#486 Building an AI-Powered Business Without Losing Control: Mo Rousso in Conversation with Niels Brabandt
Building an AI-Powered Business Without Losing Control: Mo Rousso in Conversation with Niels Brabandt
Artificial intelligence has moved from experimentation to expectation. Across boardrooms and leadership teams, the question is no longer whether to implement AI, but how to do so without eroding accountability, trust or strategic clarity. In this conversation, Mo Rousso joins Niels Brabandt to provide a disciplined framework for building an AI-powered business without losing control.
Mo Rousso approaches artificial intelligence not as a technological novelty, but as a governance challenge. Unlike many publications that focus on prompt engineering or tool comparisons, his work centres on organisational structure, accountability and decision discipline. AI, in his view, is not a magic system. It is an additional teammate. As with any teammate, it requires guardrails, performance metrics, oversight and clearly defined functional responsibilities.
Niels Brabandt raises the concern shared by many professionals: does AI threaten employment security? Mo Rousso responds with an analogy that reframes the debate. Replacing a capable professional with AI is akin to replacing them with a toddler. AI may operate quickly and at scale, but it lacks mature judgement. Human oversight remains indispensable. The issue is not replacement, but appropriate delegation.
The discussion turns to a real-world risk: hallucinations and flawed data. Strategic decisions based on incorrect AI outputs can generate costly consequences. According to Mo Rousso, the solution is not abandonment, but structured governance. Organisations must accumulate what he describes as sufficient operational experience, or saddle time, to recognise unreliable outputs. More importantly, each AI application must have a clearly accountable human leader.
When leaders attempt to attribute errors to AI systems, Mo Rousso is unequivocal. Accountability remains with the human decision-maker. Just as managers cannot blame subordinates for oversight failures, executives cannot shift responsibility to algorithms. AI provides input. Leaders retain authority and liability.
For growth-focused organisations and scale-ups under investor pressure, the temptation to accelerate AI deployment can be overwhelming. Yet speed without discipline invites systemic risk. Mo Rousso advises leaders to adopt pilot programmes in areas characterised by repetitive tasks and measurable outcomes. Controlled experimentation, regular review meetings and structured evaluation mirror best practices in any strategic initiative.
The interview also explores cultural resistance. Some senior leaders may hesitate to adopt AI due to unfamiliarity or mistrust. Mo Rousso warns against sidelining the technology entirely. Avoidance does not eliminate competitive pressure. Instead, leaders must define AI’s appropriate role within their industry context and organisational strategy.
A central distinction emerges between organisations that integrate AI successfully and those that become overly dependent. The differentiator is onboarding. Whether introducing a junior employee or an AI system, leaders must clarify expectations, define assignments and monitor performance. Over-dependence occurs when governance frameworks are absent.
Mo Rousso concludes with three pragmatic recommendations for persuading hesitant decision-makers. Identify a contained pilot project. Measure performance rigorously. Expand only after demonstrable success. In this domain, as he summarises, slow is fast.
Throughout the discussion, Niels Brabandt ensures that technological insights are translated into leadership implications. The message for executives is clear. Artificial intelligence does not eliminate leadership responsibility. It amplifies the need for structured oversight, strategic clarity and disciplined governance.
Building an AI-powered business without losing control is not a technological exercise. It is a leadership challenge.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
When you are running a business and you think, "Hmm, how should I actually implement AI?" I think I should do something because anyone's doing something. The question is, how do I power my business with AI without actually losing control, trust, or my mind? And we have an expert on the matter here today. Hello, and welcome, Mo Russo.
Mo Russo
Hello. Thanks for inviting me to join you today.
Niels Brabandt
Thank you very much for taking the time, and we get straight into it. So you wrote the book about how to exactly do what I just said: how to build an AI-powered business without losing control, trust, or your mind. So first, of course, I have to ask, what was your core motivation to write this book? Especially as today many people say, "I think we need to do something with AI, but how to know the right path?" So what was your motivation? What is your background to get to the idea to that book, which is now in the second edition?
Mo Russo
Absolutely, yes. In the second edition, if anyone has read the first edition, will notice that it actually takes a different tact in figuring out the best way to implement AI and integrate it within your operations.
Mo Russo
Most books that people come across with AI, it's all about prompt engineering or which are the best tools to use, that sort of thing. And that's all well and good, but that's not what this book is about. This book is about how you govern AI to get the types of results you want out of your business.
Mo Russo
And to me, the underlying premise is AI is an additional teammate within your organization. And as a teammate, you need to have the same guardrails, the same performance metrics, the same functional accountabilities, and the same governance over that entity. So that's what's really important.
Mo Russo
And this came from my background. I've started six businesses, sold five of them. And I also am a business coach, and I work with clients across the United States. And these are all from personal experiences, either of myself or of my clients, and me helping them navigate these questions.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, excellent. And of course, as soon as anyone gets in touch with me to be on that podcast, I always check their background if people actually know what they're talking about, and you are a senior professional in this area.
Niels Brabandt
When you now say, "We have a new teammate here," some people say, "Yeah, we have a new teammate, but the problem is I think this teammate is going to take my job away. So I'm not supporting it because someone will bring in AI just for one reason to make me go away."
Niels Brabandt
What do you tell these people who think that AI is more of a threat than actually a help?
Mo Russo
Well, if you bring AI into your organization to replace a highly capable, productive individual that's been in your business for some time, it's like replacing them with a toddler. So if you think about it from that standpoint, toddlers have good intentions, but they don't always have the right judgment. And so while AI may actually improve efficiency, speed of doing things in your business, it does not replace human judgment. And that's what people need to understand. I don't know about you, but I find myself arguing with AI all the time. I say, "No, that's not right. Why aren't you listening to me?" That sort of thing. And if you recall the movie A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.
Niels Brabandt
You want the truth. You can't handle the truth.
Mo Russo
That's what I keep thinking AI is going to tell me because I keep berating it for giving me the wrong information.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, absolutely. So just to give you one example, which I shared on LinkedIn just yesterday, there is an organization, which of course I kept anonymous, in the US. They implemented AI, and it went well so far. In the recent months, they made decisions on how to structure their sales, how to put regions into place, how to assign the different account executives to the regions. After three months, someone by pure coincidence finds out the data was based on hallucinations. So significant investments and decisions were made, suddenly didn't work out. People wondering, "Is it the market?" No, it can't be the market because our competitors are performing. Why are we not performing? So how is it that how can we make sure? Because some people say, "When I have to double-check everything AI does, I can actually do it by myself in the first place."
Mo Russo
That's right. That's right. And I think it's a process of having here, since I live in the southwest of the United States, we call it saddle time, like you're on a horse saddle. So you have to get enough saddle time with AI so that you can discern when it's hallucinating. And it also gives it the ability to have worked with you for a while to understand a little further what it is that you want from it. So it's a bit of a two-way street. But what you need to do is definitely have those guardrails in place with respect to AI.
Mo Russo
And if you go through the book, there's types of meetings you should have, types of organizational structure you should have. If you're familiar with the works of Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, right? So he's introduced a concept to the business world called Who, Not How. Right? So what that means is instead of how to figure out how to do something, you figure out who is best suited to do that thing. And in some cases, that can be AI.
Mo Russo
So that's how I think of it when you integrate AI as a team member in your organization. It's another who that can do the how things that are not as strategically important or aren't as motivating, exciting, tend to be more rote, routine kinds of things that. So that's kind of where we look for it, where it's best used, but you still need to have that human oversight.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. So from your experience as a CEO, you work directly with leadership teams. What, in your opinion, is the single most common mistake organizations make when trying to scale the execution of AI while at the same time they try to preserve not only organizational culture and trust, but also try to preserve sanity in the business and making the right decisions?
Mo Russo
Yes. So to me, a lot of times is as AI enables faster processing of whatever the business flow is, people start to take it more for granted. So they keep speeding up, speeding up, speeding up. And they start to abdicate the accountability as a result of that.
Mo Russo
So it's really important that for every AI tool that you use, you have somebody who's accountable for that tool and its use. So you just can't a lot of times AI kind of sneaks into the organization. I'm going to use ChatGPT, for example, to draft a letter or to handle it.
Niels Brabandt
Classic one. Yeah.
Mo Russo
Yes, right. And so forth. And then they start doing, "Oh, that was easy. Let's try it and do this." So it starts to snowball in the organization. And there's no real rules of engagement when it comes to most organizations when they start using AI because it surreptitiously slipped underneath the door and into the organization. So there's a couple of things to be on the lookout for.
Niels Brabandt
Absolutely. So one question I frequently receive is when people say, "Okay, let's say you have a person leading a department and they introduce AI and they use it. Things go well. After a couple of months, a significant mistake happens. And the leader of that department says, "Well, it was AI who told me to do that." Who holds the accountability? Can the leader say it was AI's fault, or is it always the leader's fault? What is your take on that?
Mo Russo
It's like a manager blaming a subordinate. What that tells me is the manager had no oversight. And so yeah, it's not AI's fault.
Niels Brabandt
Okay. So definitely, no matter how great the AI tool is, people always have to have the accountability personally. There is no way to say it's AI's fault. The leaders have to step up and say, "When something goes wrong, it's still my fault."
Mo Russo
It's exactly as if you had a human employee who's working for you and they're following instructions to the best of their abilities. And AI, unless you direct it to, is not going to ask you for clarification. It's going to do it to the best of its ability. And so it's up to the leader then to make sure that the AI is performing properly. So that's where the accountability stops.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, very good. How do you deal with leaders who say, "Look, I am from a different generation. I am not that tax savvy as other people who now just enter the job market. AI is something which is very strange to me. So probably I will always have certain trust issues. I'd rather not use it and probably put in a bit more manual work." Is it okay that people say, "I sideline AI in today's world"?
Mo Russo
I think it just kind of depends on the industry as well, the market position, and so forth. I think sidelining is like burying your head in the sand because it's not going to go away. I just think you need to figure out what the best role for it is.
Mo Russo
And it's funny that you should mention this scenario because I did write a book about it. It's called Let AI Do It. It was actually my first book about AI. And it's a parable about a stodgy old businessman who's resisting bringing AI into his workplace.
Mo Russo
And then his young niece, he hires his young niece to come in and help out, and then she starts bringing it in. He starts to see the value of it and so forth. So anyway, interesting question. So I thought I'd plug a book. Why not?
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. Very good. Very good. So whenever someone says, "Okay, I'd like to introduce AI to my business. However, how can I as a leader build trust and decision discipline simultaneously while at the same time, maybe I work for a startup where people say, 'Hey, it's all about scaling.'" And basically, as we are a startup and we are maybe even a scale-up with investors who simply expect results, and usually speed is a bit more prioritized over the exact result, how does that go together? When I say speed is important, speed and then at the same time being very precise usually doesn't go well together.
Mo Russo
Correct. Correct. Yeah. So to me, it's like, how do you balance it now if you have a junior member of your team that you're relying on to do some of that work, right?
Mo Russo
So what safeguards would you put in place to make sure that junior member of the team, one, understands the assignment? So you need to really drive clarity. Just like in any kind of business situation with any type of resource that you're using, you have to have that clarity in order for them to fully understand the assignment, to fully be able to deliver on what it is you want for an outcome, and to fully embrace providing the level of information needed to make those strategic decisions.
Mo Russo
But you would not rely on your junior employee to make that strategic decision. You would rely on that junior employee or AI, in this case, to provide you with information and context to allow you to make the best informed decision that you can.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. What would you say distinguishes organizations that successfully integrate AI over or compare to the organizations who suddenly become overly dependent or relying on AI systems?
Mo Russo
To me, again, the analogy I always fall back on is you're bringing in a new employee and your junior employee and how you onboard that employee, how you frame assignments, all those sorts of things still applies, whether it's a human or AI.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. Very good. So when now people think, "Okay, I think this looks good. I think I'm going to buy this book." However, then some people might say, "Look, I'm maybe not the CEO of my own business. I am the business, and I think we need it. However, I need to convince people who think we're doing well. We have a good market position. Things went well so far. We're not an early adopter."
Niels Brabandt
So what are the top three things you would tell people? How do you convince people who are decision makers in organizations who are probably saying, "Yeah, AI, we just wait for a bit"? How can they get started? Your top three tips for that as the second last question of the interview.
Mo Russo
Yeah, sure. So I actually have a client that we went through this process together. And at the end of the day, it's finding a pilot for an AI application that they felt comfortable with and we could easily monitor its progress, easily measure its performance.
Mo Russo
So the best way to ease into it, from my perspective, is to look for those areas in the business where there's lots of repetition, lots of repetitive tasks that are going on, and seeing how you can use AI to help you there and then create a pilot around it where you have check-in meetings, debriefings, reports, all those types of things you would normally have for any project you might implement within your business, and then evaluate it as it's going on.
Mo Russo
And then if it turns out to be a positive experience, then you can maybe create another pilot or start to expand it within your business. But to me, I had an old boss, who used to always say, "Slow is fast." And in the case of AI, I think slow is fast, right? Just ease into it. And then once you start to see the benefits, once you get used to working with AI, provide the right oversight for AI. AI gets used to working with you because that's important as well. And I think that's a good path forward.
Niels Brabandt
Perfect. And I have one last question, of course, when now some people think, so first, of course, buy this book because it's a really good one. Second one, of course, when people now think, "I think Mo might be really helpful for my organization." The main question is when they say, "Hey, we have a conference. We need a speaker or we need a consultant and mentor, someone who helps us with it," how can people get in touch with you?
Mo Russo
Yeah. So I'm a member of the Activate group. We're a small boutique business consulting firm here in the United States, headquartered in Miami. Since I don't handle pastel colors well, I live in Arizona.
Niels Brabandt
Go on. That's a good one. Yeah.
Mo Russo
But we all travel well. So Activate group, so www.activategroupinc.com, inc.com, where you can reach me directly. It's mrusso@activategroupinc.com. You can email me there as well. Phone numbers are on the website. Always happy to talk, do free discovery calls, see if there's a way that we might be able to help you that's amenable to both of us.
Niels Brabandt
Brilliant. I think these are the perfect final words. AI in your business, and now you know how to implement it with trust and without losing your sanity or controlling your business. Marusso, thank you very much for your time.
Mo Russo
Thank you, Niels. I really enjoyed being here.