Transforming Business Operations Through AI Native Strategy and Implementation
Episode 5 - Transforming Business Operations Through AI Native Strategy and Implementation
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[00:00:25] Ryan Niemann: Welcome, welcome, welcome. Hey everybody. are we feeling today?
[00:00:33] Mike Richardson: all good.
[00:00:34] Ryan Niemann: Good. Good to see everyone. It's been a couple weeks since our last prompt and Circumstance podcast. Welcome everybody. we're the essential podcast for executives navigating the AI revolution. And if you're seeking illumination path forward on AI strategy and reduce uncertainty in this rapidly evolving landscape, then you've come to the right place. That's right. Today we're gonna unpack a critical idea, the AI native enterprise. Now, most companies are truly not AI native. In fact, only a handful will ever be. But there's an opportunity to identify pockets where AI can fundamentally reshape how we work, sell, and serve our customers. not about bolting on AI at the top, much like we've talked about on this podcast. about redesigning process around ai, where it matters most. We'll talk about that, what it looks like in practice, how our executives that listen can accelerate growth, productivity and retention, what it takes and what risks to watch out for.
[00:01:37] Mike Richardson: Did you say Na? Did you say native or naked?
[00:01:41] Ryan Niemann: no, not definitely not that.
[00:01:43] Mike Richardson: I just wanted to be sure that
[00:01:44] Ryan Niemann: topic.
[00:01:46] Tom Adams: Sorry. Yeah. Wrong, wrong show.
[00:01:48] Ryan Niemann: No. No. Oh boy. I will try to keep this rowdy crowd on track. I'm joined as always by Mike Richardson,
[00:02:04] Mike Richardson: Hello, everybody.
[00:02:06] Ryan Niemann: Adams, the innovator, mark Redgrave, the Fulcrum point shift maker,
[00:02:11] Tom Adams: Oh,
[00:02:11] Ryan Niemann: and me, Ryan Neiman the operator. we'll dig in on the transformation by design, not disruption in this real AI playbook.
All right, gentlemen, how are you doing today?
[00:02:22] Mike Richardson: Good.
[00:02:23] Mark Redgrave: Great. Thank you.
[00:02:25] Mike Richardson: this naked stuff. Let's go
[00:02:26] Tom Adams: yep. Let's do it.
[00:02:28] Ryan Niemann: us on track. I wanna toss it over. I think, uh, mark, you had a great way to kind of just cap encapsulate what we're feeling. Uh, I think you said the word of the week. I'm gonna go with, Mike. What's your weekend forecast?
[00:02:42] Mike Richardson: my weekend,
[00:02:43] Mark Redgrave: Oh.
[00:02:44] Mike Richardson: my weekend forecast. not gonna go with the weather. I'm not gonna go with sports. I'm gonna go with a forecast of where my head is going. I'm really excited. I've got two big events coming up in the next couple of months and couple of weeks, around ai. One is a big conference that I'm putting on here in my local area, the Temecula Valley Wine District, where we're, we're talking about agile leadership in the era of collective intelligence equals artificial intelligence plus human intelligence.
That's on November the 19th, actually in a couple of weeks we're launching a new forum in, in San Diego for operations leaders specifically. And we have an AI speaker lined up to come in and talk about AI applied to business operations in particular. So I'm really excited about both of those. I forecast that both of those will be fantastic events.
Thanks for asking Ryan.
[00:03:42] Ryan Niemann: That is. That is perfect. Tom, over to you. What's your weekend forecast?
[00:03:46] Tom Adams: Weekend forecast is physical, not ai like, like just, just sometimes the challenge with this crazy headspace and you hear about it in social media, people who kind of doom scroll all day long kind of get a, a weird view of the world. And I, I have decided that this weekend I have to a very clear physical presence to myself, so I'm gonna be digging holes and stuff like that.
So I'm completely staying out of AI this weekend. Yes.
[00:04:13] Ryan Niemann: good. Mark, over to you. What's your weekend forecast?
[00:04:16] Mark Redgrave: Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. That's.
it's actually a little bit of a shame because this government shutdown thing, but we have the Pacific Air Show in Huntington Beach this weekend, which is awesome, but no jets can fly because of shutdown. So I was re, I was really looking forward to it. And Mike, I guess you've just had Miramar, haven't you?
Down in San Diego. But like we, we, the Pacific Air Show is so good. We have F 30 fives, F 20 twos buzzing the beach. Unfortunately, everything's grounded, so that's a frustration. So yeah, cloudy with a chance of meatballs. That's it. That's my forecast.
[00:04:49] Ryan Niemann: that yes, that is, uh, chance of meatballs for sure. I, I would say, you know, I am gonna join Tom and unplug. I've got, uh, unlike Mike, a whole bunch of football coming up. So we've got, uh, the Broncos taken on, the Eagles on Sunday, so that's gonna be a good weekend,
[00:05:04] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Yeah, that's.
[00:05:05] Mike Richardson: Of course, last weekend I would've forecast that Europe was going to win the Ryder Cup, and indeed they did.
[00:05:13] Ryan Niemann: Yes, that's true.
[00:05:14] Mark Redgrave: They did.
[00:05:15] Ryan Niemann: It's true. For those that don't know, Mike and Mark are both British and we're rallying for their team. Yeah,
[00:05:22] Mark Redgrave: Proud moment, proud.
[00:05:26] Ryan Niemann: All right. As we always do on the podcast, let's go ahead and start off with what caught your eye this week. Tom, let's turn it over to you. What, uh, what caught your eye? This one.
[00:05:34] Tom Adams: what caught my eye this week was, uh, a realization that so many people in the world think AI is magic. And, there's this kind of magic sense, and we've talked about it in previous episodes where, where AI is just the next, the next logical word or statement. But what I, what I hear so often is, uh, in the conversations I'm having with, business owners, CEOs, is, uh, I just need to throw this magic thing at the thing and it's gonna work.
And what I, what I keep reminding people is, uh, you gotta have a process. You gotta have an, you gotta have. decision points. You've gotta have rules related to those decision points. You have to have a next action. You have to have a output that comes as a result of that, and you have to have some sort of evaluation.
Did that work? And then I go, well, ooh. It's a lot like how you manage your human people. and yet so many times I have this conversation, it's like this whole AI thing is just magic. And so suddenly we're just gonna throw this thing at our. You know, at our business, and it's all gonna resolve it. And it doesn't, it just doesn't do that.
So that's been my big lessons this week. AI agents don't circumvent the stuff. They come from having clarity about this stuff. Uh, the under the hood stuff.
[00:06:51] Mike Richardson: by, you know, wishful thinking, right? People, people lapse into wishful thinking. It's like, no, you're gonna have to really lean into this and do the legwork.
[00:07:00] Tom Adams: Yes. Yeah.
[00:07:01] Ryan Niemann: Agreed. Good?
[00:07:02] Mark Redgrave: Tom, the magic. The magic can become chaos with a stroke of a, you know, it's.
[00:07:08] Tom Adams: yes.
[00:07:09] Mark Redgrave: So look, I've actually had a great week this week. I've learned a lot this week, but I, I like the thing that caught my eye early week. This, do you know anyone know who this is?
[00:07:18] Mike Richardson: if, if you are,
[00:07:18] Mark Redgrave: This is,
[00:07:19] Mike Richardson: YouTube, everybody.
[00:07:21] Mark Redgrave: yeah. Okay. This is a young lady and her name is Tilly Norwood and on Tuesday some very clever marketing person in Hollywood.
Made her available as a completely AI actress to the movie studios. Right. Completely synthetic and Hollywood lost their mind. Right. You can imagine. Um, and it was, I, I just watched it. We're close to, close to Hollywood here. So obviously my local a b, C station or whatever it is, it's like, so, so the minute it was announced, all the actors and actresses in Hollywood, right?
Everyone from Emily Blunt, like all the big names are like, this is it, this is disgusting. Um, actually Emily Blunt was quite balanced, but a lot of them were like, no, this is the end of what you can't do this, this. And I sat there watching and I'm like, I have my popcorn. And I'm like, right, let's go man.
'cause like this is, and, and I think it's really interesting just quickly because of like on one side, right? You've got. Multi-generational acting families that have honed their craft into, into incredible award-winning, you know, performance. On the other side, you have a whole generation of creators, people who have scripts, ideas, who wanna make movies, who could never make a movie ever.
Who now have the opportunity to make feature films. So I'm like, I'm what? And there's no right, there's no wrong, but I'm watching this thing and I'm, and the one thing I'm sure of, and I, I was at an event last night and I, it's like, you know where this is going. You, there's no, you can't put the genie back in the bottle, man.
So if you sit there and you go, I'm an actor, a thespian, and I will not allow this, it's gonna be very painful. Few years for you, man, because like, this is, this is.
[00:09:03] Mike Richardson: Ultimately, ultimately, resistance never wins.
[00:09:06] Mark Redgrave: Futile. Futile. So I'm like, but I just thought it was so,
[00:09:10] Ryan Niemann: Yeah,
[00:09:10] Mark Redgrave: it was so interesting because, because
[00:09:12] Mike Richardson: does that mean that sort of auditions go away because you just, you just basically tell the AI actress or actor, this is what I want from you, get on with it.
[00:09:21] Mark Redgrave: Correct. No rider. Yeah. No. Um, no times to work. Uh, no. Uh, no. No.
[00:09:28] Ryan Niemann: like the, uh, the
[00:09:29] Mark Redgrave: It's wild.
[00:09:30] Ryan Niemann: taking on the personification, give it the right context and it can
[00:09:33] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Ryan Niemann: like, you know, your
[00:09:35] Mark Redgrave: So, but it was, it,
[00:09:36] Ryan Niemann: actor. Yeah.
[00:09:37] Mark Redgrave: so if you, if you're a CEO, right. I just think there's an analogy here, a parallel, which is like, if you're a leader today Yeah. Like, don't be like the Hollywood actors and actresses that lost their mind. You can have a little private moment. Yeah. When you, when you sit down in the dark and have a little cry.
But like, but like. This is gonna happen. So let's think about how we turn that to our advantage. That was, that was what struck me this week.
[00:10:01] Mike Richardson: you could call that little private moment. You could actually call it an OSM an Oh shit moment.
[00:10:08] Mark Redgrave: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:10] Ryan Niemann: actually to tie this in, so Mike, you've talked about the becoming the AI driven leader and
[00:10:15] Mike Richardson: Yeah.
[00:10:15] Ryan Niemann: Woods talks about creating your own board. this extrapolates into do we really need a CEO or do we need a synthetic CEO? Like what if we wanted Bezos to go run this right type of thing. Right. All. That's a big one. Nice job mark. Way to
[00:10:31] Tom Adams: I, I
[00:10:31] Mark Redgrave: was so fun though.
[00:10:32] Tom Adams: before we go to Mark, we must, we must honor the fact that, uh, I mean we go to Mike, we must honor the fact that Mark used the word thespian.
[00:10:40] Mike Richardson: Oh, he.
[00:10:41] Ryan Niemann: That
[00:10:42] Tom Adams: He did, he threw down. He threw down today. I know he threw down today on that one without a, uh, a pop filter.
[00:10:49] Mark Redgrave: English,
[00:10:50] Tom Adams: Uh,
[00:10:50] Mark Redgrave: I'm this.
[00:10:51] Ryan Niemann: he didn't even, he didn't even blink.
[00:10:53] Mike Richardson: We, we speak Shakespeare?
[00:10:54] Ryan Niemann: track. Tom. Tom. Tom, what's your, uh, what's your, what's your insight for the, what'd you catch?
[00:11:00] Tom Adams: I already said mine. It's Mark. It's Mike's turn.
[00:11:02] Mike Richardson: Hello.
[00:11:03] Ryan Niemann: Oh, sorry,
[00:11:04] Mike Richardson: Yeah. So while we continue to talk about non synthetic boards and one-to-one coaching, I was, I was in a one-to-one coaching session with one of. Members of my peer forums yesterday and um, I've been helping them sort of innovate growth opportunities him and another member in the forum have now mobilized a fantastic program together where one of them needs to share customer data with the other. It's really taking off and we, you know, we obviously wanted to double check, Hey, are we sure that we're, you know, fully covered from a data privacy point of view? And so that came up in that conversation. And you know, I said, oh gosh, I've got some vague recollections of all of that. I said, I'll tell you what though.
When we put the phone down in a minute, it is actually a Zoom call I'll spend, I said, I'll spend five minutes on chat GPT, and I'll send you whatever I get. So I just go to chat. PT GPTI loosely describe, Hey, one member does this for another member. They've got a transfer a customer data between the two of them. Can you remind me? Of the USA data privacy laws, in particular here in California. what would need to be in place between both of them, you know, to make sure that they're fully covered. Boom. Fantastic. Uh, you know, oh, and can I produce this for you in a Word doc? Yes, please. Oh, and can I do that for you in a Word doc?
Yes, please. Copy paste email to him five minutes later. Done. you know, I almost forgot that I had that capability now.
[00:12:36] Tom Adams: Right.
[00:12:36] Mike Richardson: Until, you know, I just reminded myself, Hey, five minutes to chat GPT. I'll send it to you in a moment. Brilliant.
[00:12:42] Ryan Niemann: Good stuff. Good use case. Alright, I'll, I'll round us out on mine. I know I've talked about education. I have a number of friends in education, the one that caught my attention because I, I'm seeing the. probably say more in the high school to college and then college entering industry. one in particular caught my eye.
I was just announced, uh, yesterday that the San Francisco Unified School District is starting to claim that they're seeing an increase in reading proficiency on the level of four to 14% by leveraging ai
[00:13:20] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:13:20] Ryan Niemann: they mention a platform and it's called Amira. And I went and checked it out and, uh, happened to have in my ecosystem some speech language pathologists and the like, and I always kind of like had this in the back of my mind that is a language model after all. this will allow for students to then have a 24 7 never exhausted, always positive reinforcement learning how to read. It's just fascinating how
[00:13:50] Mike Richardson: And to expand their vocabulary. Yeah, exactly.
[00:13:53] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.
[00:13:54] Ryan Niemann: So now that's K through three.
[00:13:55] Mark Redgrave: Interesting.
[00:13:56] Ryan Niemann: three. So now think of that, like that being very accustomed to using AI on a regular basis and what that means throughout an individual's education all the way through to coming in, entering the workforce, and, you know, 15 years. let's dive into our, our, uh, segment today. So AI native, Now when we talk about AI native enterprises, it can sound, I'd say at a minimum extract, right? You, many of our listeners may not know exactly what that is, but there are a few companies already leaning into that label, So, for instance, you may have heard of a company called Cursor.
It's a AI native coding environment built from the ground up on ai. Uh, there's another one called Sprinkler It. It calls itself an AI native customer experience platform. App Year, uh, in Asia has staked out ground in the MarTech space, in cybersecurity. It's, uh, Sentinel One. And, and, and Wika. They're framing their platforms as AI native, uh, for detection and data infrastructure. even telco and finance are getting into the mix. So circles with open AI and better.com, which has branded itself as a AI first. Uh, AI native mortgage lender. first question comes to mind is what is AI native?
[00:15:20] Mike Richardson: Yeah, and, and maybe this is where you're headed, what? heard the, you know, we've heard the word native used over previous generations, you know, digital native.
[00:15:30] Mark Redgrave: Cloud.
[00:15:31] Mike Richardson: can you just start off, Ryan by, because you've been in this lane for many years, many decades, what, what, what, what does the word native U mean in this context?
[00:15:41] Ryan Niemann: Well, I was hoping you guys would tell me.
[00:15:45] Mark Redgrave: I know.
[00:15:45] Mike Richardson: Sorry.
[00:15:46] Mark Redgrave: it is.
[00:15:46] Mike Richardson: Mark knows. Okay.
[00:15:47] Mark Redgrave: AI native means that, like the core value of the company could not exist without ai. That's, that's what AI native means. So it's not, um, you know, it, it's not about like, like there's a good definition I read, which is like, if you're AI native, like AI is the business.
If you're AI enabled, AI helps the business. So let me chat. Like, like, so, so, so we're saying like the core of your value offering to your customers is completely AI driven, the core. Now I would, I would question, so Ryan, you mentioned a couple of good companies there, right? Um, cursor. Yes. Yeah. 12 people.
It's two years old. Well, it depends. Some, there's, there's a, there's some differences around how many employees, but it's like 12 people. $10 billion valuation as per the last raise this year. Yeah, like, like, like sprinkler. Okay. 2009. I know sprinkler from a previous life where I did media monitoring software sprinkler 2009, uh, 3,500 people, um, uh, you know, $2 billion valuation as of 2020, which was the last time they did a raise.
Not AI native. It's marketing bullshit for them,
[00:17:05] Ryan Niemann: you go.
[00:17:06] Mark Redgrave: but I do think, like we are in like, because this is a land grab situation, just like.com in 20, in the two thousands, everyone is going, oh, we're AI native. They are not. If you own a company today that exists, you cannot be AI native because you haven't built, you haven't built the core of your business on it unless you wish to disassemble your entire enterprise and rebuild it.
So that's just a, that's just a perspective, but it's, I'm a marketing guy. It's marketing.
[00:17:34] Ryan Niemann: That's good. Actually, I think you, you might be onto something that Mark, and I think it's a real good encapsulation of like how to just fundamentally understand what AI native is. you mentioned, some of these companies, they are doing things that might be AI native. How does, what does that mean? What does that concept and how do we. Start to unfold that.
[00:17:53] Tom Adams: From my point of view, the challenge with the bigger mid-market companies is, is like Mark said, you've gotta completely unassemble what you're doing. And unless you're doing skunk works projects and you kind of create a little skunk works over on the side and you go, okay. us AI native, whatever that means. 'cause I, I still think native, despite what Mark said, is unless everybody clarifies what that word means, everybody's using it. And it doesn't mean anything. It's Mark, mostly marketing. Right. It doesn't mean anything. So to me, the, the way you implement a. Uh, what that seems like native, your foundation of that is you gotta go create a skunkworks and you go, go build off of this new reality.
And fundamentally see if we can reshape something, in larger companies, I don't know how to do it otherwise. 'cause the whole. Thing. The whole system's built on this way of being in the world that doesn't start with that. And, and so I don't know if you can be a AI native if you've got a traditional company, you just, you, you got a skunk works it, it somehow is my opinion.
[00:18:57] Mike Richardson: I, I was trying to think of a metaphor and the, the best, the feeble best I could come up with was the difference between a combustion engine vehicle and an ev. Right. In the early days, we tried to supplement combustion with electric hybrids. Right. And we tried to reverse engineer. Batteries and electric motors into, you know, we took a combustion engine out and we put, you know, an electric system back in. And then ultimately we've arrived at the place now where we are seeing many EVs, of course, led by Tesla. No, this was built ground up from scratch as
[00:19:37] Ryan Niemann: analogy.
[00:19:37] Mike Richardson: an electric
[00:19:38] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.
[00:19:39] Tom Adams: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Mike Richardson: from a, from a platform point of view, we hear X, Y, Z platform, which is a multipurpose EV platform from the ground up.
[00:19:53] Tom Adams: Yeah, that's good.
[00:19:54] Ryan Niemann: so your perspective on that, like when you look at, in your perspective, companies that aren't truly AI native, but can they have pockets that are AI
[00:20:03] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.
[00:20:03] Ryan Niemann: or
[00:20:05] Mark Redgrave: So, so I reckon, so, so I'm, I'm thinking about like, like the, the people who hopefully are listening to this podcast, right? It's like, I would say this like. It doesn't matter and it will be quickly forgotten, right? Because like, I'm, I cast my mind back to 2000, right? Where I ran a software company and I remember, as the.com thing hit, uh, like some investment bankers said to me, mark rename the company.
And if you, for every person you can find, rename it with a.com. In the end, for every person you can hire with credible experience, we put a million dollars on the valuation. So hire 30 people as quickly as you can right now. That was quick. We got, we got through that transition so quickly, right? Do you remember 12 months later?
It's like everything's dot com, so it doesn't matter anymore. So like, so like renaming the company would've been, we didn't do it, but it would've been pointless. That's where we are with this. So at the moment, people find, think it's, it's important positioning for your business if you're raising money.
'cause this is where the money is. But I would, I would proffer to you guys, it's not going to matter,
[00:21:05] Tom Adams: All right.
[00:21:05] Mark Redgrave: don't worry whether you're AI native or not. What matters is that you are thinking about how to start to use AI in your business. 'cause that does matter. So, so, and, and I, I kind of feel that, we have some really poor numbers from all the big consulting companies around the scalability of POCs. everywhere I read right now is saying there's a 90 to 95% failure rate
[00:21:32] Tom Adams: Right.
[00:21:32] Mark Redgrave: scaling POCs. So, and, and, uh.
[00:21:36] Mike Richardson: What's a PC?
[00:21:37] Mark Redgrave: Sorry, a proof of concept. So if you're creating this AI program as a proof of concept, as a test in your company, like the, the, the barrier to make it to scale is very big. And, there's some data I heard yesterday was from, Boston Consulting Group, and they said only 5% of AI programs have an EBITDA impact currently.
So, so, so Ryan, I just like, like this is about to, to me it's like. That please, as a leader, as a CEO, don't get hung up on whether you're native or not. You're not. It's like unless you're, unless you're about to start, in which case, wicked like jealous. Um, but it's like it, it's.
[00:22:15] Mike Richardson: that there's, there's, there's merit in, in the listeners, you know, when they're trying to think about, okay, how do I lean into this, you know, my, my whole better, faster, cheaper thing last week, choose one thing. I think there is, there is value. you know, if you're exploring, you know, blue Ocean possibilities to, to add a new product, a new service, a new, new system, a new something, there is value in perhaps thinking about a skunkworks kind of approach.
Like, like suggesting, where you could get your head into the space of how could we do that from an AI first bottom up. Totally ev not combustion engine, reverse to And, and how could we do that as a, as a true AI native experiment? I remember, I think it was about 12, 18 months ago, um, the CEO of Ford, I, I forget his name. He's, it's not a, it's, he's not part of the Ford family. Um, he said. When everybody was getting worried about the possibility of cheap EV imports from China, pre tariffs, um, he said, he said, we have set up a skunk works in Ford, uh, I think actually down here in la, some in in California somewhere. are going to figure out how Ford can compete with those kinds of low price point entry, low cost vehicles.
And they just announced. Very recently they've completed that process and
[00:23:54] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:23:54] Mike Richardson: will be launching a, a series of vehicles to compete at that level.
[00:23:59] Ryan Niemann: I think that's, that's fantastic. We've talked about that solo unicorn. Thought that like, an individual that must almost have to be working AI native on their own and creates a billion dollar valuation. And then I had a great conversation with A CEO and he said, you know, to address this, I have a, a tiger team focused on disrupting my own business
[00:24:20] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:24:20] Ryan Niemann: we've given 'em full autonomy to work AI natively and, and in that really look at our business and what, what would a green do to try to. not do it at the scale that we do, but come up with features, functionality, and, you know, customer success stories that, that we're not thinking of or can't get there because.
[00:24:39] Mike Richardson: You know, I, I did that once. I
[00:24:41] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.
[00:24:41] Mike Richardson: an enterprise scale software company back in the early two thousands and we, we hit a brick wall with one of our products where we lost a key opportunity and it was a real, it was a real, um, moment of truth for the company. So I got the team in the room and I said, okay, we need a brand new product. Three days, three weeks. Three months. I turned to a guy called Jerry. I said, Jerry, the top floor is empty. It's now yours. tell me who you want, you get them. I want you to take over the top floor. I want you to be back in this room in three days, showing me a plan of where you can be in three weeks and what you can deliver in three min three months.
Any questions, please begin. We will just keep pushing pizza under the bottom of the door. Don't come out until it's done.
[00:25:34] Ryan Niemann: That's right.
[00:25:37] Mike Richardson: We had a brand new product.
[00:25:38] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:25:39] Ryan Niemann: Fantastic. It does take that, that that forcing factor.
[00:25:42] Mark Redgrave: I, um, had exactly the same experience, Mike, when I was at the big Telco, but there's a really important thing here, so if you're thinking about this as a CEO, like I would like you must create separation. So for you, it was the top floor for us at the Telco. We were 5,000 people, but we took another building.
Right in town to do, to do the same program. So, so it's like, then you must create separation. um, but you can do this at, at like a really modest scale, right? It's like, as you said, Mike, you could, if you're, if you're a CEO and you want to get some AI native thinking, you could put three or four people in a, in a WeWork across town and you, some amazing things could happen.
[00:26:25] Mike Richardson: that empty office over there in the corner of the building. Or, you know what? Take over the corner of the warehouse over there. Put whiteboards on the wall. Use it as a skunkworks kind of place. Begin, you know, and, and let's see what we can do.
[00:26:37] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.
[00:26:37] Tom Adams: think there, the, the proof to me is coming back to what Ryan was talking about, which is these billion dollar one person firms. And what we're starting to see, and I'm starting to see 'cause I follow this religiously, is. out there is doing interesting things. And there's this company called Evry that built a newsletter. And what Evry now is doing is building products based on this belief that they can be fully AI native, but they're not encumbered by historical structure. Right. And, and that's why I think the power of separation
[00:27:08] Mark Redgrave: it.
[00:27:09] Tom Adams: important because if you're encumbered by the current system, you're gonna keep serving the current system and you can't be AI native.
From the current system, you have to go and try something fundamentally different with different, uh, requirements attached to it. Otherwise, you're just, you're, you are really struggling to become AI native. You can be AI supportive, but, what Mark said, don't get, don't get your head stuck around AI native.
Get it around AI supported ai, uh, efficient, AI effective, but AI native to me only works when you're in a fundamentally different space and a way of being.
[00:27:42] Mike Richardson: Yeah, and at least mentally, right, at
[00:27:44] Tom Adams: Yep.
[00:27:45] Mike Richardson: separated may. Maybe you just don't have the flexibility to be massively physically separated. You
[00:27:50] Tom Adams: Yep.
[00:27:50] Mike Richardson: a corner office or. Or corner of the warehouse, but at least mentally separated. And for me, one way to do that, we had a great speaker at my forum last month, called Simon Vetter, uh, leading with vision, and he did a fantastic job.
Most people think they lead with vision until they heard Simon, and they
[00:28:07] Tom Adams: I.
[00:28:07] Mike Richardson: they don't lead with vision at all. They lead with goals. And there's a massive difference between leading with vision and leading with goals.
[00:28:13] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:28:14] Mike Richardson: so for me, this is about the courage to lead with vision that is far enough out there. Big enough and bold enough to create mental separation that you can't get there by just doing an incremental change from here.
[00:28:30] Tom Adams: Right,
[00:28:31] Mike Richardson: It's like the a the old adage, right? When you do strategic planning, you come up with, you know, you come up with, with a grand vision and you think, well, if we want to get there, the last place I wanna start from is here because there's too many
[00:28:45] Tom Adams: Yeah.
[00:28:45] Mike Richardson: and turns and brick walls and hurdles between here and there. But I think that's what it takes. It takes the courage to, to sort of, to sort of crystallize that vision with no idea at all how on earth we can get there from here. are gonna set out on that journey and we will be successful if we stick with it.
[00:29:03] Ryan Niemann: You know, I think we were going to segue into the executive playbook, but I think you, you nailed it,
[00:29:11] Tom Adams: Yeah.
[00:29:11] Ryan Niemann: think having the courage. In your leadership might be just, you know, we've talked about getting started we've talked about the different flavors and, you know, we could go into go to market or operations or other aspects of the business of, of where you start. getting started is important, but it does take that vision and, and courage. I think you nailed it.
[00:29:32] Mark Redgrave: there's a great leadership, uh, trick that I learned, which I just wanna share with, the team. It's like, I was told one day like, Hey, if you wanna start changing your thinking like. Change how you get to work, change how you walk, change how you dress.
Don't take the train. Like, you know what, and it's like, and this is all part of the same thing, right? So, and, and it's like, this is why, back to the separation thing, it's like, I remember when we did the, when we did some of these, you'd call 'em skunk works things. Um, in previous life, the 5,000 person organization used Microsoft products, right?
Like Windows based products. This team said, no, we want to use Max. We went. Yeah. Great. So 20 a team of 20 turned up completely Mac enabled. We don't wanna use Outlook, we wanna just use Gmail G Suite. Yep, no problem. Right? It's like, so I mean, I mean I know it seems a bit trivial, but it's not trivial. Like you wanna start re-imagining how your business operates.
Like walk a different way to work
[00:30:29] Ryan Niemann: I would add in there actually, Tom's comment about, you know, go, go dig a ditch. Do something that is not
[00:30:36] Mark Redgrave: Totally.
[00:30:37] Ryan Niemann: to trying to figure this out. And you'd be surprised how that gives you, uh, some time to kind of synthesize your thoughts and, and think of things differently. we can't talk about this topic without obviously going to the risks, right?
Like there's the obvious ones that people go to, which is you gotta have good data. There's ethics and security and such, but there's, there's also other roadblocks. you know, that might be other aspects that aren't technical. What are you guys seeing in those roadblocks?
[00:31:07] Mark Redgrave: I am, I'm in, oh, I'm talking too much, but I'm in this conversation right now with, uh, uh, you know, really, uh, amazing company and we are having a. Operating model change conversation empowered by, enabled by like wanting to, uh, embrace AI and the risk conversation is dominating. And this get, this gets to a point where like.
Nothing will happen, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. From this point, nothing will happen unless somebody is prepared to take a different attitude, mindset perspective on like your current risk profile. Yeah. Because if we, if we stick to what we're doing today, there is no way forward. So I think part of this one, one perspective, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of facing right now is encouraging.
Like senior legal risk leaders to take a different growth mindset. Perspective to their current, like their current parameters, because otherwise nothing moves Ryan. So it's like, because literally like you do get there, right? You get well, according to our protocols and our current, like, we're like, like this is, and, and what I'm using, and I'll leave this with you guys to talk about, but it's like, it's like we've got to change the conversation of like, of why can't we to, how can we,
[00:32:29] Tom Adams: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:29] Mark Redgrave: we have to otherwise, like this doesn't go anywhere.
[00:32:32] Tom Adams: and I would add to that, there's, there's to be a second layer to that mark, which is, um, clients that I have are now facing. Other people's risk, like client risk, right? They not just their own internal one, but clients are saying to them, how are you using ai? What are you doing with this? Uh, that needs to be written into agreements.
And I saw that this week. Somebody was saying to me, how do I answer this question because my client now is demanding. I disclose my AI usage. Which is a risk that the client is now placing on them. So I mean, it's almost like double jeopardy. It's the internal sense of their own risk, plus a client clients that are now adding that layer on.
[00:33:14] Mike Richardson: And the way I think about this is, is actually. There's nothing new here. Everybody. We've always faced the risk reward equation of do we or don't we? There's a risk of doing, if we get it wrong,
[00:33:29] Tom Adams: Yep.
[00:33:29] Mike Richardson: of not doing we, you know, just sort of in the status quo. What's that old adage? Everybody? we don't change until the pain of staying the same. Exceeds the pain of change. And then we finally begrudgingly change because really we've got no choice left. You know, sort of Kodak, blockbuster, blackberry, you know, you name
[00:33:53] Tom Adams: Yep.
[00:33:53] Mike Richardson: old, all the old ones. Um,
[00:33:57] Mark Redgrave: Yep.
[00:33:57] Mike Richardson: so, uh, you know, the way I express that to people, you've heard me say this before, is I ask them, look, are you tickling this or are you tackling this?
[00:34:05] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:34:05] Mike Richardson: biggest risks I find is that. If we're not careful, we're just gonna keep tickling this, just like we did with ERP implementations and CRM implementations and all of the previous eras of, of, you know, waves of technology. We've always faced the same challenge. The difference these days is those things took, know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years. To go on the journey to maturity. You'll be lucky if this one takes, you know, 3, 5, 10, 15 quarters.
[00:34:41] Tom Adams: Yeah.
[00:34:42] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
[00:34:43] Mike Richardson: the, the time compression such that the game is gonna play out everybody. And we will see the scores on the board. We will see the victors and the victims. We will see the best and the rest. Really quickly here, over the space of the next few years, can't afford to be tickling this.
You've gotta
[00:35:03] Tom Adams: Yep.
[00:35:04] Mike Richardson: tackle it.
[00:35:04] Ryan Niemann: I, I agree completely. I think you hit on it. I had this conversation earlier this week that, you know, we've, we've lived through the internet and, you know, moved at e-commerce and then, you know, cloud and mobility and things like that. this is just moving so much more fast and more meaningful and more prolific.
Like, just the fact that I'm talking about this is affecting education for K through three.
[00:35:26] Tom Adams: Yeah.
[00:35:28] Ryan Niemann: Then you, then you added just, just the. the complexity of this, and, and I often come back to one of the, the greatest risks is just people like it's, you know, and I've kind of characterized it, that for some it's awareness, for some it's fear of messing up and, and, and for others it's that mindset shift, right?
How do I shift the way I'm thinking? And that beginner's mindset. So,
[00:35:50] Mike Richardson: Yeah. And
[00:35:50] Mark Redgrave: You know.
[00:35:51] Mike Richardson: perhaps another risk here, sorry to cut in there is,
[00:35:54] Ryan Niemann: Yeah,
[00:35:54] Mike Richardson: is, and, and we've, we've gotta be careful that, that we get through this barrier is that, you know, some of my members, maybe some of our listeners are sort of stuck in the generic. I know I've got to do something, but I just don't know what to do and how to get started.
And so what I'm talking about now in my groups and I'm sure where we want to go with this podcast is, to get members to do demos to each other of something specific tangible that they've applied AI to a show and tell. A case study that may not work specifically in the other members' businesses 'cause it's different businesses, but they're now starting to ideate around, oh, well, if they can apply that kind of thing to that kind of process in their business. What kind of thing can I apply to what kind of process in my business? And now we get this snowball effect rolling where next thing you know, they can do a demo and show and tell, and then you're stimulating everybody else. So no doubt everybody who's listening, as we go down the path here, we're gonna, we're gonna start looking ahead to bring some guests onto this podcast who can start to, not demo necessarily, but start at least start to articulate some
[00:37:17] Mark Redgrave: Are you firing me? Is that what you're doing here?
[00:37:20] Mike Richardson: Well, you know, um, no comment.
[00:37:24] Mark Redgrave: Me separately, I mean,
[00:37:25] Tom Adams: right.
[00:37:28] Ryan Niemann: Well, this is a natural segue to the to the next part, which is if you're A-A-C-E-O or a C-level, or a leader listening to this how do you translate this into action, like
[00:37:39] Tom Adams: Hmm.
[00:37:40] Ryan Niemann: that you can actually try in your company this quarter? Tom,
[00:37:45] Mark Redgrave: okay.
[00:37:46] Ryan Niemann: You're the innovator. You've got some fantastic.
[00:37:49] Tom Adams: Well, well, I would say how do we translate? This is a start with Mark's premise, which is don't, don't define yourself by a title. Define yourself by an action. so don't say you're AI native. Don't say you're whatever, just. Try a specific thing and, and we built some foundations for this, um, smarter, faster, um, Mike Mike's concept, um, which is figure one
[00:38:14] Mark Redgrave: Um.
[00:38:14] Tom Adams: things out.
But the, the thing to me is quit talking about it and start doing something like, like so many people are just blathering about this, but when you actually go and see, uh, what they're only doing is using, uh, an LLM chat tool. And nothing wrong with that. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but. But that, that doesn't solve the problem.
So you've gotta go to a deeper level and start solving the problem, um, which is potentially create this little experiment, a skunk works, um, opportunity. Take somebody on your team who's going to sort of push the charge forward and try one thing, even if, even if it has limited value to the long-term goal of the business.
Try the process so you can see it unfold.
[00:38:58] Mark Redgrave: I've got three builds on that. Tom. Love that. So now we're talking like, if you're, if you're a mid-market CEO and you're wondering like what to, where to start, what to do. Okay. First thing is like, if this is important, make it important.
[00:39:10] Tom Adams: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:10] Mark Redgrave: I see this is a classic strategy and planning error, right?
I see with a lot of leaders where they go, yeah, that, that's, that's kind of, but it's like, it's, it, it just doesn't get any airtime. It, it's not prioritized effectively. Like it can't be number 11 on your priority list, if this is important. So number one, if it's important to you. Make it important.
[00:39:29] Tom Adams: Yep.
[00:39:29] Mark Redgrave: Second thing, we know from recent research that the value is in back office, right?
So what's happening is in marketing and sales AI adoption, lightweight AI adoption is more prolific. Okay, but it is not where the value is for early adopters. The value is in back office. So you need to be thinking about how your, like how the back office of your business can be enabled. So that's a, that's, um, my point number two and number three is like, and I heard this yesterday at a great, um, AI seminar I went to and they said a great way to get your team involved is get them to find personal things, uses of ai, because it really generates engagement.
So he said. Like, encourage your teams, encourage your teams to like use AI chat GBT to book travel to make incredible itineraries for your trip to San Diego. Yeah. use it to explore recipes. Use it for like personal things. And he said this is a very good way to get your team if they're, if they're like rather resistant.
It's a very good way to get your team feeling good about ai. I thought that was really neat idea. Right. Really neat.
[00:40:39] Mike Richardson: I'll build on what, what Marcus said, and Marcus said if it's important, make it important. And, and of course, I think in last time's episode Mark, you said, therefore, put together a, a monthly scrum. Biweekly Scrum, maybe a weekly scrum where you know, you get the right people in the room and you, you talk this through.
Now everybody, you might be inclined not to do that 'cause you think, well, I'm not sure we'll have much to talk about. That's the whole point. You've got to be willing to get into the room and sweat the bullets together. Even in the early phases when there were no easy, obvious answers. Well, no. That's why we're here to sweat these bullets in many ways, everybody, that's why we started this podcast. We probably said this in in the first version. The first episode that, you know, we wanted to self-impose on ourselves
[00:41:29] Tom Adams: Yes.
[00:41:29] Mike Richardson: our buy biweekly scrum meeting. Where we get together and we try to start talking this through, sweating these bullets together and figuring this out. Uh, and in, in many ways, doing it for ourselves first, even if we never got any listeners,
[00:41:48] Tom Adams: Right.
[00:41:49] Mike Richardson: quite likely we'll get listeners who want to begin participating in the same process of just trying to sweat these bullets and figure this out.
[00:41:59] Ryan Niemann: I think, uh, Tom said it earlier when we were having a conversation, I think, Tom, you said sometimes you have to expose the scar tissue, right? You gotta, like, we're, we're, we're really in many cases talking this through in a true, authentic way together on what we're seeing from different vantage points.
so let me summarize. What I heard is Tom's. We've gotta get started, right? And, and look for ways to get that started. And, you know, Mark's comments about make it a priority, shine a light on it, get, give it some real cadence and think about thoughtfully how this meaningfully moves the needle. Not just some of the easier things that might be in sales and marketing departments and superficial, but real transformation and set that, lofty vision.
As, as, as, uh, Mike was saying, you know, really lead with courage. Alright, let's wrap this up. Uh, today we dug into what AI native really means and the reality of it that that transformation can happen in your organization. But focus less on the naming convention. Really be thoughtful about the design and get started. And with that, we thank you for listening and enjoy having you join us on the Prompt and
[00:43:12] Mike Richardson: And I think I'm hosting the, I think I'm hosting the next one. So can we make the next one, AI Naked? We do.
[00:43:20] Ryan Niemann: We cannot. No,
[00:43:21] Mark Redgrave: I, I think I lastly, so thanks everyone. It's been brilliant.
[00:43:27] Ryan Niemann: none of this is true. All these gentlemen will be back with me in a couple weeks, and we look forward to our next podcast. Thanks everybody for joining us.
