💁🏽♂️ Stephen’s Note
I think I’ve made my position clear on the matter — performance reviews are broken. Six-month cycles make no sense in an AI-powered workplace where expectations change monthly.
Enter Thomas Forstner, VP of People & Talent at Juro. With a team of just four, he rewired performance management using AI. Instead of slogging through clunky feedback windows and retro reviews, Juro now runs monthly AI-guided feedback loops and future-forward role conversations.
This isn’t just a tool. It’s a playbook for eliminating PIPs and making performance management continuous, data-driven, and future-ready.
💪🏽 Running Lean with a Big Idea
Here’s the detail that stuck with me: Juro’s People & Work Tech org is just four people.
Yet with that lean team, Thomas built a suite of custom GPTs and lightweight automations that many vendors would claim takes a year (and six figures) to roll out.
It’s not about scale. It’s about building with first principles.
❌ The Pain
Like most companies, Juro relied on the “best practice” of six-monthly reviews. The result?
Managers couldn’t recall six months of detail.
Feedback landed too late to be useful.
One-hour retro + future planning sessions were at odds with the pace of AI-era change.
As Thomas put it: “Best practice is often just shorthand for not thinking from first principles.”
For a lean, high-density team like Juro’s, talent quality is everything. Old processes weren’t keeping up.
🎙️ Join the Ask Me Anything with Thomas Forstner
Thomas is ready to share how he rewired performance reviews with AI — and why this could be the end of PIPs.
Bring your questions. Learn how he built it. See what continuous, AI-guided performance can mean for your team.
⚒️ The Build
Before writing a single prompt or setting up a Zap, Thomas and his team did something most HR leaders skip: they stepped back and reimagined performance management from first principles.
The starting point: what if reviews weren’t a compliance exercise at all, but a living system for conversations, decisions, and growth?
From there, they designed a suite of simple, agentic tools — not platforms — to make that system real:
OILSmith – A custom GPT guiding managers through Juro’s OILS framework (Observation, Impact, Listen, Suggestion). Instead of “write your review,” managers prep feedback in minutes, practice tough conversations, and even role-play with the bot. The goal: make feedback a skill, not a task.
FutureSmith – A GPT for “futurespectives,” shifting the conversation from what happened in the last six months to what roles might look like in six months — especially in an AI-shifting workplace. This philosophical pivot is key: feedback isn’t just retroactive, it’s future-proofing talent density.
Automation Layer – Slack nudges remind managers when conversations are due. Humaans HRIS workflows and Zapier reporting handle the admin and pipe data back into the system. The result: performance as a continuous data stream, not a twice-yearly event.
Org Brain Backbone – Notion serves as the living handbook and AI-integrated hub for everything: feedback logs, GPT templates, role documentation. Instead of static files, Juro has a knowledge system that learns as the org learns.
This wasn’t just “AI for HR.” It was a philosophy turned into practice: small, modular agents solving one problem well, connected into a bigger system.
🧰 The Tech Stack
What’s striking about Thomas’ build isn’t how technical it is — it’s how simple.
No custom platform. No heavy engineering. Just a thoughtful combination of tools, glued together by first-principles design:
ChatGPT / Custom GPTs → OILSmith & FutureSmith agents, the brains of the system. Lightweight prompts, trained on Juro’s frameworks, that turn feedback into practice and conversations into forward-looking plans.
Humaans → the HRIS backbone, feeding employee data and workflows into the loop.
Zapier → invisible automations — logging outputs, sending reminders, closing loops without extra clicks.
Slack → nudges and reminders delivered where work already happens.
Google Sheets → the simplest possible reporting layer. A lightweight data stream, not another dashboard.
Notion → the “Org Brain,” a living hub where frameworks, logs, and learnings all connect.
The takeaway? You don’t need a vibe-coded platform to change performance.
Sometimes, a few agentic GPTs stitched into everyday workflows can unlock massive value: saving 100+ hours, near-100% adoption, and creating cultural momentum that traditional review platforms never achieve.
💡 The Wins
The numbers speak:
Adoption: Near 100% completion — 300+ OIL conversations in 2 months.
Time saved: CRO estimates 100+ hours freed up.
Cultural shift: Faster decisions, fewer lingering issues, and the potential to eliminate PIPs altogether.
Proof: Internal Slack shout-outs + 4.8 GPT ratings show managers actually like using it.
🔄 Reflection & Lessons
Don’t fear mistakes. AI is “playgroundy” — iteration beats perfection.
Titles don’t matter. Even Juro’s CTO asked Thomas how he built it. Everyone’s learning AI together.
Critical thinking > tools. Not everything has to be a vibe-coded platform. Simple, agentic solutions can be just as powerful.
🚀 Wrap & What’s Next
Thomas proved what’s possible when HR leaders design systems instead of inheriting processes.
Bold takeaway: Performance management is being rewritten. With AI, you can eliminate PIPs, accelerate improvement, and future-proof roles.
👉 Subscribe to Field Notes so you don’t miss the next build.
👉 Join the AMA with Thomas next Wednesday, September 10.
👉 Forward this to a People Leader still stuck in six-month reviews.