Articles by Joel "Thor"
Activity
27K followers
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisWhich fighter pilot is most likely to crash? The 50-hour rookie who is trying to earn their wings? The 500-hour pilot a couple years into the journey? Or the 3,000-hour veteran who's been doing this for a decade? It's the 500-hour pilot. Every time. When I investigated crashes in the Air Force, the data was clear. The 50-hour pilot paid attention with every fiber of their being. Survival instinct fully on. The 3,000-hour veteran knew exactly what mattered and when to pay attention. But that 500-hour pilot had learned just enough to stop growing. Putting the plane and their brain on autopilot. Coasting on a false sense of security. That's where most companies are with AI right now. Past the novelty. Past the first wave of excitement. Comfortable enough to think they've figured it out. Tools everywhere. Agents spun up across teams. Content flying out the door. And almost nobody reviewing what AI is actually producing before it ships. This is the 500-hour problem. AI sprawl without governance. Companies scaling usage without scaling oversight. AI pulls from its full conversation context, which means it can surface details or data you never intended to expose. That's a security liability sitting in your workflow today. And the hallucination problem is real, but it's not even the biggest risk. The bigger risk is AI that misleads with total confidence because the guardrails we gave it weren't specific enough. We wrote loose instructions, never stress-tested them, and now trust the output because it sounds authoritative. In flying, the 500-hour pilot doesn't crash because they lost skill. They crash because they stopped questioning whether they were safe. Same thing is happening with AI across the enterprise right now. The question isn't whether your teams are using AI. It's whether anyone is paying attention to what it's doing. I discussed this with Jeff Hopeck on the Interesting Humans podcast where we got into this topic and a lot more. Link: https://lnkd.in/ee3ziazb #AITransformation #EnterpriseAI
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisDay one at the Air Force Academy. 1,800 of us new freshmen sitting in an auditorium. "Stand up hand if you were captain of a sport in high school." Many stood up. "Now stand up if you were valedictorian." More stand. "Salutatorian." More. "Over 1400 SAT." More. "Won an academic award." By the end, every single person in that room was standing. The drill instructor looked at us and said six words: "You're not special anymore. Sit down." Every one of us had showed up with a resume we thought made us special. Then we looked around and realized we were one of 1,800. The race had just started over. That moment broke something in me that needed breaking. Because until then, my identity was built on being the standout. The fast kid. The high SAT score. The one the guidance counselor got excited about. None of that mattered anymore. And the people who thrived from that point forward weren't the ones with the best credentials walking in. They were the ones who decided the scoreboard had reset and got to work. I think about this every time I walk into a room where the bar is higher than I expected. The feeling never changes. You either let it shrink you or you let it fuel you. Had a great conversation with Jeff Hopeck on the Interesting Humans podcast where we dug into this and a lot more. Link: https://lnkd.in/e5zssKt6Ep. 67: Joel Neeb - What Fighter Pilots Know About Fear (That You Don’t)Ep. 67: Joel Neeb - What Fighter Pilots Know About Fear (That You Don’t)
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisAt 8x8, we built a product we hadn’t even conceived of six months ago. No roadmap. No six-month heads up to the sales team. No enablement package. No pricing and packaging. None of it. We had the idea, built it, and demoed it for a customer before many in the company knew it existed. The customer said, “We want it now.” That’s the new product creation cycle. Weeks, not quarters. Everyone celebrates that speed. And they should. But nobody’s talking about what it implies. If you can build a product in weeks, so can everyone else. So can your customers. The same acceleration that made creation fast made shelf life short. That feature you shipped in January? By summer, your customer is wondering why they can’t just build it themselves. Six months ago it was magic. Now it’s table stakes. This changes everything about how you compete. Your moat is not the product anymore. Products are temporary. Your moat is the speed at which you can keep creating the next one, and the ability to show customers how to extract value from it before the window closes. 📊 Product creation cycle: collapsed. 📉 Product shelf life: collapsed with it. 🎯 The only durable advantage is your rate of change. If it feels like things are moving fast, brace yourself. This is the slowest things will ever move again. #ProductStrategy #Innovation #AITransformation
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisGot to catch up with the great Sandy Hogan, who served as Chief Channel Officer when we were both at VMware. Sandy is now building something I think the market desperately needs: a diagnostic-driven framework for helping companies close the gap between go-to-market ambition and actual organizational capacity. One thing from our conversation that really stood out: The biggest blocker to AI transformation isn't the technology. It isn't the frontline employees. It's the leaders. Sandy shared a stat that over 70% of employees are at or beyond change saturation. That's alarming on its own. But layer this on top: most leadership teams think they're further along than they are. They see the potential. They mandate the transformation. Then they inspect the same old metrics, run the same forecast calls, ask the same pipeline questions they asked five years ago. Sound familiar? It reminds me of the early internet era. Companies would hire some young technical wizard to "do the .com stuff" because the CEO didn't really understand it. Leadership wanted the magic without learning the mechanics. And then they were stunned when none of it translated to business outcomes. We're watching the same movie again. The leaders who will win this era aren't the ones who approved the AI budget. They're the ones who changed how they inspect. Changed the questions they ask. Changed what they reward. Changed themselves first. 📊 If your forecast call looks the same as it did two years ago, your AI investment is theater. 🔄 The tool changed. The inspection didn't. 🎯 And the inspection drives the behavior. Sandy Hogan is doing important work helping companies see this gap clearly and close it systematically. Worth following her and what she's building at BozQ. #AI #GoToMarket #Leadership
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisSome recent 8x8 AI use cases and the lesson learned: A finance VP needed to figure out how to operationalize a new rebate program. Weeks of "how do we manage this" and "where does the data come from." She sat down one afternoon and built a working prototype. Two-page methodology. Four-tab spreadsheet. Done. A sales leader needed enablement materials for a new product motion. The enablement team was at capacity. He spent an afternoon and built a better version than the experts would have. Because he had the context they didn't. A channel team needed a deal calculator. Ops wasn't able to schedule a scoping meeting this week. The prototype was live before the calendar invite went out. None of these people are engineers. None of them filed a ticket. The old model was an assembly line. You need something built. You file a request. You wait. You context-dump to someone who's never touched your workflow. They queue it. They build a version that's 60% right. You revise. Three weeks later, maybe you have something usable. That model is dead. Here's what's replacing it: the 24-hour rule. If you've been waiting more than 24 hours for a cross-functional deliverable, it would take less time to build a working prototype yourself than to explain what you need to someone else. You already have the context. The nuance. The edge cases. The reason it matters. Stop packaging that into a requirements doc. Build it. Governance still lives with the experts. Production still lives with the experts. But prototypes live with everyone. Get it to 80%. Hand it over. They'll make it better. They'll harden it. They'll put it in production. But the prototype is yours. The lines between roles aren't blurring because people are overstepping. They're blurring because the cost of waiting now exceeds the cost of building.
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisThe United States Air Force Academy didn't teach me AI. It taught me how to think under pressure, lead through ambiguity, and treat chaos as an advantage. Turns out that's the entire job description for the Insight Age. Grateful to be featured alongside four fellow grads building at the intersection of AI and human judgment. Different industries. Different missions. Same foundation. Kate Zimmerman '12. Hassan Bin Rizwan '02. Christian Sorensen '97. Peyton Cooper '19. Each one proof that what the Academy instills transfers far beyond the flight line. When everyone has access to the same technology, the differentiator is how you lead. The Long Blue Line keeps extending. Article in USAFA Checkpoints: https://lnkd.in/ejVH572X
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb reposted thisJoel "Thor" Neeb reposted thisLast year on the Accelerate stage, Joel "Thor" Neeb, Chief Transformation and Business Operations Officer at 8x8, said something that resonated across the room: “𝘕𝘰 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.” It removes the repetitive, manual grind. In most enterprise organizations, that looks like: 🔴 Assembling data for hours or days 🔴 Chasing weekly progress updates 🔴 Letting daily fires crowd out strategic priorities You name it. This is exactly why our AI agents exist: ➜ The 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗳𝗳 expands managerial capacity. ➜ The 𝗔𝗜 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 strengthens leadership at scale. Not replacing leaders, but supporting them to execute at their best. We’re looking forward to this year’s Accelerate conversations on AI. More on Accelerate 2026 coming soon.
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisThere’s a misconception floating around that AI is going to make work easy. It’s not. AI doesn’t eliminate effort. It eliminates excuses. The research that used to take two days now takes twenty minutes. The first draft that used to be a blank screen staring back at you can be a working outline in seconds. The data you couldn’t access without a three-week IT request is now a prompt away. The work still has to happen. The thinking still has to be sharp. The judgment still has to be yours. But the barriers that used to sit between “I should do this” and “I did this” are disappearing fast. That changes the expectation. The knowledge advantage is gone. The person across the table has the same models, the same access, the same ability to synthesize information at speed. Intellect and raw output are being commoditized in real time. What separates people now is the willingness to actually do something with what’s available. Initiative. Follow-through. Taste. The things AI can’t fake. The leaders I respect most right now aren’t the ones chasing the shiniest AI tool. They’re the ones making sure their teams can’t say “I didn’t have what I needed.” And then holding the bar high. The playing field is leveling. What you do on that field is up to you.
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb shared thisEvery company lists "change fatigue" as a risk right now. Fair enough. We're asking people to learn new skills, adopt AI, rethink how they sell and operate. That's a lot. The easy answer would be to slow down. That answer isn't available to any of us. If it feels like things are moving fast, brace yourself. This is the slowest things will ever move ever again. So how do you build an organization that's change ready instead of change weary? Simplification. Most companies grew by throwing people at process problems. They optimized for what worked in the moment, not what worked best. Everyone picked their own tools. They held it together with bubble gum and duct tape. And now they're staring at a tangled operating model that's nearly impossible to pivot when the next wave hits. At 8x8, we're taking this on directly. Mapping every process to visualize how we actually operate, cutting what's redundant, automating what bogs people down. Consolidating to fewer, better tools so every team sees the same data and the same customer journey. Running company-wide AI training so every employee builds the fluency to thrive in what's coming. We're building the same thing for our customers. Fewer tools. Cleaner data. AI that works because the foundation underneath it is standardized and coherent. A leader can really only influence three things: tools, culture, and operating model. Get those right, and change stops being something your team endures and starts being the thing they're better at than everyone else.
Joel "Thor" Neeb replied to a comment
4h
Connor Kinsella great question, because it typically took a “scare” to jolt our 500-hour pilots back to the right level of discipline.
We were very good at bringing the fear back into the conversation in our world. Making every near-miss a debrief item the next day over lunch. It sounds morbid, but our low accident rate was due to the fact that we meticulously inspected every error, no matter how small.
We need the same level of disciplined now with AI, and a healthy trepidation. Don’t let it slow you down, we still need to fly supersonic, but do it with great caution and respect. And when you identify the small liabilities, highlight them broadly.
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb liked thisMeet with my team in Vegas for Channel Partners Expo: https://lnkd.in/gPmRwi7ZJoel "Thor" Neeb liked thisCustomer expectations continue to rise, and organizations are investing in technology that helps them deliver faster, more personalized service. At Channel Partners 2026, we’re looking forward to discussing how CX and contact center solutions are helping organizations improve customer engagement and operational efficiency. Let’s connect in Las Vegas. Book a meeting to meet with our team: https://bit.ly/4rRTJ9D #CPExpo2026 #CustomerExperience #ContactCenter
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb liked thisJoel "Thor" Neeb liked this🎉 Join us in welcoming Chris Corde, our new Chief Product Officer! Chris will be a key driving force in SentinelOne’s next chapter of innovation, as we set the standard for AI Security leadership. As CPO, he will lead our renowned global product organization, driving strategy, roadmap execution, and alignment across our portfolio. A security veteran, Chris brings more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity and enterprise software. Most recently at Google, he led Product and UX for the Google Cloud Security portfolio — including Google SecOps (formerly Chronicle), Google Threat Intelligence, Chrome Enterprise Premium, and the Mandiant product suite — helping to scale the company’s security platform into a multi-billion dollar ARR business. His proven track record of building and scaling multi-domain security platforms, driving market-defining product innovation, and aligning teams across engineering and go-to-market speaks for itself. Welcome to SentinelOne, Chris! 💜
-
Joel "Thor" Neeb liked thisJoel "Thor" Neeb liked thisMaybe our best Long Blue Leadership Podcast conversation yet? This one is with Joel "Thor" Neeb, a former F-15 piliot who now works in the #AI industry. A stage IV cancer survivor, Thor shares why it's important to protect your precious time and say "no" now and then. He also shares very helpful insights about #artificialintelligence and how we can all leverage it to optimize human performance and drive business results. Whether you're a United States Air Force Academy graduate or looking for great leadership and actionable AI insights, this conversation is for you. The U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation is proud to power Long Blue Leadership and talk with amazing grads like Thor. https://lnkd.in/gTmPdQEgJoel "Thor" Neeb ’99 - Leadership in the Age of AI | THE LONG BLUE LEADERSHIP PODCASTJoel "Thor" Neeb ’99 - Leadership in the Age of AI | THE LONG BLUE LEADERSHIP PODCAST
Experience & Education
-
8x8
View Joel "Thor"’s full experience
See their title, tenure and more.
or
Licenses & Certifications
-
-
-
-
Flight Safety Officer
USAF
Issued
Volunteer Experience
-
-
Vice President / Co-Founding Board Member
CureCare
- 2 years 1 month
Health
At CureCare, we strive to alleviate the financial burden faced by cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment. We also connect the patients with local participating restaurants to receive meals delivered free of charge while they wage their cancer battle.
Publications
Honors & Awards
-
Inc 5000 CEO
Inc.
The Inc 500/5000 Awards are rewarded to the fastest growing privately held companies in America
-
Benjamin Franklin Award - Top Memoir of 2020
Independent Book Publishers Association
The Benjamin Franklin Book Award is rewarded to the top book in category each year.
-
Forbes Small Giants
Forbes
The Forbes Small Giants Award is rewarded to the top 25 small businesses in America each year.
Languages
-
Spanish
Professional working proficiency
-
Japanese
Professional working proficiency
-
English
Native or bilingual proficiency
Recommendations received
9 people have recommended Joel "Thor"
Join now to viewOther similar profiles
Explore more posts
Explore top content on LinkedIn
Find curated posts and insights for relevant topics all in one place.
View top content