Rich Wilson & Davie Gow, The 40-40-20 Workforce: From Theory to Reality at Arnold Clark

[00:00:06] Hey everybody, I'm Tony Buffum with the Human Cloud Podcast. I'm a co-founder, chief strategy officer of Human Cloud and I'm so excited today to be speaking with Rich Wilson and Davie Gow. You're going to love our conversation about how the new organization needs to blend talent of all types and how Davie's actually doing that right now. It's not just theory and speculation. We're going to learn about how even in a large organization,

[00:00:36] we can make that mix work. But I'm going to start with just asking Rich to, he's been on this podcast before, but Rich, reintroduce yourself, although most people will remember you immediately from your accent. Yeah, anybody listen to this, we're going to try, me and Davie are both Clausewitzians, so we're going to try and speak very slowly. And we get very passionate about this topic, so it could turn into a very quick podcast.

[00:01:01] Yeah, so thank you, Tony. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to yourself again. Yeah, I'm Rich Wilson. I'm the CEO and co-founder of GigDI. I was in the contingent staffing industry for many years. I worked with the Luchus Group. That's actually where I first met Davie, probably 19, 20 years ago, Davie. I'm going to age both of us here.

[00:01:23] But, you know, we met a very long time ago when I was at Luchus Group providing contractors into public sector. Davie was one of those contractors. And we've, you know, had a relationship ever since.

[00:01:36] I then obviously went and spent four years at Gartner, where I was working a lot within the future work and advisory side of things. And then in 2021, we launched GigDI. And we launched GigDI to solve a very specific challenge, that being around, you know, skill shortages, especially within technology.

[00:01:56] At the time, we were doing that through two very specific lenses. One lens being the on-demand, you know, which has grown exponentially. How do you tap in to external resource to solve technology problems quickly? You know, which we do a lot with Davie and Arnold Clark. And then the other being the internal talent marketplace side, you know, how do you harness what you've already got?

[00:02:18] You know, that's in growing arms and legs. Our vision was to be the blended workforce platform for enterprise to tap into external and external talent. But in the last 12 months, we've really built on that, but where do agents play in that? You know, and we've really leaned into this concept of the 40-40-20 workforce. You know, traditionally with the 80-20 workforce, 80% of your resource, you would try and have full time, 20% being contingent.

[00:02:45] But we very much see the contingent side growing, the full-time side reducing, and the use of agents increasing. And what we're focusing now is the on-demand continuing to do what it does great. But really, that internal talent side has really became more of an orchestration platform for matching human and AI skills together to get work done. And that's really where we believe the future lies.

[00:03:09] And as I said, I think it's less about the future. It's about what's happening now, and companies are doing it. And whether it's been the internal, whether it's been agents, or whether it's been on-demand, it's not a theory anymore. It's happening. And yeah, as I said, I don't think I've ever been more excited about the industry and where it is, but it's changing. It's changing quick. So yeah, looking forward to talking about where things are at.

[00:03:33] Absolutely. Yeah, I love your passion, Rich, and also love this 40-40-20 concept because certainly it's something that reflects the different ways that we just get work done now. And as you said, it's not future thinking. Companies are already dabbling with agents and AI technology within their companies, but actually applying it and integrating that into the way they think about getting work done is, even though it's happening, it's still on a small scale.

[00:04:03] So usually our listeners are curious how it's being applied so they can take those lessons and bring that to their current organizations. And Davie, that's part of why we're talking to you because you're doing that at a really large organization. Really great to have you on. Can you give us a little bit of your background and bring us up to what you're doing today? Of course I can. First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast, Tony. Really privileged to be here.

[00:04:29] And as Rich said, both Clausewitzians, both known each other for quite a long time. It started my career as what was called a YTS, which was a youth training scheme. It's kind of the equivalent of a school leaver apprenticeship scheme now, but it wasn't as good. You got a bad paper at the end of it rather than a qualification. I was very lucky. I ended up with a full-time job, all in IT. So that was, I'm going to age myself here, 1986.

[00:04:58] So I'm 40 years in tech this year. Started as a YTS. Did a few years down near Oxford for an automotive car parts company, still in IT. And then kind of went freelancing from 98, right through to 2018. Really, really, you know, I loved freelancing. I loved being able to take on programs, whether they were right at the start of their phase and ideation,

[00:05:27] and you were there just to backfill for somebody and do a bit of BAU. To go into kind of projects was the big exciting thing and go and deliver something new. Whether that was like high net worth banking in the early, you know, 2000s or late 1990s, or it was large transformation programs and ERP programs, technical architecture. I remember, you know, Windows NT and getting my MCSE and real technical stuff back then.

[00:05:57] You know, AS400. I used to do bits and pieces on that. So real technical background. Contracting gave me a fantastic variety of life. You know, one minute you're in public sector, the next minute you're in telecoms, the next minute you're in automotive or manufacturing. So just great fun. Came to kind of 2018. I was freelancing to Lockheed Martin IS and GS it was at the time.

[00:06:25] They went through a reverse Morris Trust and paired up with SEIC in the States, became Lidos. And they asked me if I'd come and join permanent. I've been asked that many times over the years. But, you know, that way, contracting for a large systems integrator, it was great fun. So I did that for six and a bit years as a permanent employee. Deputy UK CTO led the Solution Archonnect capability.

[00:06:53] Lots of public sector work. I was invited to be the First Minister's Digital Fellow. So I did quite a lot in Scotland with the public sector as well. Really enjoyed that. And then just under a couple of years ago now, May 2004, I got approached and, you know, Davie, do you want to come and join Arnold Clark? One of UK's largest family-run businesses. 11,500 employees. We do everything to do with automotive. I'm a petrolhead through and through.

[00:07:22] I was brought up going to stock cars every weekend, not going to football. Cars, cars, cars. Absolute petrolhead. So for me, kind of dream job. CTO, a digital team of 300 people, about 200 within my remit. Just cars. From Alfa Romeo to Maserati to Corvette. We're just there. Okay. BMW, Mercedes. It's just fantastic.

[00:07:53] They've been able to use technology and people, not use people, but leverage them. I talk a lot about in my, the way that we've created Arnold Clark Digital Careers, ACDC, for those about to rock. The way that we've kind of done that, we try and get people to think about the skills they've got and how they can apply them. But it's really, really important that it's not just about the skill.

[00:08:21] It's also the tools they use or the technologies, you know, like Python or .NET or, you know, whether it's ISO 27001. That's a tool. Okay. Your experience is that at the startup of something or is it when it was a big red program and going wrong and then the domain, whether that's after sales or rental or leasing or card payments. So we try and look at the whole TEDS aspect of it from an employee perspective to see what

[00:08:49] roles they can do and how they can progress. We leverage skills framework for the information age. And for me, that's the kind of starter for my employees, the core team. So we've then got that kind of approach of actually, do we need contingent resource? Is that ultra short term? Is that because we don't understand the problem? Is that why we think we need a short term expert?

[00:09:17] Why we've got the short term expert? Is that then help us form up the requirements more for resources? Do we then understand actually, is it a fixed term role we've got? Is it a nine month contract we've got? Or actually, does that just give us room to do the recruitment and find the right person? And then obviously in the last couple of years, the agentic change to what goes on.

[00:09:44] For me, that's a huge accelerator for any staff member we bring on. It's like, here's your pack to get you going. By the way, here's all the agents you need to help you. You want to know about Arnold Clark Digital Careers? You want to know about your goals and objectives? Well, here's your goals and objectives agent. This one can help you understand it. Here's the training you get. And then we work with our partners, whether that's the tech partners or the resourcing partners. That was probably a really long answer than you're used to, Tony.

[00:10:14] But I'm going to hand back to you guys and let you go. No, that's good. Well, it's really helpful to understand that background, especially coming up as a freelancer. And there's no doubt that's influenced your openness to working with contingent workers, on-demand contractors for short term projects and adding that to the team. It's often a big hurdle for enterprise leaders to get over how do we use them and being able

[00:10:44] to answer those questions of when do you go full-time, when do you not, and find someone on-demand, and where technology fits into all of that. Rich, in what you see, I often talk about talent access versus acquisition and companies shifting into this mindset of not trying to own all of their talent, but making sure they have the levers to access the talent they need with the skills that they need when they need it.

[00:11:10] Rich, what do you see as the biggest hurdle or the thing that enterprises are missing when it comes to implementing this kind of more broader orchestration mindset? There's a lot of things. I think the first one is, like Davey done a very good job of, you've got to know what you have and don't have, right? So it's like, you know, some people, I call it a skills inventory, you know, some people call it a skills catalogue.

[00:11:37] But, you know, you need to really look at Jeep about the different, you know, skills. Like, and like Davey said, not a technology, but actually, you know, the experience of the main expertise, you know, you know, and also the accreditations because people are learning accreditations all the time, right? And where do they, so, and people's skills have never developed faster now due to either AI agents training them or just learning new LLM models as they come out, right?

[00:12:08] People, you know, we've never learned new technical skills as quickly as we have now. Just never, we've never been. But you need to know what you have and what you don't have. You then need to have, which, you know, was where, you know, me and Davey's conversation started properly four or five years ago around this. You need to, you need to embrace that on-demand open talent side of things and not be, you know, not ask all of the what ifs.

[00:12:38] Because me and Davey had a big conversation. I was really pushing the concept a few years ago around site hustles. Like, you can have an amazing .NET developer who could work, working for a bank, a large UK bank, for example. You know, but why couldn't they add value to a, you know, to a problem that Davey's trying to solve? There's no, there's no competitive tension there, you know? But, you know, so that's where we started talking.

[00:13:03] So I think there needs to then be that openness to, you know, to be like, look, yes, if we then know we know we have skill gaps or in this space is open to, you know, procure, open to bringing procurement, HR, TA, whoever you need on that journey with you to open it up. And then it is then, it's then not being scared of the potential, you know, the agentics.

[00:13:32] So, you know, Davey just gave some amazing case studies or use cases about where agentic can be used. And it's about having a plan, you know, as I said, I've seen Davey first hand do it. The very specific strategy, what it was trying to achieve with a work stream for each and then brought everybody, he wasn't doing it all himself. You know, I don't think, you know, other teams didn't feel that they were being told what to do, which you see a lot in large technology firms or large firms, you know, and then you'll

[00:14:01] have HR saying, I'm not doing that, we're not doing that, it's too different. What Davey's doing and the mindset is totally different, but everybody's going to came along on that journey. So I think that openness is important. Willing to try your different talent pools, right? It doesn't just need to be a day rate contractor. There are other, you know, university, HDs, there's lots of different flexible talent pools.

[00:14:27] And then bringing your people and your procurement leaders with you instead of turning into an internal fight, which I've seen so many. Like where I always see this fall down, it's always a procurement to say no. And it's not because they want to say no. They've just not been brought into the journey early enough, right? They've just been told, hey, we're going to use this on-demand platform called Gigdi. I've only been on four years, we've never used a category like this before.

[00:14:57] Look at them. Away you go, we're not doing that. But again, if you can bring them on the journey, pilot, you know, things. Not everything needs to be rolled out to a full org. So, yeah, I would say it's those three peers. Be open, bring your procurement and HR leaders with you, and have a plan. Yeah, oftentimes when they're brought in after the fact, they're predispositioned to resist

[00:15:27] because they don't know how we got here, and it feels different. And different means throw up all the hurdles, make it difficult. And if they survive all that, then maybe. But it's a lot easier to then, you know, kind of push it back and stay on course than to bring on something that feels new and different. But I like how you started with understanding. Go ahead. Sorry, just what I was thinking. It works face-versa the other way as well, right?

[00:15:54] So when I was at Gartner, I seen it work the opposite way. Sure. You know, procurement and HR leaders would decide a piece of software, usually one that starts with a W and finishes with A. And then the tech leaders would be like, whoa, wait a minute, you know, and they would because they hadn't been brought on. So it's not about HR, procurement, tech being.

[00:16:18] It's just about, you know, who's brought in early enough in the journey to then go on. As I said, that, you know, it's definitely not about any one department. It's just whoever's not involved early enough will usually try and block things at the end because they just, they haven't been involved. They don't understand. They don't see the vision. And as I said, I think that's something that Davey's done. Well, the vision getting bought into it, getting everybody bought into the vision and saying,

[00:16:47] hey, things might not work. This could fail, but let's try it. Yeah. And find that out. Well, Davey, tell us about how you and Rich met each other and started working together towards that journey. Because I want to understand how you, how it is you, you practically work with GigDai and Rich to bring what we're talking about to reality within an enterprise. That's a really good question.

[00:17:13] One of the challenges we had, so I got to Arnold Clark, it was a case of, nope, nope, we don't use contractors. We've had problems before. We just don't do that. And I was like, well, actually, they're really powerful to help us. And then I spoke to the legal teams, the compliance teams, the accountant teams. And it turned out that our accountancy teams actually had a legal team on retainer, not even their own in-house general counsellor legal.

[00:17:42] They used a third party legal team to make IR35 assessments on the tax liability of that contract. So I was like, well, why are you doing that? Well, you're getting a day-to-day contract. I was like, well, hold on. That's not how I want to work. I think one of the key things for me was being able to understand because I think I've been a contractor for so long. I knew what worked well.

[00:18:09] And in my previous role at Liros, we'd used, get a gig as well there. I'd used them as part of a kind of overall staffing strategy for bid work. But when I came to Arnold Clark, it was, look, we just don't do that. And I was like, right, so what are the blockers? So the blockers were, oh, right, we're worried about the IR35 tax implications. How do we get around that? Right, how do we get around that? We do a statement of work-based outsourcing.

[00:18:38] Yeah, yeah, we can do that. But that's not a contractor. I was like, exactly. That's not a contractor. That's about outsourcing some accountability and some risk. And it's that typical. You know, if I take my career way back, you know, I think one of the things I learned in the late 90s was probably there's two main reasons to outsource things. One, you don't understand it. Therefore, you need somebody to do it. But the implication of that was you could get absolutely fleeced.

[00:19:08] And actually, the best things to outsource were the things that you understood at the absolute nth degree. But they were so common to you now, they weren't adding value to your business. They were just utilitarian components of your business. So the best things to outsource were the stuff you actually understood. What you do get a contractor and get a subject matter expert in, get a short-term contingent resource in, is for things you don't understand.

[00:19:37] To upskill you, to knowledge transfer you. And what you do is, from my perspective, the key hurdle was getting around that it's a flat day rate to no. Oh, it's a statement of work. They own some risk. We own some risk. Does this satisfy the contractual demands? Oh, yes, it does. Great. Right. Brilliant. I'm not going to advertise for a contractor. I'm going to go through a gig marketplace and I'm going to put up the outcomes that I want.

[00:20:07] And anybody that's registered on the gig marketplace can bid for that work. I would have a couple of conversations with a couple of people that responded. Some of the responses I just didn't like. So I was like, no, that's not going to fit with my mindset, my way of working. We got a couple in. I don't want to use names, but there's a couple of contractors that we have used through GigDI. Very successful. Really, really good. Very helpful.

[00:20:35] One was for an Umbraco migration of some of the content we've had on our own in-house content management engine to the Umbraco cloud. And what we did with that was to give our accountancy and legal terms some comfort. We obviously show them the umbrella contract, the master service agreement. We show them the subcontract. They get to review it all. The next thing we did was, especially with bringing the first sort of statement of work

[00:21:05] based contractor in was, we did an IR35 based assessment following the accountants team's normal practice. And we did one using the gig platforms practice. We compared the results and our accountant team were happy that actually the results matched and they were happy. So we did that the next time and now we're good to go. So I think one of the key things for me is making sure that whoever is not in the hiring

[00:21:30] manager, but the person accountable for overseeing the quality of work is the person that signs that off and the person that signs off the deliverables. So I don't sign off any of the deliverables. For example, we did a mobile app one and it was my mobile app lead dev that signed off all the deliverables that we'd outsourced to the specialist on Gigt. And that way, they're the people that are accepting those PRs into our DevOps pipeline. Right?

[00:21:59] They're accepting them into our code base. They're the people that are reviewing it. They're the people accepting it. They can see if those outcomes have been met. So I think for me, getting around that hurdle and transforming an organization to do something a bit different. There was some speed bumps to use an automotive kind of analogy. A couple of pothills, some speed bumps, but we got there. I think the next bit for me, the agentic bit's been a bit different.

[00:22:27] It's been more about trying to hold it back. Everybody's wanted to rush into it without understanding it. And that was the bit that kind of got me because we understand people. We understand work. So why was it harder to bring in contingent resource when everybody's knocking the door down to bring agentic solutions in? And we've got there, you know, we've now got a group that work on strategic AI initiatives

[00:22:56] as a whole business. Our group, General Counsel's in it. One of the main board directors is in it. CIO's in it. CDO's in it. CDO's in it. We've got cybersecurity in it. So, and as you, we've got key representatives from areas of business, including our people director sits on that kind of board looking at what we're doing with AI as an organization. Yeah. I like in both of those pieces, you talked about all of these cross-functional stakeholders

[00:23:24] and addressing each of their respective concerns because you do need it. Like we started the conversation. It's a long journey. They all need to be bought in. There's usually a champion that's driving and leading the group on the journey, but every stakeholder needs to be satisfied for it to be a successful program. Otherwise, you're just kind of forcing it. The same applies to evaluating and introducing AI.

[00:23:49] But I also agree there's so much hype around AI for good reason. It is amazing and powerful, but there's so much hype. People feel so much pressure to just start doing things, even if they don't know how they're going to get it done. Rich, what are you seeing in the same vein in terms of, you know, getting the right stakeholders engaged on the journey and also getting the right buy-in as you talk about how you integrate

[00:24:18] and leverage technology in that process? I think it's everything. I think every conversation I have, even internally with my boards, with investors, you know, the number one challenge I have, you know, as a leader of a business like this is, you know, how can I get, you know, champions and buy-ins at large organizations to think a different way.

[00:24:42] Obviously, if I could have 40 Davies who actually focus on doing it that right way, that'd be great. But, you know, but there needs to be that aspect. You know, I think what I like to hear from Davies' perspective, even from somebody who's had a vision, like we always knew that having a strong talent community was really, really important, but we knew it wasn't going to be everything, right?

[00:25:11] And I think a lot of, you know, if you think about traditional recruitment companies or traditional platforms, but you need to have a workflow that fits the workflows of the business. And I think, Kieran, what Davie said, we've worked deeply on having workflows that are technology enabled for every part of that. So if the customer wants to do an outcome like Arnold Clark, there's a very different

[00:25:34] workflow to do all of the, you know, the definition of the work, the proposal, the payment is totally different. The compliance is totally different. If it's T&M, obviously a day rate that is not assigned to a specific deliverable, you can't treat it the same. It's a totally different workflow. So, you know, the proposal gets delivered differently. The payment is done differently. It's all done differently.

[00:26:01] So, so we worked really, really hard to have two very different workflows that could be enterprise ready. You know, and so we spent years, you know, building that, building the right IR35 partnerships into it, building the right 1099W2 partners, building all of that EOR, the EOR aspect into it. We've had to think deeply about that and, and work deeply with different law firms and different accountancy firms to do that.

[00:26:30] You know, we spent a lot of time on that. So that when you're someone like Davey, who's a champion, is trying to get, you know, a new different solution on board, did a lot of the, you know, yes, they're going to have questions, but we've got answers to that, which are robust and enterprise wide. Right. And I think it's exactly the same with, you know, the ironic thing, it's almost identical. I get shot down a lot with this view, but it's almost identical with AI, right?

[00:26:59] If you think about, if you're an AI in your organization, well, what, where, what's the guard rails? Where's the data stored? What are we putting into it? What's this connected to? How do we know? What's the AI safety protocol? And unfortunately, most organizations, you ask those four or five questions that I just asked, very few people will have an answer for them. And I think it's the same thing.

[00:27:28] I think then, you know, if you're, if you're implementing and whether it's a new model for bringing in different skills or whether it's implement a new AI agent, there needs to be robust yet quick processes to, to test and pilot, you know, our model, which Arl Clark used and which Davey used at Lidos, that model is composable, right? If we didn't do a good job or it didn't work, just get rid of it. Yeah. And I think that's a really important, we have that optionality as well, that we are,

[00:27:57] that us as a, as the, as a provider on like, you know, we're not, you know, you're not asking for any huge commitment either because it's got to work. And if it doesn't work, there's no point for everybody. Yeah. I think there's the, there's the, there's a, there's a partnership about going on the journey and then making sure that it's not about just ticking the box. It's about actually having the answers because you better believe if a contract is wrong

[00:28:24] or the deliverables like made up, that's going to come back and bite you. The AI-35 is wrong. That's going to bite you even worse because it's going to be HMRC biting you, which is not what you want. And, you know, it's the same with, with, with AI. If you haven't thought about guardrails and you haven't thought about security and you then end up having a, having an issue on that.

[00:28:49] So I think it's just about been thinking about the, the, the positive outcome and then what are the risks and then making sure there's a robust plan for all of those things. So, yeah. So, yeah. I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. It's something that my co-founder who you know well, Matt Mottola and I, talk about a lot is the, the race to understand how to adopt agentic tools is just like the

[00:29:16] process for understanding how to adopt and integrate contractors or freelancers. And the more that people are trying to sort that out for us, we believe that's the continues to accelerate the adoption of contractors and freelancers because they're, they're going through the same steps and realizing if we have the energy to solve this for the technology, we should be able to do this as well for the talent at the same time.

[00:29:40] And, and adopt more of that blended workforce approach to help drive a more successful, more agile, and just overall more powerful organization. So I, it gets me excited to see that organizations are willing to adapt that and put resources behind, you know, finding those solutions and getting those quick answers. Just like you said, Rich, for both of you, we're, we're, I, we could talk about this forever,

[00:30:08] but it's already been 30 minutes and it flew by. I'm going to leave you with one closing question. If I, we have a CHRO, a CIO, a CTO, CFO listening to this as our audience, which we do, we got some of those folks. Um, and they're thinking, okay, I get this vision and I realize this is something that's possible, but how do I just start? Because it, it feels overwhelming in the beginning.

[00:30:36] Uh, and David or Davey, you, you kind of described that as well, that, you know, a lot of those stakeholders can be resistant in the beginning. How do they just get started on that journey so that they can later scale it as they get more of those quick answers set and, uh, and they get more adoption and comfortability with it? For me, it's, it's similar to anything else, whether it's a tech program, a person program, right?

[00:31:05] Find something that's high business value, find something that you can contain the challenge or the risk. You've got to be able to accept some risk, but you've got to be able to contain it, do a small proof of concept, a proof of value, make sure it works. Have the right stakeholders in the room. Listen to the naysayers. You know, there'll be people saying no to this as much as there's other people screaming saying, I need this and I need it now. You've got to find that right balance.

[00:31:35] Um, getting that, getting the people team in the room, get the legal compliance people in the team, get the operational specialists that actually understand their area of the business in the room. Yeah. I think one of the biggest noises and challenges for me is the market texture around it all. There's massive marketing hype around it. You know, so many people not having to prove what hand they've got, you know, they're playing

[00:32:04] poker, but they never have to show their hand. They're constantly just saying ours is better than yours. Why are you guys slow? And the reality is you need to take a bit of time. You need to make sure you understand the risks. It could be as simple. So one of the things for us, I'd love to use some of the anthropic models. I am sorry for tech name dropping, but I've got challenges because we're a UK company and

[00:32:32] we don't in our privacy contents see anything about offshore and data. Yeah. So I can't do that just now. Yeah. And that's one of the challenges I'm working with just now on the legal team, the data compliance team. And it might be a simple thing is checking your company's website privacy policy. What have you actually told your customers? Yeah. So just take your time, read it, understand it, slow proof of concepts. That's kind of mine on it.

[00:33:00] And Davey, I love that you started with a high value business problem because oftentimes because of the apprehension around the risk, the enterprises start with a really low value, low risk problem. And that what I've seen in the past is that kind of forces a stereotype of using contractors or trying something new is, okay, good. It's good for these low risk, low hanging fruit things, but anything that's complex, we can't

[00:33:30] apply to this. And they remain kind of in plateaued at just that superficial level within the organization. So really, really love that. And I also think, man, when we talk about applying this in a broader scale, of course, making sure all the stakeholders are satisfied. But I love listening to the naysayers because you've got to make sure you're, they could be highlighting things that will get you in trouble. Yeah.

[00:33:58] Don't just resist it as they don't want to change. Embrace that because that's going to help you come up with a better solution. Rich, what are you seeing and what do you think those C-suite leaders I mentioned before should take away from this also for how they can practically get started? Yeah. I think if we go back to, I was at Gartner in 2018, 2019, you know, when it was the kind

[00:34:23] of boom of what I call eat the apple in one bite, right? Like, so the C-suite or the CHRO, the CIO, the CTO, there was very much the era of let's roll everything out top down. You know, right, we're going to do this technology rollout. We're going to get every user on board and we're going to do it. You know, I think we're now back at the era thanks to how AI is moving so quickly.

[00:34:53] It's that you should actually look to take the one small bite at a time. Like Davey said, take a big problem, but don't try and bite the whole problem. Try and focus on, right, what can we do at a small scale? Because some of the naysayers, it might not solve their problem. So, for example, if we took the approach that we took, you know, with Davey and him being the CTO, if we tried that in a, you know, in the, like, you know, let's say the vehicle

[00:35:20] servicing unit, I don't know, would they work, right? It wouldn't work. You know, they would be like, well, that we can, it wouldn't, the model wouldn't work because you can't do it on an outcome basis. It's based on time. How long, hey, I need somebody just to fix my car and that's the, that's not going to work. It needs to be on time because God knows how long it's going to take to fix that car. But, you know, that, that's, so you want to listen to naysayers, but then go, right.

[00:35:46] But actually the problem I'm trying to solve is I'm trying to do, you know, small but important projects that need to be completed quickly. This, you know, by biting it this way, I'm going to solve that problem. I might not solve your problem. It's not an organizational wide solution, but it's a solution for what we're trying to do. And I think that's what, that's the big trend that I've been leaning into with that whole internal talent marketplace.

[00:36:12] There's the multi-billion dollar companies that are still trying to attack the whole organization at one, but your organizations aren't one anymore. There are lots of different business units within an organization with lots of different skills and you need to look at different report approaches and different suppliers and different solutions. Yes, that creates a more complex architecture, but there isn't a one size fits all anymore. You can't just have an MSP. You can't just have a PSL.

[00:36:43] You can't just have what worked 20 years ago. It doesn't work now. So need to try new things. And as I said, if it doesn't work, hey, we're going to try this for six months. We're going to try it for three months. Here are the success metrics up front that needs to be happened for this to be. And if those success metrics aren't done, then you can it. And you go back to the way it was. And you have that in the plan. And I think that you're just going, right, we're going to do this, but it doesn't need

[00:37:10] to be a 40, 50 person program of work. It can be a short focus group with four or five people, a few trusted suppliers, and let's try something different and take it that way. Yeah, and I like that approach because, like you said, if it doesn't work, you can shift and do something else or try different technology. But if it does work, the value for the organization is profound. And that's what I think people need to remember. They're not just trying it for the sake of trying it.

[00:37:40] You're trying it and you're testing these new technologies, new ways of working, new partners within that ecosystem, because when it does work, the benefits for the organization, the new skills that you can integrate into your organization, the ROI on the investment, the speed to talent, all of those things that bring tremendous value are now available when it does work. So it's worth those pilots.

[00:38:07] It's worth taking each of those small bites because in the end, it could bring so much terrific value for the organization. What I'll also add, Davey, you mentioned trying to select even the vendors and the partners within that ecosystem is in and of itself a big task. And that's why HumanCloud exists, because we want people to be able to see who those providers are, who they've had success with, what types of projects.

[00:38:33] We want to accelerate that time to trust so that organizations can weave their ecosystem together that much faster and get to those pilots faster, share their success in scale together. Both of you. Thanks so much for joining me. What a great conversation. I'm sure we'll stay in touch. Let's real quick before I wrap up. If people want to learn more, Davie, what's the best way to get in touch with you if they

[00:39:02] want to ask follow up questions or they want to learn more about how you had so much success in your program or even in your freelancing career as well? Best thing is just through LinkedIn. Yeah. Davey, go on LinkedIn. It's the best way. Richie, same question for you. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, just Rich Wilson and LinkedIn. I'm posting every day about this kind of stuff. And always happy to talk. All right. Great, guys. Thanks a lot for joining me on the HumanCloud Podcast. We'll see you again soon.

[00:39:31] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.