Episode 42 | Your AI transformation has a shelf life — and it's getting shorter

[00:00:00] These things are wildly sycophantic. And, you know, that's absolutely a slippery slope, 100% slippery slope. But in knowing that that's true, how do I make it work for me? So, you know, it's also a little ass-kissing as a service.

[00:00:28] Hey, Amy, you're looking a little tan and happy. Tell me more. I gotta tell you, I was not ready for this podcast today. I just had a house full of friends, my college pals, come and visit my house here in Pebble Beach every year. And they just left yesterday afternoon. And this morning I got up and I was like, I don't know what in the world we're going to talk about.

[00:00:56] But then the rain stopped and the blue sky appeared and I went for a beautiful run. And I feel so much better. And I'm ready to go. I love that. I love that. I mean, you know, maybe not as much the running part, but the beautiful sky and getting out and also community with friends. That's really lovely.

[00:01:16] Oh, speaking of which, Meg, I was laughing because one of my friends from Minnesota, she was telling me about how she's gotten really into Mahjong. Ah. Yeah. And she's got like two groups going now and she's like thinking about combining them. They did lessons. And so it sounded a lot like, you know, what Pat Waters was telling us a couple weeks back.

[00:01:45] It's the new thing. Kara Swisher is the one that said that it's the new pickleball. It's all the cool kids are doing Mahjong. So maybe that's why I'm starting to get the like, maybe I should learn how to do that. And then I am reminded about just how bad I am at games in general. So we'll see how it goes.

[00:02:07] I think it's just from lack of practice. Like you're actually pretty good. You just don't do it. So. Yeah. Well, it's a little of that for sure. But I think it's also somewhat it's never something that sounds like something I want to do, but it's something that once I do it, I'm I usually enjoy myself. So it's more than just practice. It's like my remembering self does not create a memory that makes me yearn for it.

[00:02:37] And while my experiencing self has a great old time whenever I am with people that are enjoying games or doing games, including my own children, they like to do games. So I was thinking that we would kind of revisit the five threads shaping the future that we introduced in our first episode of the season. And to see if we want to wander off of those or if they're holding. Yeah. Yeah. There might be some tangents or, you know. Yeah. Love it.

[00:03:06] So the the final thread was what we called the the great reshuffle, which was really kind of the fact that all of the threads are interconnected. A bit of a convergence, if you will. Yes. And so so I thought that was kind of cool when when I watched Amy Webb's South by Southwest presentation.

[00:03:32] She basically shared that trends were dead, that there is no more trends report coming from her. And it's all about convergences. And I thought that a lot of you probably didn't actually get to see her presentation because you're very busy. And so I thought it would be great if we revisited it a bit. Yeah. First off, I'm a huge fan in general.

[00:04:02] But this year was especially mind blowing. And I think the there was a lot happening at the time that this all came out. So I agree. I don't think we spent a proper amount of time thinking and unpacking all of that wealth of information.

[00:04:20] And of course, the unique kind of nerd that I am, the concept of convergence to me feels very aligned, not just with our reshuffle topic, but also with my broader thesis that this like the benefit of interdisciplinary and the benefit of bringing different age groups together.

[00:04:43] Like all of these things are really kind of teasing around the same idea, which is this is a moment where the disassembly and reassembly of innovation and ideas is really powerful and also very disruptive.

[00:05:05] And so I think that to me has always been where things get really interesting, that I've never really thought that a single invention was the interesting thing. I've always thought that the reassembly of an invention with a different point of view is the place where things get really interesting.

[00:05:27] And the example I've always held in my own head was when I first got introduced to TiVo and I was talking with a colleague and I said, you know, well, I just don't really like television that much. And the colleague said, well, that's the entire point. TiVo makes television interesting.

[00:05:48] And I looked into it with an idea that, hey, the innovation wasn't that breakthrough from a technology point of view. It was really a very large hard drive and access to a TV guide in a digital way. But the ability to bring those two things together unlocked a whole lot of things like that unlock.

[00:06:17] Of taking apart concepts we know and then reassembling them in new ways to change something dramatically, which for me was a disinterest in television because I disliked the fact that it anchored me in a time and space with content of someone else's choosing to be able to have that. Your own agency. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:06:44] To unlock agency and my own sort of personalization against that. So anyway, I really love the idea that she's headed towards convergence. I think her presentation scares the crap out of me and simultaneously, you know, unlocks all kinds of curiosity. So, yeah, very, very powerful. Yeah.

[00:07:11] So one of the things that she introduced was this concept from someone called Joseph Schumpeter from long ago, where he said that capitalism is a perpetual storm and it constantly destroys old industries and creates new ones. And I think that she's creative destruction was the term that she used throughout the presentation.

[00:07:32] And I thought it was really, really important to look at it that way for everyone to understand that this is not the only time this has happened. But, you know, you do see lots of new things and then you see the death of lots of old things. And that's what we're going through right now. And it's really hard to to live through it.

[00:07:55] But if you like can take a step back and realize that this has happened before and we've been fine and you need to get on the left side of the equation and not the right side of the equation, both personally and, you know, if you're leading a company or part of a company as well.

[00:08:19] So she's done 10 different convergences in her convergence report and three of them, she went into some depth in the presentation. One example was human augmentation. And again, she just kind of shared that like humans have been augmenting themselves since like the very earliest days.

[00:08:43] And now there's like all sorts of crazy sounding innovations happening, like where you can walk longer and climb higher.

[00:08:54] And her point was that, you know, this technology and this need and desire of humans to leverage these things creates kind of this storm, which is that ultimately people are going to be objectively better than other people.

[00:09:19] If they, you know, if they, you know, buy these things and use these things and then it creates inequity and it creates scarcity and it's like the spiral of destruction. And, you know, that could be really terrible. To Amy the motivational speaker.

[00:09:43] What was interesting though, Meg, is that at the end she, you know, she kind of paints this like possible dystopian future, but then she has a solution. And her solution is something that she calls contribution credits. And it sounds an awful lot like what Scott Santens was talking about on our episode last November.

[00:10:08] We did have the most controversial responses to that episode of any that we've done, which I guess should be unsurprising. And so, of course, Scott is known as the UBI guy, universal basic income. But the reality is that UBI has like political connotations and, you know, it scares people.

[00:10:34] But what we talked about on that show is kind of this concept of digital dividends and, you know, basically sharing the profits of the digital AI economy with the people who've contributed to it through data and other means. And that's really what she's talking about as well. So that was kind of exciting to have it all connect back.

[00:11:02] What's interesting is that, you know, both of the kind of conversations, Sam Altman and Dario, they both kind of lean into that as something that we're going to need. And so I think it is a common belief.

[00:11:20] Now, again, you know, it may or may not be accurate, but it is a common belief that we absolutely need some way to substrate this particular transformational moment, not just to protect the quality of life and jobs, but to also to help us bridge that transition time frame.

[00:11:47] And so I like this idea of these dividends or the thinking of this because I think it also lines up nicely with patterns that make sense in my own brain, whether that's right or not, where you've seen places that have created like in Scandinavia with the sovereign wealth funds that they created because of oil, similar in Alaska.

[00:12:15] Things where there's things where there's things where there's this moment of natural resource that becomes really clear. It's going to be changing the foundation of the economy. And instead of just looking at that as, you know, a private capital extraction, thinking about how to also build a foundation so that it benefits everybody to some level.

[00:12:43] I think the tension of extreme wealth building and the tension of the potential of leaving people behind is a conversation we need to have. And to me, it's very unfortunate that this starts to become a political bifurcation.

[00:13:03] And when I said that our last conversation, we had some, you know, more controversial responses to our takes on this is an indicator to me that this is a place where there's a lot of really strong opinions about concepts where people tend to start talking past each other.

[00:13:24] And so I guess I think this creates for all of us an opportunity, not just to imagine the future, but to open up our own minds to the idea that what we know needs to be reinvestigated in this future state. And we need to bring forward more curiosity to the problems that we're starting to see.

[00:13:51] And so I just hope that we as a collective and certainly those of us that are thinking about creating future pathways for work and workers are really open to the reality that we have a lot to learn here. And that these solutions may be imperfect, but no solution is also a problem.

[00:14:18] And so I think we really need to be open-minded to having conversations without the, you know, the reaction of, oh, my God, it's UBI and Megan and Amy don't understand basic economics, which I really appreciated. You like that? You like that? Yeah. Economics major. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was like five years ago that you got your degree, though. That's true. That's true. Yeah.

[00:14:48] Since Amy Webb talked about agency and specifically how you need high agency to really think creatively, destructively, let's go on to high agency next. And so when we talked about people having high agency.

[00:15:08] We talked about how we talked about some examples and how this is just an absolutely critical skill going forward. We've been vibe coding. And that has been quite interesting. And so, Meg, I wanted to kind of first check in with you on your open brain project.

[00:15:35] I like to think of this as not exclusively vibe coding, but this just being a broader learning journey. And vibe coding is one element of that learning journey, this sort of hands-on practical training, if you will. So we had been talking about Nate B. Jones's thesis about using AI to get smarter about who you are and how it can help you.

[00:16:02] And building this concept he called open brain as a repository that could be used to help you index and catalog all of the things that are important to you so that when you interact with AI, you have a lot of context built up so that your agent can be effective for you. And, of course, Amy saw that and said, Meg, you need to do it.

[00:16:30] And she was not wrong because just indexing all of the things that are going in my mind or that I read or that I do or that I talk about, et cetera, has turned into a pretty hefty project. So on the plus side, I have built up a pretty solid repository.

[00:16:53] On the minus side, I've been a little bit stubborn and some of this is intentional and some of this is I will change. But I've been a little bit reluctant to just open up the checkbook for Claude. I really wanted to see, like, what is possible for a normal person paying the $20 a month. And if I were to summarize, a fair bit of frustration is available to the normal person. I think you made a comic about that.

[00:17:23] I indeed made a comic about that. And the gist is that you hit these throttle limits at the moment where you're really starting to get into flow. And so I think that's a little bit by design. And it is immensely irritating. And so I have I've proven the concept. I have a lot of things done.

[00:17:46] I'm now kind of having to ration the amount of ingestion runs and agents that I do so that I can also try to explore and do some other new things. And in that process, just take a quick look at that comic again, because the face that Meg makes, I feel like I've gotten that face. It's not the preserve for smoking Claude.

[00:18:13] Like, that's the face that Amy gets sometimes, too. Yeah, yeah, that one that one definitely nailed it. And I should I should do is sort of a shout that all of my comic work is done through my open A.I. A.I. versus your open ear chat GPT must have loved making fun of Claude. Exactly, exactly.

[00:18:38] And I've I've run into a few times where it says, hey, I think you're violating our our rules or guardrails. And I'm not sure if that's because I'm insulting Claude possibly.

[00:18:54] Um, so anyway, so then I decided, OK, that's great, but it's not completely to the point where it's augmenting Meg's speed, velocity or productivity in any way yet. What is it actually doing for you? It's not doing anything yet other than just like getting all of the things there. No. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, I've got I've got one.

[00:19:25] The the one that does all the like real smarts, which tries to draw all the associations and and create the map across. That says something I've got like 75 more runs to do before it's like completely. And how many runs do you get before Claude takes a smoke break? Like four. One of the things that it has forced me to do is to get a go a little deeper on like requirements.

[00:19:51] Reading email is something I can do very quickly with high velocity, like trying to make someone else do that is is like dumb for both of us. The reading of the things helps me think. And if I have somebody distilling stuff, they they probably miss the stuff that I want to to understand and think about. And I'm high velocity on that. So getting help with that is the opposite of contributing to my productivity.

[00:20:19] And it's more it's more about the recall for you. Exactly. Which is where your whole recall brain is filled with like 1990s memes. That's right. It doesn't have room for anything else. So you use like secondary location for all of the other recall. Right. That's that's exactly or between the the 1990s memes before they were even called memes, but also, you know, like music lyrics.

[00:20:47] And I spent a lot of time making mixtapes off the radio and anybody like for the youngsters don't even try to understand what that means. So I'm starting to ask a different question, which is what what would be productive and helpful? Like what does a chief of staff do for Meg? And are there places that that I can rethink, you know, agents in that element?

[00:21:12] And that has started to unlock for me some really interesting things, because for me, I realize chiefs of staff and office in general help me a lot with emotional regulation, help me a lot with figuring out how to bring the right energy to the right task, how to bring, you know, how to get prepared with the least amount of intellectual and mental clutter.

[00:21:41] Sure. I realize like maybe there's some ways I can lean on agents to help me with some of that, especially since I'm without a staff. Right. Like there are some places. And so one of the things that I really like is investing in. So, you know, this, Amy, I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that the story and the way I'm thinking about things is aligned with my best self, you know,

[00:22:09] giving the best benefit of the doubt to others, giving the best benefit of the doubt for myself and keeping me aligned with making sure that I evaluate what's happening in my life in a way that supports who I want to be and where I want to grow and what I want to do.

[00:22:27] So I started thinking, OK, well, maybe I could get a little more help with keeping clarity of the tasks that I'm doing and how they line up with my really big, audacious long term goals. Like, am I investing enough? Am I thinking about my time properly?

[00:22:48] And so I started exploring this a little bit. And one of the things that came back right away was I the you know, my my new sort of agent emotional regulation support friend started basically telling me I'm not giving myself enough unstructured time.

[00:23:07] And I'm not, you know, I'm not creating enough space for reflection and thinking, which I thought was super fascinating because I think I'm doing more than I ever have. And so that was that was kind of like a fun challenge question to myself.

[00:23:27] And then, of course, then I turned it that into a little bit of automation where I fed a new this new agent and I'm open to like I need ideas for names. So anybody want to give me some ideas of how to name this? I fed it my long term goals, my word of the year, my track, all the trackers for all the things that I'm trying to do, my calendar.

[00:23:54] And I said, hey, send me a daily affirmation. Don't send me a here's all the people you need to respond to. Send me a daily affirmation telling me the things that I'm doing today and how they line and ladder up to the person I want to be in the future and the things that I want to do in the future. So I'm getting these little I'm playing around with it, but I'm getting these little text messages.

[00:24:16] Just an affirmation, though, because I've seen an example because it it gives you like some prompts of like here's how you should be going into this meeting. And here's what you should be trying to get out of it. And here's what you know what I mean? Like so it's not just affirmation. Here's the point of the thing you're spending your time on. And here's what it's helping you achieve.

[00:24:39] And and that to me is both like so reinforcing and helpful because then I can ask like I think I'd call it I think I'd call it you go girl. There you go. But but but the joke that I make about it is that, you know, these things are wildly sycophantic and, you know, that's that's absolutely a slippery slope, 100 percent slippery slope.

[00:25:06] But in knowing that that's true, how do I make it work for me? So, you know, it's it's also a little ass kissing as a service. I'm starting to ask different questions about what I want to automate. And it's like I don't want to automate noise and I don't want to build a, you know, a bunch of second rate things.

[00:25:28] I want I want to think more strategically for myself and then understand that pattern for others about how do I need to reimagine and rethink and reshuffle the things that I'm doing to try to get to certain outcomes. So that's kind of how I'm how I'm playing around. I love that.

[00:25:51] Your project itself is about creating agency for yourself, but it's also about creating context. Right. And so context is another thread that we we pulled. And so I think some interesting things have arisen in that category as well. And in addition to the open brain, our friend Nate B. Jones has introduced a couple of things.

[00:26:15] So one is this need to have portable context kind of introduced with the open brain because the idea was, hey, as a as an individual, you need to be able to bring your context to your different, you know, whether if you're using chat GPT and Claude and Gemini want to be able to have all of that one place.

[00:26:38] But but he was recently introducing kind of this idea that as a worker, you need to be able to bring your personal context to work and you can't bring your own AI tools to work right now. But maybe you could bring your personal context and vice versa. And then if the if your company changes AI tools or if you move to a different company, you still have that context.

[00:27:04] So it's something that that we all need to be thinking about is like, how do we how do we create our fancy markdown files that contain all this context about ourselves that we have the control over it? And I think the other thing about that, you know, years ago, Amy, we used to talk about wanting to make skills portable and easily, you know, skill passports and all of those sorts of things.

[00:27:29] And I think that this is a moment when you change the narrative with the high agency to be sure it'd be great if universally something like that was available. But it's not that complicated or difficult for you to decide it matters to you and to figure out a way to bring that portability into your life.

[00:27:53] Yeah, I think Nate had a good point, though, which was it's really hard to motivate to do that at the right time because the right time is now before you need it. Right. And the time when you're actually motivated to do it is when it's too late and you don't have access to it. So so it's like a real like double edged sword from that perspective.

[00:28:21] Right. And I think the story that I told myself in that because I was I mean, that was a little bit of my friction as well. Like, yes, this would be helpful, like at some point in the distant future. But it's it's got a heavy climb to get to a useful state. Instead of telling myself I was doing this long journey, I told myself I was working on a small thing against a bigger thing. And then I started telling myself my real goal is getting more proficient building AI agents and vibe coding.

[00:28:51] And so this was a means to an end to that as opposed to just this big, arduous project. So, again, I think it's a little bit. And how do you break that down for yourself and how do you turn that into like a productivity moment that comes much sooner for you as you make your way down this journey? The other thing is the the importance of comprehension.

[00:29:13] What are the the key things in particular that young people or really anybody needs to do in order to, you know, secure their their career future? Being able to comprehend what it is that you're building, what it is that you're doing is so important. And, you know, it got me thinking a bit about, you know, a lot of Gen Z, including my son, have a real like resistance to AI.

[00:29:44] And I I kind of wonder if this is their bodies telling them the same thing where they need they need comprehension. Right. And so like their bodies are telling them, no, don't don't do that. That's bad for you because it you'll drift. You won't be able to really understand what's happening and you won't survive.

[00:30:12] There's like some sort of happy medium. There's it's not good for all of our young people to just be like using using AI without having any idea what it's actually doing or what they're thinking or what have you. But but they do need to kind of bring that that strong sense of what it is that that they're comprehending and be able to use the AI tools.

[00:30:40] So, you know, how do you bring those two things together? So, yeah, my my youngest is very anti-AI as well. My older is really delighted that AI can help with the dyslexic writing. Yeah. So there was there was kind of a gateway drug in that in that element. And I do think that they're like the the neuroplasticity thing is a really important conversation.

[00:31:10] And especially to your point, if you don't have any mental models to draw upon to create these sort of parallels, it can become a little complicated when the answer is so quickly derived. And, you know, we've we pondered this with every new big technological shift. You know, what are we losing and what are we gaining and do are we doing it intentionally?

[00:31:37] I think that's a healthy tension and I'm I'm totally fine with it. I think there's never been a more important time for expertise. But I think that this is a unique moment for expertise because I do think the mental models and the crystallized intelligence you have when you have seen patterns before, disruptive patterns, etc.

[00:32:06] etc. added to the curiosity about what is new and the intellectual humility to let go things that you're certain of. I think those pieces together are the key. And so I think that, you know, youth without any sort of foundational clarity or context is a risk.

[00:32:34] I think expertise and experience without intellectual humility is equally a risk. I think the magic comes when you can sort of bring those things together. So for people that are young, I think I would encourage more context gathering and whether that's reading history or connecting with people who have been in a particular industry.

[00:33:02] Or ideally, go get involved with a business and and go learn what the what their business is, what their business model is, what customers they serve, etc. To sort of get grounded in how the first principles of that business work. Maybe there's something about the way it works today that won't be true tomorrow.

[00:33:26] Maybe there is a need to expand our own knowns to let go of some of those truths and open up to the idea that tomorrow will not be like yesterday. So it's very unsettling on both sides. And I think what we miss is that both need something. And so to me, I think the best the best answer is get closer to each other.

[00:33:56] Get, you know, bring the youth and the, you know, sort of the cognitive flexibility together with the expertise and experience. But that only happens when there's a recognition that the neuroplasticity problem is not just for early talent. It's for senior talent as well. For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:20] And so, you know, obviously huge risk around the big cognitive decline. But there's also just the risk of, you know, sounding cloddy. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. So I know this one hits a bit of a nerve for you, Meg. And you have a new comic.

[00:34:43] Tell us a little bit more about your, the risks that you see here. We've been adding language and gravitating towards language forever. That's, we're social beings and we start to mirror each other.

[00:35:01] The challenge for me now is that Claude specifically, but all of AI, has started to become really irritating to me. And now it's like it's all the same in a certain type of way. And it's not even just the lack of depth. There's some key tenets of the writing style that is just everywhere.

[00:35:30] The one that's really, like, gotten under my skin. It's so weird because, again, I'm really surprised at my own reaction to it. But it's just building. It's getting really visceral for me. It's the it's not this. It's this other thing. And so I was super fascinated to find out that there people are tracking this and it is like going off the charts. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That the writing, the writing has really shifted.

[00:35:59] And, yeah. Well, the other thing, too, is like the super short sentences, which, you know, at first I really liked. I really liked them because it does make it kind of easier to read and it's a little more dramatic and, you know, like it's punchier. But it just gets exhausting. Like, like if everything is punchy and dramatic, then, you know, what what else? Way more pages.

[00:36:27] I think somebody said you have to pay extra for it to write the concise version. Yeah, that's another thing, too. Yeah. And then the psychofancy kicks in because I'm like, here's what I actually wrote. And it's like, oh, this is so much better. Sure. You took this out and that was great. And you removed this and you changed that. Yes. Yes. So great, Amy. So great. So I don't know where we go, like all of our writing.

[00:36:51] And the worst thing is, is oftentimes it's like topics I'm interested in written by people that I admire who I know, know their topic. So and I don't want to be a judge. Like, I don't care that you wrote it with AI. I just wish that AI didn't use these ticks that are starting to get annoying to me. You know, it feels manipulative.

[00:37:16] So we also talked about the agency of agents and agents gone wild. Right. So when we when we kicked off the season, it was the, you know, the the dawn of clod bot, molt bot, open claw. And, you know, obviously that hit a big nerve. The discussion has moved to just general security risks now. Right.

[00:37:44] And and how much more security risks are introduced because of all of the agents that are, you know, that are running right now. And of course, we had the lovely Doug Merritt on the on the show to to educate us quite a bit. And I know you've been doing a lot of thinking here, Meg, around not just like preparing for security risks, but preparing for the inevitability of security risks or security breaches.

[00:38:12] One of the things that I spent a lot of time thinking about when I was running very large cloud deployments is Jason Cohen has a great blog post about at scale. Rare things happen. Right. That it's it's very improbable. And then once you scale up, it's going to happen and it can be every single thing.

[00:38:37] And so this has always been back of my mind as you build these systems to serve customers. You need to think about them from a durability point of view. You need to think about them from a security vulnerability point of view. You need to think about how to manage them ongoing. And you really need to think about and then what.

[00:38:57] And so I'd spent a lot of time where the majority of the and then something happens that's very rare but still happens was pretty benign stuff as it related to the security topic. It was, you know, a cable fried or a hard drive collapsed or, you know, a human threw a patch on and shit happened.

[00:39:21] You know, like I've done many apology tours in my career and I have thought deeply about how to do corrective action, etc. And one of the things that I have learned along the way is that communicating the information about what happened to customers is something that most businesses are bad at.

[00:39:49] Because the person that understands what happened is probably not the best person to communicate it in a way that anyone else can understand. And so you spend a lot of time in technical leadership thinking about how do you try to teach people to write better incident reports and then you give up and rewrite them yourself.

[00:40:11] Because you need them to not terrify customers but also be, you know, transparent and help customers understand what happened and what you did to fix it. Where we are today with the velocity of vibe coding, you have people like me that like know better building these open brains and just saying, yeah, sure, go ahead.

[00:40:34] What is really happening is that all of the foundational technologies are used in a much broader surface area than ever before. And they're wildly vulnerable.

[00:41:14] And they're always in the wrong game when it comes to how we think about security risk right now. And yes, we need much better work on prevention. And yes, we need this investment that is happening with the Mythos release to get more businesses more serious.

[00:41:37] But every board and every business that has any level of technology to serve their customers needs to be really clear what their incident process is when something goes wrong. You need to quit thinking that just prevention is going to protect them. They need to do real tabletop exercises to walk through who does what when, when something goes wrong.

[00:42:03] They need to have proper templates and training for people on how to communicate and what to communicate. And they need to really understand risk and liability in a way that they've not had to understand before. And so I believe that this is both an opportunity. Everybody's got to up their game because we are now in a situation where there is no path that does not go through something going wrong.

[00:42:33] Yeah, I have to say this was your least funny comic. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely, yeah, it was serious. Yeah. Maybe, maybe we don't call it a comic. It's a, an illustration. Yes, it's a, I'm, I'm, I'm writing a graphic novel of. Yes, yes. Hopefully there's a superhero involved. Get some capes. Yeah.

[00:43:02] So, so the other thing about agents gone wild. So we had Brian Solis on the, on the pod last week. And, and he was talking about how, as they're measuring AI maturity, the AI index, companies are actually like going backwards. And, and it's, has a lot to do with how, how fast the models are improving, the harnesses are improving, et cetera.

[00:43:31] And, and, and just kind of reflecting on, you know, when we put together our maturity model. Well, when Amy's maturity model. Well, I know, but, but I think that this is, this is a bit of an hour statement because, you know, I started the maturity model.

[00:43:47] But as we were, you know, kind of finalizing the touches and everything, you kept insisting on creating a, a slope that was, you know, accelerating pace.

[00:44:30] Right. So the moment that we're in the pandemic. And in the world, the moment that we're in right now, nobody could have predicted we would be where we are right now. Companies are really struggling with kind of a perfect storm where they know they need to like do a bunch of transformation. And on the other hand, there's so much to learn and to absorb. And as soon as they do and try to bring the two things together, then everything else has changed.

[00:44:57] So you've got this opportunity to like completely transform work and through work intelligence, 80% of exactly what you need to do. But you still need people to go in and look at like, okay, well, what's the other 20%? And that's a tremendous amount of work because even though it's been impossible to do the 80% before,

[00:45:26] it's still really hard to do the 20%. One of the things I'm hearing people talk about more in this area is kind of twofold. One is what is the lifespan of the thing that you built for this, you know, getting that 80% value.

[00:45:44] People are starting to recognize that the lifespan of that thing that you built is much shorter than you realize because as the models change, as, you know, the market moves, etc., you're probably just as good to go back and redo it than to, you know, try to force forward fit what you did from four months ago, six months ago, whatever.

[00:46:10] So yeah, so the unlearning has to happen like constantly. Exactly, exactly. So two things, like what you need to capture is the thinking that went into the problem you were trying to solve because the method from which you solved it, you might have a better method in the future and that future might get here really quickly. That's the one dimension.

[00:46:37] The second dimension that is really difficult for big companies is that the value capture of doing that is moving away from you very quickly because all of your competitors are doing the same thing.

[00:46:54] So you go from maybe having some alpha or some, you know, some differentiation either in what you do or how you do it that gives you some edge to, oh, well, I have to redo it because I don't really have that anymore to, oh, my goodness, you know, I've been leapfrogged by the competition and now I'm behind again.

[00:47:21] And so the emotional weight of that is quite severe on people as they realize it's not a problem that you solve.

[00:47:32] It is a culture that you build and a mindset and, you know, a belief that you build within yourself and within your organization that what you're good at and what you're doing is continuously looking at how can you leverage in a better way your time to deliver something that's, you know, adding more value to your bottom line.

[00:47:59] Most people don't have that kind of thinking and it feels very much like you remember the experiment about like when people built the Lego thing and then they tore it apart right away. Like your motivation just completely went out of you to build it the second time. Right. And it's like but that's what we're up against. We're going to build these beautiful Lego sculptures and they're going to be torn apart.

[00:48:24] And we have to figure out how to find meaning in that because otherwise it's going to feel very, very emotionally draining because how does that how is that progress? So there really is it's it's a human element and an individualized cultural thing where you have to figure out what what brings you joy and fulfillment in this moment.

[00:48:50] I think they need to be teaching Lego creative destruction in schools. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's all back to that creative destruction concept. That's right. And I love the Lego analogy. And yeah, I think I think that maybe there's some like team building exercises where we like destroy each other's Lego. Figure out what's the personality types that and what roles do you take in this in this path?

[00:49:20] Because I think we need to build some maps, you know, some scaffolding to that future. There was this recent post by Philip Mazzowski and he shared that the the adoption of enterprise AI is really low. And he noted that only three percent of SAP customers had adopted any of the AI features that that SAP has created.

[00:49:48] There's a bit of a paradox here where SaaS companies, in order to be valued higher, they need to be building AI capabilities. But they're not necessarily being appreciated by by customers.

[00:50:08] And so it got me wondering if that is because of the readiness of the customers or is it back to Jason Lemkin's point, which is that enterprise AI solutions are, you know, 60 percent of what is needed. And so they're really kind of crappy and therefore there really isn't any desire by customers to adopt them. So what do you think, Meg?

[00:50:37] Yeah, I think both of these are true. I think that the bar for value expectation is high because the cost is not zero. I think the readiness for organizations to, you know, feel like they understand and can prioritize things are is really constrained right now.

[00:50:58] And I also believe that there is a big gap between the way San Francisco and tech sees the world and the reality on the ground of how work is happening. And I think that this is a little bit about the future doesn't come evenly. Right. The spikiness of this of where we are.

[00:51:22] I really caution us not to take too much of this as a signal for or against in some way, because I believe that there's too many unknowns to be really predicting based on this.

[00:51:36] But I would say that I think for the investments that you're going to do in AI, the bridge to helping customers understand what they should be doing with it and and helping them get successful outcomes from it. Like you can't like you can't leave that to the reader.

[00:51:57] And there's just not the muscle memory in these larger enterprise organizations from the technology providers or from the customers to to bridge this gap particularly effectively. So I think that's going to be the strain for a while. Well, so lots of storms brewing. I did my QA suite.

[00:52:16] So I incorporated a whole eval, whatever you want to call it, thanks to Anker, who was very helpful in pointing me in the right directions. And so now I have a full smoke test suite. Dark factory, baby. Yeah. Yep. You got it. Level five. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:52:40] And I and I and I did finally make it to the app store and I'm really embarrassed about why it took so long. So I'm not going to share exactly why that was. Well, but hey, exciting. How about if we try to sneak in a quick leadership corner? I was presented with this dilemma this weekend. And I'm interested in what your advice would be. All right.

[00:53:09] So this individual was hired a year ago to lead a very large, large organization and was given incredible feedback. But then they had peers undermining them. And then ultimately his boss got kind of like swept up in the people who are undermining him.

[00:53:34] And in a restructuring did not give him a plum position, gave the other people plum positions, but not him. And now he's been fighting to find a place in the organization. And as far as I could tell, he did everything right. So what sort of advice would you give him? So I'm reflecting back.

[00:53:53] I think it was our end of season one finale where we talked about this, about how sometimes it's really hard for even the best of people to navigate what can be some pretty hefty forces of resistance or whatever those things are.

[00:54:15] So I think the first thing is to, you know, be reflective of the lessons, but be also recognized like you win some and you lose some in these big jobs. And getting hard things done, transformative things done does create a lot of uncomfortable people and, you know, can make it difficult.

[00:54:39] So I guess from where the person is right now, I would suggest, you know, using this not plum position as an opportunity to regroup a little bit, to kind of plan your future forward, whether that's with this company or somewhere else. But recognize it as a little bit of a breather so that you can put some of your energy into figuring out what you want to do next.

[00:55:09] So definitely, you know, lick your wounds. And as far as like, well, this sucks. And when people show you who they are, believe them. Right. So now you know what you're up against and maybe may take some notes of ways you could have seen that or maybe ways you could have shored up a little more a broad base of support to have your back because ultimately that's what's happened here. You got a little bit of outplayed on the bigger scoreboard game.

[00:55:39] And that sucks. That's not because you're bad at what you do or who you are or anything. It's just sometimes these forces are bigger than you realize or you just don't have enough tools or the right kind of boss to protect you. I've been there myself.

[00:55:57] I have been in a situation where I had decided that, you know, that the future was not going to work out well and therefore I needed to find something else. And I've also been in a situation where I've managed to win the next round, you know.

[00:56:15] So I think both are potential paths that are worth, you know, really analyzing to say what is the opportunity in front of you and what's your next best move. But, yeah, use it as a chance to learn a few lessons and to not internalize your worth based on this, but do internalize more clarity about what the, you know, what game is really happening at this particular organization. I have a little bit more context.

[00:56:45] This person had a lot of support, broad support from other peers, right? So it was kind of just a couple of standout peers that were problematic. And he really also put a lot of trust into his manager, which is good, but, you know, like a heavy reliance on that that person is always going to show up for you.

[00:57:12] And, you know, I've had this exact situation happen multiple times, I would say, right? Where I had, you know, broad support kind of at my level and what I thought was a really good relationship with my manager, really good support. And then that kind of fell apart in, you know, with other people kind of coming in.

[00:57:36] And so what I understood to be true is that, you know, first of all, it is good to trust your manager. It's good to, you know, really focus on that relationship.

[00:57:47] But building support and relationships with your manager's peers and your manager's manager, you know, really so that a broader set of people that are making decisions about you, you know, are in your corner and see what your value is. That's really important. And that's hard to do.

[00:58:14] And I'm not necessarily saying I ever did a great job at that because, you know, I found myself in this situation twice, not having done a very good job of that. But I think that that is the lesson. And the other thing, you know, is, yeah, like, make them pay you to leave at this point. Yeah. If you've made your achievement, did lots of good stuff and it's time to move on.

[00:58:40] But do bring those lessons with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say back to the like hoping that your manager has your back. I mean, like this is a thing like I don't think the right answer is never trust your manager.

[00:58:54] But I also have been in this situation more times than I really care to acknowledge, to be honest, where I think the more recurring pattern is the managers that will have your back unless there's any kind of risk for them personally or hassle and noise that gets out of their comfort zone to manage.

[00:59:18] And so maybe just like also getting a read on that, that, you know, had everything been without contention, your manager probably would have been delighted to have your back. But it's it's in those moments of contention, like trying to have a read of do you have enough leverage with all of the decision makers such that disappointing you versus disappointing someone else?

[00:59:46] Like, how does that math work? And again, I don't know, like you could get jaded, but like I don't recommend that. And I don't know that there's a way to completely win. And like some I just take it in like sometimes you win these and sometimes you lose these, but you always learn something. And hopefully you bring pride in the things you managed to accomplish and the people's lives that you managed to touch, because I think those are things that nobody can take away from you. Beautiful advice.

[01:00:16] Well, thank you so much, Amy. This was a it's fun to have an episode of just the two of us. It's been a while. I know it has been a while. Let's invent the future together, everyone. I believe in us. Let's make every day count.