Progress Over Perfection Episode 4 Guest Nick Schutt: People, Policy, and Privacy

In this episode of Progress Over Perfection, Jack Moore talks with Nick Schutt — founder and president of Artemis Human Capital Management and host of the Robots and Red Tape podcast — about what actually separates AI programs that work from the ones that stall out. Nick and Jack cover why most organizations aren't AI-ready (it's a data problem, not a tool problem), the biggest mistake leaders make when rolling out AI, why prompting matters more than which model you use, and why you should never take AI output at face value. Nick shares real results from his own podcast guests: military planning cycles cut from two weeks to five minutes, and monthly compliance reporting cut from 80 hours to 90 minutes. He closes with the one thing a federal leader can do Monday morning to move the needle. Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:31 Why Nick started Robots and Red Tape 4:03 Why most organizations aren't ready for AI 6:00 The federal AI tools landscape 7:07 The most overlooked piece of any AI rollout: your people 13:00 Prompting, tool comparisons, and building context with AI 17:56 Pattern matching vs. understanding 21:00 Real results: military planning, compliance reporting, and more 26:34 Where we really are on the AI adoption curve 27:55 The one thing to do Monday morning