What separates the companies actually winning with AI from the ones that just brought it in?

If you have been listening, you know we recently started digging into what AI really means for how teams work, most recently with Sankar from LinkedIn. This episode goes a level deeper, with someone who has actually run it.

In this episode of the Kundra Podcast, Theresa sits down with Sylvain Grande, until recently Chief Product Officer at PayFit, where he was the executive sponsor for AI. Before that he ran product and P&L across SoundCloud, Shutterstock and Yieldstreet. He was already running real AI use cases at PayFit back in 2023, long before most companies had begun. Very few people have actually run an AI transformation inside a real company, over years, in a regulated industry. Sylvain has.

His core idea: AI is not a tool you roll out. It changes how the whole company works, not just what software people use. And the gap is widening between the companies that redesign the work and the ones that just buy the tool.

In this episode, you will learn:

• why treating AI as a license rollout fails
• where to actually start: the smallest unit of work, the task, not a reorg
• why you change how people work first, and let structure follow
• the honest math of AI ROI: why an assistant that handled 80% of support questions still only produced a 30% productivity gain
• the two levers a leader truly controls: rhythm and agenda
• why cost has become the forcing function that makes redesign non-optional
• who should own this, and why ”everyone's job” means no one's job

Whether you are a CEO, a product or business leader, or a manager trying to make sense of what AI means for your team, this conversation gives you a concrete way to move from adopting AI to redesigning how your team works.

Chapters

• 00:00 Meet Sylvain
• 05:16 What most companies get wrong about AI
• 07:56 How AI started at PayFit, back in 2023
• 14:06 A real example: redesigning customer support
• 17:49 The honest truth about AI ROI
• 20:33 Where to start, and the two levers a leader controls
• 23:36 Bringing the whole company along
• 26:53 Why cost became the forcing function
• 30:45 Who should own it
• 33:34 The next 12 to 18 months

About Kundra

Kundra keeps teams strong at the pivotal moments when capacity changes: long leaves, returns, departures, reorganizations, and AI mandates. We help companies structure continuity and redesign how the work gets done, so teams keep performing and come out stronger. This podcast is part of how we learn: conversations with leaders, founders and experts about what really happens when teams change shape, and what the strongest companies do differently. If this resonates and you want to see how Kundra works in practice, email [email protected].