Episode Overview

Partner programmes are the invisible infrastructure behind most enterprise software revenue, yet they rarely get airtime.

In this episode, Pete talks to Joanne John, who spent over nine years at Salesforce moving from incident management through partner operations into transformational change leadership, about what partner success actually means, how AI is reshaping partner programmes without replacing the trust at theircore, and the real mechanics behind a major attrition-risk reduction programme she led.Key Takeaways

• Partner success is ultimately measured by customeroutcomes, not just deal size; a poorly fitted solution damages trust even whenthe deal closes.

• According to Joanne, roughly 70 to 80% ofpartner-related escalations at Salesforce traced back to communicationbreakdown rather than product or delivery failure.

• AI's role in partner programmes is in surfacing betterdata for decisions (referral fee structures, certification value, partner motivations), not in replacing the relationship-building that still drives trust.

• Leading cross-functionally without direct authority depends on transparency and finding a genuine win-win, not positional power.

• One simple structural fix, mandating partner involvement within 24 hours of an escalation, was, according to Joanne, the central driver behind a measured year-over-year improvement in partner-related account risk.

🌐 Connect with Joanne John on LinkedIn

Episode overviewDavid Homan has spent more than a decade building a private community of over two thousand connectors, founders, family offices and impact investors. In this conversation with PeteWoods, he explains why he eventually decided the analogue version of his work needed an AI engine behind it — and how that became SOAR Connect, his relationship intelligence platform currently in beta.

It is a wide-ranging conversation about the things technology has quietly broken about human connection: the way contact data evaporates after every conference, why most introductions are wasted, and why the people who built the social platforms we use every day are themselves the loudest critics of how cold those platforms have become.

David also tells the story of taking the phone call, at 28, that wiped out the fourteen-million-dollar endowment of the foundation he ran at the time — a call from a fund managernamed Bernie Madoff. The fallout from that single moment, and the way most of his network walked away rather than helped, became the real beginning of everything he has built since. There is also a vacuum cleaner, a ballet at the Joffrey, an encounter with Steven Spielberg, and a genuinely useful reframe of the well-worn phrase “give without expectation of return.”

For anyone trying to figure out how to use AI thoughtfully in the parts of work that are most human relationships, trust, asks, follow-up, this episode is worth your time.

Episode OverviewJoshua Gould is Group CEO of thebigword, one of the world's largest language service providers, handling around 50,000 assignments a day across translation, interpreting and localisation. He took the company through a majority private equity sale, stayed on to run it, and has spent the last few years rebuilding the business around AI orchestration, automated workflows and the WordSynk platform.

In this conversation, Josh walks through the journey from a £44-a-week room and a sales job at Coors Brewers to running a tech-enabled language group across more than 80 countries. He's refreshingly blunt on what AI actually does inside a real operation, why "AI strategy" is the wrong starting question, and how the unsexy work of fixing broken processes is what compounds.

If you're a leader being told to "have an AI strategy in 90 days", this one is for you.

Key Learnings

• Why AI is "like taking speed" and what that means for broken processes
• How thebigword drove operations from 20% of revenue down to 9% (and why that doubles profit)
• The questionnaire Josh would send to every department head on day one of an AI mandate
• Why companies that called themselves "internet businesses" all failed, and what that tells us about today's "AI businesses"
• The difference between data-informed and data-driven decisions
• Managed risk over blind gambling: how to size AI bets when token costs are unpredictable
• Why a zip manufacturer is suddenly more attractive to buyers than a flashy tech business

Resources mentioned:

• thebigword: https://www.thebigword.com
• WordSynk platform
• Joshua Gould on LinkedIn