In this episode of FinTalk, Ivan Jesus, Founder and CEO of Finalytics, sits down with Alissar Halabi, Partner at AI Infiniti, who advises founders and executive teams on leadership, culture and HR transformation. Together, they explore how people strategy, leadership and AI can help businesses turn their goals into effective execution.
Key takeaways
Connect people strategy to business goals
People strategy should reflect how the business operates, what it is trying to build and how it serves customers. HR and finance need to work together on workforce planning, costs, technology and talent decisions.
Culture shapes everyday execution
Culture is not just values on a wall: it shows up in daily behaviour, meetings and decisions. As a business grows or changes, its culture and leadership approach need to evolve too.
Communicate through change
Leaders should keep people informed as priorities shift, at every level of the business. When answers are not yet clear, it helps to slow down enough to align before speeding up to deliver.
Use AI to improve the employee experience
Automation can make the employee journey more seamless and reduce mundane HR tasks, leaving more room for strategic work. Data from HR tools can also support timely feedback and better-informed decisions.
“Tech is the easiest part of a project, it's actually people that's the hardest.” Alissar Halabi
Why it matters for founders
For an owner-led SME, people strategy can help turn the founder’s vision into clear roles, behaviours and priorities as the business grows. Bringing HR thinking in early, and keeping it aligned with finance and operations, can help prevent execution gaps and reactive fixes.
Our take
Every hire turns a plan into a fixed cost. People decisions made with finance in the room are the ones a business can still afford a year later.
See it in practice: Cash is King: how to take control of cash flow as you scale
Watch or listen
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