What are the hidden costs and stumbling blocks that keep your company from running efficiently? Which projects are clogging up your workflow? And is your business strategy all risk and no return? It can be hard to evaluate those problems on your own. Angelique Mohring, Founder of GainX, brings a different solution. Her platform uses artificial intelligence to analyze a company’s data. By reviewing information on employees, projects and finances, GainX discovers potential problems before they spiral out of control. Read on to learn more about how Mohring and GainX help companies “navigate the future” and drive organizational change.
Angelique Mohring, founder and CEO of GainX, took the road less traveled, especially since the destination was organizational change powered by artificial intelligence. Mohring sees the links between archaeology and artificial intelligence, anthropology and organizational change.
She started her “zig-zag journey” as an archaeology major with a minor in anthropology 25 years ago. “The beautiful thing about it is it teaches you to keep the human at the center of everything that you’re doing. It taught me how to be able to step back and, as much as humanly possible, approach today’s challenges objectively. Fast forward 25 years, and you’re looking at things like the application of artificial intelligence in our market, to help drive greater economic growth.”
GainX uses AI to help executives enact organizational change
GainX helps drive efficiency, foster change and reduce costs. The goal is to predict the outcome and effectiveness of a strategy. Where are opportunities to reduce costs or cancel duplicative or redundant projects? Are there projects that are stalled because their leaders are distracted? Are there risky investments and dependencies? By asking these questions and identifying opportunities to shift or change direction, an organization can see why a strategy might succeed or fail.
GainX focuses on organizations with 5,000 employees or more. These complex, global organizations can easily fall victim to things such as duplicative projects, “clay layers” and bloated costs. The lessons learned can be applied to an organization of almost any size. “A clay layer is part of the organization that isn’t getting the information required to do their jobs effectively. I think once you hit over 50 people, you’ve got a clay layer,” says Mohring.
GainX helps organizations understand more than just strategies. Organizations need to comprehend the implications of trying to work with existing teams and combine them with new working models such as hybrid working. They need to determine the impact these different working models have on overall effectiveness. How does this information affect their ability to deliver on a strategy?
This is where those lessons from the archaeology and anthropology degrees come in. “I don’t think you can invest too much in ensuring that everyone understands why they come into work every day.”
Working from home; more productive, or less?
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted almost every person and business across the globe.
The pandemic has exposed issues that organizations have missed before. GainX determines the root cause of these issues and efficiently fixes them. “I felt I built the product for this moment, to be honest. Not for the pandemic, but for the moment that we get to where we understand we’re in the age of the network. Everything is connected.”
The new world has ushered in a new era of organizational change. There has been a massive increase of working from home or hybrid working. So many jobs can be done from the comforts of home or a remote location. Without long commutes, there’s no need to wake up at absurd hours to get to the office on time. They can work from wherever they want.
But the question remains. Has this new work-from-home environment increased productivity or hurt productivity, in the long run?
“People feel that productivity has gone up with the work from home model. I think that’s a false positivity, meaning, it might have gone up initially, right? Because I don’t have to commute two hours to work anymore. I don’t have to go pick up my kids, because they’re homeschooling or whatever it might be,” said Mohring. “The fact is, you know, in my own personal home, I’m about 20 feet away from my kitchen?. I might be working 10 hours with only maybe five hours of productivity.”
Why GainX?
What was the driving force behind GainX?
“I love this question,” she answers. “I got really tired of the glass ceiling. If I’m honest, I was a bit surprised to find out the glass ceiling (in terms of fundraising) is even thicker than it is working in technology as an executive.”
Mohring is a big thinker, and in addition to shattering that glass ceiling, she wanted to do something significant that would allow her to always keep learning. “I wanted to build a company that I would never be bored in. I wanted to solve an almost impossible problem in the world. Learning is one of my passions and this allows me to continue to do that.”
Putting mental health first
“I think that one of the things that we all struggle with as women is putting ourselves first. I mean this in a number of different ways, from our health to our well-being to taking time just to read a book instead of trying to learn something new.”
Balancing work life, social life, family, mental health and everything else is an eternal struggle for everyone. After she suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries, Mohring made a change in her priorities. “I ultimately decided that instead of them being equal priorities, my health will continue and always be, number one. The fascinating thing that I found is everything else in my life got more successful, including my business.” Mental health and well-being don’t have to be sacrificed for success.
“Put yourself first and I promise you everything will follow anyway.”
Advice for other women entrepreneurs
Mohring has one other major piece of advice for women entrepreneurs. “Go for the gold and know that you can do it. It’s okay if it takes a bit longer than you may expect. You can solve big things and do big things. All of us can.”
She has seen situations where leaders and other companies have gotten too big, too fast and ended in collapse. “I wonder what would have happened if somebody a little bit more risk-averse in terms of how to conservatively manage was there, but still had those goals in place?”
“Get up on the podium and just don’t compromise.”
For more on GainX, visit gainx.com.
Learn how Lauren Washington is closing the gender funding gap with artificial intelligence. And for more feature stories from Lioness Magazine, click here!
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