to use AI with confidence and good judgment. His hands-on AI Kickstarter Workshop helps teams move past fear and into everyday AI use, and his Career Ownership and AI Keynote helps people take charge of what AI means for their own careers. Reach out at andy@andystorch.com or visit andystorch.com.

Connect with Andy:

• Website: andystorch.com
• Email: andy@andystorch.com