Having worked through several major technology shifts over the past few decades, I’ve learned that companies rarely fail because of a single bad call. It’s usually the slow drip of hesitant decisions — the “wait and see” posture — that does the real damage. And right now, AI is moving too fast for hesitation.
Our 2025 State of Performance Enablement report revealed a number that should make every leader pause: nearly 8 in 10 high performers are seeking new roles. These employees are usually the most AI-savvy — and they know when their company is falling behind.
The consequence of standing still
If you’re not helping people learn, experiment, and apply AI in their work, they will go somewhere that does. I’ve seen this movie before. In the 1990s, Borders Books didn’t take Amazon seriously until it was far too late. Their leadership assumed that customers would continue to visit stores. They lost the bet due to a lack of imagination and stale, presumptive thinking that consumers would prefer to buy books from brick-and-mortar stores rather than online.
A similar pattern is emerging with AI today.
The link between innovation and NextGen
Betterworks NextGen is an intuitive solution with a powerful, native AI backend that is technically optimized and built on containerized microservices for rapid innovation and scalability. This turns performance data into organizational intelligence in a way that supports executive priorities and business outcomes.
It is the most significant product transformation in Betterworks’ history. It’s a complete rebuild, informed by a decade of customer feedback and engineered to move at the speed of modern work. As such, it lays the groundwork for the next wave of innovation where intelligence amplifies the human side of performance by dramatically improving the quality, timeliness, and personalization of the insights and support that employees, managers, and HR teams receive.
A few things matter most to me as a CEO:
- Is it intuitive? If a solution slows people down, adoption collapses.
- Is it technically sound? Architecture determines how fast you can innovate.
- Does it help leaders run their business more effectively?
NextGen checks those boxes. It enables us to deliver new capabilities in weeks, not months. That speed matters when you’re competing in markets reshaped by AI.
Just as important, NextGen transforms continuous performance signals into real guidance — something most leaders have never truly had. For years, performance management has been a compliance exercise for so many. Now, it becomes a strategic driver.
What leaders want now is adaptability and current, actionable data — but you cannot achieve adaptable outcomes or good data from rigid processes.
Talent intelligence: The next frontier
One of the biggest shifts we’re enabling is the move from static talent management to dynamic talent intelligence.
We hear the same concerns from CEOs and CHROs:
- Do we have the skills we need?
- Where is our talent strong or exposed?
- How do we help people grow into the roles the business needs?
NextGen begins to close that gap.
We’ve integrated learning platforms like Docebo, allowing employees to link development directly to goals and skill-building without leaving Betterworks. Development becomes part of the workflow, not an afterthought.
Soon, our solution will help organizations identify skills with far greater precision, map talent to opportunities, match people with projects and roles based on skills, and enable organizations to see where to invest before skill gaps slow the business.
Scalability and innovation: why architecture matters
I’ve been in enterprise technology long enough to know that architecture either accelerates innovation or kills it. One of the biggest advantages we have with NextGen is minimal technical debt — something many competitors cannot claim.
Due to the solution’s design, we can develop and deploy features faster, scale them reliably, and respond to customers’ needs without compromise. In a rapidly shifting AI landscape, this is critical. Leaders can’t afford tools that lag behind the business.
Business value and competitive advantage
The first test of any solution is simple: Do people actually use it?
NextGen’s clean, elegant UI and AI Assist features eliminate friction from the performance management tasks that managers and employees undertake — including goal setting, check-ins, feedback, recognition, and performance summaries. When something is easier to do and more accessible, people are more likely to do it, and adoption will increase.
Betterworks’ AI Assist features and ease of use in our solution to date have generated, by one customer’s measures, $3 million in productivity value. We expect all our customers to see an equally significant impact when using our latest version.
And with the adoption of NextGen comes the real payoff: Companies can finally act on the valuable performance signals they’ve been missing.
Frequent goal updates, feedback loops, conversations, and recognition data tell a story about alignment, engagement, growth, and risk. NextGen turns that story into insights leaders can trust and act upon — reducing bias, increasing fairness, and helping teams move faster in the right direction. It also reveals where your talented people are — and where they’re not.
Better alignment leads to higher engagement, stronger performance, professional growth, lower turnover, and the achievement of strategic business outcomes. That’s the chain of impact we’re enabling.
Helping enterprises turn on a dime
Most large companies recognize that their performance processes aren’t helping them become more agile. Many are stuck with annual or bi-annual reviews, performance bell curves, calibration decisions that feel subjective, and slow decision cycles that can’t keep up with change.
I’ve lived inside these systems — ones where 75% of employees were categorized as “average” or “above average” based on outdated data and subjective conversations. It never sat right with me, and it never truly improved performance.
What leaders want now is adaptability and current, actionable data — but you cannot achieve adaptable outcomes or good data from rigid processes.
What I’ve learned in my career is that performance is never about the process. It’s always about the people and how we enable them. NextGen was built to help people and organizations stay aligned, agile, and competitive in a world that’s moving faster than ever.
NextGen removes much of the friction and risk typically associated with change. When conversations, goals, feedback, recognition, and development all live in one intuitive, integrated ecosystem that’s convenient and easy for employees to use, leaders can shift direction without losing people along the way.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Performance goals align directly to the organization’s strategic goals, so people are clear about what matters most.
- Feedback is timely and useful, helping people stay on track — not a once-a-year exercise.
- Conversations connect to accomplishment, helping managers coach instead of evaluate.
- Development aligns with internal mobility, creating growth paths rather than a talent drain.
- Recognition builds culture, showing people their work is seen and valued.
This is how organizations become faster, more aligned, and more resilient.
A future that amplifies the human side of work
AI doesn’t replace leaders. But it does change what great leadership looks like.
A manager who partners with AI — using it to prepare for conversations, check bias, generate clearer feedback, or understand team trends — will outperform a manager who doesn’t. I tell leaders all the time that AI won’t replace managers, but AI-savvy managers will replace those who ignore it.
NextGen is built for this future. It provides companies with a way to embrace AI responsibly, strategically, and with people at the center.
That’s the heart of performance enablement: helping managers coach more effectively, enabling employees to grow faster, and empowering leaders to make decisions with confidence, not guesswork.
What I’ve learned in my career is that performance is never about the process. It’s always about the people and how we enable them.
NextGen was built to help people and organizations stay aligned, agile, and competitive in a world that’s moving faster than ever.
The leaders who embrace this shift will build companies that attract and retain great people and unlock their best work. Those who hesitate may find themselves in Borders Books’ position — looking up one day and realizing the world changed without them.
If you’re ready to move your performance strategy into the future, we’re here to help you get there.
Learn more about what’s under the hood of NextGen.
Before becoming CEO at Betterworks in 2018, Doug was the CEO of Alfresco and President of SuccessFactors. He spent 11 years at Cisco Systems, Inc. [CSCO], and 10 years at 3Com Corporation, and began his technology career as an HP sales representative in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also a co-author of the book Make Work Better.
Step inside NextGen — built for strategic HR leaders
