[10:05:57:18 – 10:06:01:20]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
First Principles podcast, season one, episode three.
[10:06:03:14 – 10:06:07:00]
Lochner Eksteen
When are we getting one of those clicker things? I’ll organize it.
[10:06:09:16 – 10:06:15:15]
Lochner Eksteen
Listen, OK. We are thankful for being here this morning. Every time we have this, it rains.
[10:06:18:07 – 10:06:18:12]
Lochner Eksteen
Interesting.
[10:06:18:12 – 10:06:19:06]
Stephen Wardle
Good omen.
[10:06:19:06 – 10:06:19:19]
Lochner Eksteen
Yes.
[10:06:21:14 – 10:06:28:18]
Lochner Eksteen
I’m going to quickly start with introductions. Let’s start with you, Sonia. Just a quick– what do you do for a living?
[10:06:28:18 – 10:06:30:11]
Sonja Blignaut
My favorite question.
[10:06:30:11 – 10:06:30:16]
Lochner Eksteen
Yes.
[10:06:32:07 – 10:06:49:22]
Sonja Blignaut
Sonia Blachnod, I am a practitioner of complexity. Let me put it that way. So probably the shortest way to say what I do is I help people become more comfortable in uncertainty and continuously change in context.
[10:06:49:22 – 10:06:53:21]
Lochner Eksteen
You’ve been doing this for years, and it wasn’t really that pickable until now.
[10:06:53:21 – 10:06:58:05]
Sonja Blignaut
Yeah, I’d like to say I’ve been working with complexity before it became cool.
[10:06:58:05 – 10:06:58:13]
Speaker 3
Yes.
[10:06:58:13 – 10:07:00:14]
Sonja Blignaut
So I’ve been doing it for about 25 years.
[10:07:00:14 – 10:07:04:14]
Lochner Eksteen
But what was interesting is your background. You studied meteorology, huh?
[10:07:04:14 – 10:07:05:09]
Sonja Blignaut
Meteorology, yes.
[10:07:05:09 – 10:07:07:09]
Lochner Eksteen
Why did you decide on that?
[10:07:09:09 – 10:07:33:07]
Sonja Blignaut
Long story, but to please my dad. He told me I needed to become a scientist. It’s quite a common story, I think. And I’ve always loved extreme weather. I had this very naive perspective that meteorologists are like the storm chasers in the US. And then when the reality hit me that all I’ll be doing is simulating those weather systems on a computer, it was like, this isn’t for me.
[10:07:34:08 – 10:07:39:08]
Lochner Eksteen
Very interesting. But I think that base knowledge is very interesting.
[10:07:40:16 – 10:07:40:21]
Lochner Eksteen
Stephen.
[10:07:40:21 – 10:07:52:05]
Stephen Wardle
Yeah, so currently I’m an account manager with Salesforce. Prior to that, I was working as a solutions architect. But I found myself just being involved in projects overseas.
[10:07:53:13 – 10:08:01:15]
Stephen Wardle
I like being part of this economy. I moved from the UK to South Africa 15 years ago now, where I was working for SAP.
[10:08:03:16 – 10:08:16:23]
Stephen Wardle
And yeah, I think that this is a very exciting place to be. It’s a really exciting place to do business. So following the account management side, prior to that, I built up a practice, a CX practice, at Bratas, now part of NTT.
[10:08:18:04 – 10:08:22:01]
Stephen Wardle
And my fascination is that interface between people, processing technology.
[10:08:23:09 – 10:08:29:00]
Stephen Wardle
I’m a no solid believer that one thing does the change. It’s the balance of those three things.
[10:08:29:00 – 10:08:37:05]
Lochner Eksteen
That’s why, yeah. I just want to remind people listening, that it was actually in your conversation around the Indian– Kari.
[10:08:37:05 – 10:08:39:18]
Stephen Wardle
A lot of good things started around the Kari.
[10:08:41:07 – 10:08:43:16]
Lochner Eksteen
That sparked the idea for a podcast.
[10:08:44:18 – 10:08:46:20]
Lochner Eksteen
Karine, just to give yourself for the guests.
[10:08:48:15 – 10:08:50:13]
Carien Human
My name’s Karine. I’m a psychologist.
[10:08:51:15 – 10:09:01:00]
Carien Human
And yeah, learning a lot on this podcast, enjoying it. It’s really interesting to hear. And I’m looking forward to what you have to share today.
[10:09:02:02 – 10:09:14:04]
Lochner Eksteen
Thank you. So listen, what’s interesting I thought about this morning was our first podcast. I remember that time was such an exciting time, because the bond markets are growing, the grand dollar is strengthening,
[10:09:15:16 – 10:09:25:11]
Lochner Eksteen
the gold price is just going to the roof. And it’s the time now to be assertive and then based on whatever the case might be. And I think it’s two months later. And now all of a sudden it’s like, ugh.
[10:09:26:21 – 10:09:36:10]
Lochner Eksteen
And I think it’s a good– I want to– that quote you had to– who’s Michael Mead, by the way, anyway?
[10:09:36:10 – 10:09:38:17]
Speaker 8
He’s a mythologist.
[10:09:39:20 – 10:09:42:17]
Speaker 8
Very interesting. He works with myths and–
[10:09:42:17 – 10:09:58:11]
Lochner Eksteen
Jordan Peterson type stuff as well. Not really. Not really. OK. OK. But he said, and you quite read on one of your stuff that I listened to, I can’t remember. To be alive in this time is to be in the liminal phase of a collective rite of passage.
[10:10:00:08 – 10:10:21:16]
Lochner Eksteen
It’s deep. It’s really deep, which is cool for me, because I never had the opportunity to go to the army. And my parents always said, if you didn’t go to the army, you never went to the rite of passage to be a man. But it feels like we are in the bit of a rite of passage. And the people who can navigate this wisely and intelligently
[10:10:22:19 – 10:10:34:03]
Lochner Eksteen
will have some form of a rite of passage. Can you please just define liminal before we start? Everybody can pause and just Google it. But what does liminal mean? Liminal space?
[10:10:35:15 – 10:10:44:08]
Sonja Blignaut
So the best way to describe it, I think, is with an analogy or a metaphor. But it essentially means you’re in a threshold space. So it’s like the cocoon.
[10:10:45:10 – 10:10:56:04]
Sonja Blignaut
It’s this in-between space where what used to be is no longer accessible, but what will be hasn’t happened yet. So it’s this in-between– Transitional.
[10:10:57:16 – 10:11:00:15]
Sonja Blignaut
Space that people find very uncomfortable.
[10:11:03:03 – 10:11:03:23]
Sonja Blignaut
So that’s a brief–
[10:11:06:04 – 10:11:18:07]
Lochner Eksteen
And do you, in your meetings– and I’ve got you here because you do a lot of, call it, vendor-like meetings with customers. Do you sense that reality, that liminal space, in the decision-making process?
[10:11:18:07 – 10:11:28:18]
Stephen Wardle
Yeah, I think there’s less of the phenomenon of I’m doing something. There’s more the tension, that liminal tension, of saying, I need to do something.
[10:11:30:05 – 10:11:50:10]
Stephen Wardle
But how and where and why is the challenge. And in a relatively short space of time, it’s gone from how can I replace systems with a technology like AI to how can I get the best out of AI to help me make decisions. And that’s been a very positive shift in a relatively short space of time.
[10:11:51:14 – 10:12:09:14]
Stephen Wardle
But the counterpoint is there’s so many technologies out there that there’s almost a parallax that happens. So I think that’s the bit that I’m helping customers try and navigate is, yes, there is a lot of technology. And obviously, I’m coming from a vendor angle to say, well, we represent one angle.
[10:12:10:20 – 10:12:35:06]
Stephen Wardle
But what is your thinking around the fabric of your business? And what is the opportunity to replace and enhance? And try and keep it in the process space and move it out of the technology space as much. I mean, ultimately, yes, I have to go behind a technology. But let’s frame the conversation a little bit better around the fabric of your organization and the fabric of this technology is set to enhance. Yeah.
[10:12:36:10 – 10:12:38:23]
Lochner Eksteen
Karine, I’m just thinking on what he’s saying.
[10:12:41:03 – 10:12:48:07]
Lochner Eksteen
We spoke about it the last episode was the type of personalities who’s now successful versus those old titans.
[10:12:49:11 – 10:12:53:09]
Lochner Eksteen
I’m just wondering, these conversations in this liminal space, what type of person
[10:12:54:16 – 10:13:01:08]
Lochner Eksteen
is good for this, for this time? What space does a person need to be in? What childhood trauma should they not have?
[10:13:03:09 – 10:13:03:09]
(Laughter)
[10:13:03:09 – 10:13:06:20]
Lochner Eksteen
Look– Is it people with ADHD or without?
[10:13:06:20 – 10:13:08:19]
Carien Human
Is it– Good question.
[10:13:10:14 – 10:14:15:02]
Carien Human
The thing that’s been going through my mind as you’re speaking is almost like I’ve heard a lot of talk recently where people say, we introduced computers in school. And everybody went, yeah, yeah, yeah, computers. And then the new research now says, OK, it really shocks me might be producing a generation that’s less smart. And I think it’s because of computers. And so my generation parent right now is thinking, great. So we remove computers altogether, and we go back to what we knew. Which is what you’re saying. If you’re in this space, you either yearn for what was, or you get really excited about what’s coming. And I think that’s where the personality difference comes in. There are personalities, if we think about some Myers-Briggs types, that enjoyed systems that work, tradition, predictability. And there are energized visionary personalities that love change and want to go with it. So there will be quite a divide.
[10:14:16:13 – 10:14:26:14]
Carien Human
But the question wouldn’t necessarily be, are we now catering for the one or the other? But maybe what can we do to accommodate the shadow side of both?
[10:14:27:21 – 10:14:34:05]
Carien Human
Because often visionary excitement also comes with impulsivity and ADHD.
[10:14:35:21 – 10:14:47:02]
Carien Human
And on the other side, for those who find security in predictability and things that work– and I guess you could add the trauma side there–
[10:14:48:07 – 10:14:54:15]
Carien Human
change becomes quite a scary thing. What is this going to do to my nervous system?
[10:14:54:15 – 10:14:57:16]
Lochner Eksteen
Because it’s interesting. I mentioned it earlier. I think it was Robin.
[10:14:59:00 – 10:15:08:23]
Lochner Eksteen
Especially they said it probably, I can’t remember, five, six years ago, where he said, our biggest competitor is not another big software vendor. It’s indecision.
[10:15:10:05 – 10:15:14:10]
Lochner Eksteen
It’s not making indecision. And it sounds like– I don’t know if you can maybe expand a little bit on that.
[10:15:15:16 – 10:15:29:13]
Lochner Eksteen
When people are in this liminal space, facing this complexity– because there is complexity in being in that space– can you give any advice to our listeners? Like, listen, what do we need to do? And I think I like that forest story of yours.
[10:15:30:16 – 10:15:35:14]
Lochner Eksteen
I don’t know if you can bring that forest in, but it’s up to you.
[10:15:36:17 – 10:15:47:02]
Sonja Blignaut
I think the thing is, what happens is we’ve been socialized in certain ways. So for example, if you’re in a senior leadership role, you need to be decisive.
[10:15:48:04 – 10:16:01:14]
Sonja Blignaut
And you need to get things right. And you need to have answers. I think that is, so there’s this pressure that you need to know. So we’ve almost made knowing and being competent the same thing.
[10:16:02:16 – 10:16:23:04]
Sonja Blignaut
And now what’s happened is the environment has shifted. It’s not like you’ve become incompetent over time, just overnight. The external context has shifted. So especially the people that you mentioned, Karine, that’s comfortable with certainty, with predictability and stability, that’s dissolving.
[10:16:24:05 – 10:16:36:14]
Sonja Blignaut
And so there are still areas where you can have it. But overall, there’s fewer and fewer. And so I think the one thing is almost to understand that it’s not necessarily you. It’s the environment.
[10:16:37:21 – 10:16:41:04]
Sonja Blignaut
And if you can let go of this thing of I have to know.
[10:16:42:07 – 10:16:59:16]
Sonja Blignaut
Because there are things– and this is one of the things in complexity is you’re dealing with unknown unknowns. And nobody knows. So it’s not a judgment on you. Nobody can know. And so when you kind of step into that, then it becomes, OK, how do we find our way together?
[10:17:00:18 – 10:17:04:07]
Sonja Blignaut
And this is, I think, where maybe the forest metaphor comes in, because–
[10:17:05:17 – 10:17:15:03]
Sonja Blignaut
and maybe I’ll take a step back from the forest. One of my blog posts that got quite a bit of traction, the headline was, it’s hard to survive in the jungle if you were trained in a zoo.
[10:17:16:17 – 10:17:24:19]
Sonja Blignaut
And I think that’s still quite an apt analogy, because it’s almost like the zoo cages have opened.
[10:17:25:21 – 10:17:33:16]
Sonja Blignaut
And we can see the wild, but we don’t feel safe. But now in the past, we had the option to stay in the zoo. Now we can’t.
[10:17:34:22 – 10:17:40:23]
Sonja Blignaut
And so what do we do when we’re in a forest or in the wild where there are no paths? We need to make them.
[10:17:42:07 – 10:17:55:08]
Sonja Blignaut
And for some, this is exciting. And for others, it is very scary. But I think just coming into the present moment and saying, I don’t know, but let’s find out together. And then make the path by walking. I think that’s the invitation.
[10:17:57:02 – 10:18:01:09]
Stephen Wardle
The one thing I’m observing in the field is when that pressure comes down,
[10:18:02:11 – 10:18:35:05]
Stephen Wardle
there’s a certain personality type that wants to air towards that certainty. And their attention is, I can’t provide everything that was certain with a new technology. The other side is, well, this is just so exciting. This is everything we can do. It’s running into the jungle. And where I see the midpoint being is you’ve got a technology which is really good at generating or assessing content and coming up with a guide. How can these technologies be companion technologies
[10:18:36:08 – 10:18:37:23]
Stephen Wardle
rather than outcome technologies?
[10:18:39:05 – 10:19:42:22]
Stephen Wardle
And I think that is a good framework to move forward with this process. And I go back to one of the best plants I’ve ever worked with where we were going through a project. And we found that we were just spending too much time on fringe cases to build something that was unbreakable that would deal with a really bad case that the customer was a retailer. And we kept on going back to, what if a kid walks into the store and a lintel falls on their foot and the CEO finds out via LinkedIn, I’m going, wow, there’s a lot of stuff going on there. And we landed up building up all these exceptions criterias in the sort of agile framework. I’m going, this is pretty fringe. Now, I wasn’t directly, but it was my team that was executing the project. So we came back to the playback and the customer, because the ultimate exec was like, where’s this going? Obviously he knew the personality types of involved with why this fringe case became so prevalent. And he came around and he turned things around. So brilliantly, he says, all I want is a system where my people can honor a promise.
[10:19:44:10 – 10:19:55:18]
Stephen Wardle
And I thought that was brilliant. And that’s something I bring into conversations, whether I’m working with customers at the start of the cycle or where I was before, which is more kind of in the execution framework.
[10:19:56:20 – 10:20:13:20]
Stephen Wardle
Can you honor promise? And then there’s a sort of deeper question with these changes, what are your new promises of the 10 rules that you have? What are the two you’re gonna lose and the two you’re prepared to bring in? And I think that is a nice framework to find yourself in,
[10:20:15:00 – 10:20:21:08]
Stephen Wardle
because it’s brilliantly framed. It’s that fringe between the zoo and the forest. It’s uncomfortable.
[10:20:21:08 – 10:20:23:18]
Lochner Eksteen
Yeah, it’s easy to deliver on your promises in the zoo.
[10:20:23:18 – 10:20:40:23]
Stephen Wardle
Yeah, but you have to deliver on promises in the jungle. And I think the best thing to do is use your technology as a companion rather than a total, here’s the standard operating procedures and off you go. It’s the reason why I think in the military environment,
[10:20:42:08 – 10:20:47:07]
Stephen Wardle
elite regiments are small, because you train people to make decisions on the fly.
[10:20:48:10 – 10:20:57:12]
Stephen Wardle
And I think sometimes with the new technology, you’ve got to go small and you’ve got to take small sorties into the jungle instead of trying to march and you’ve got to go small and you’ve got to go small.
[10:20:57:12 – 10:21:12:02]
Sonja Blignaut
Yeah, it’s just to be much more experimental. And I’ll build on your analogy there. I think sometimes we want to use these technologies. One of my favorite terms is we outsource our relationship with uncertainty to certainty merchants.
[10:21:13:06 – 10:21:31:05]
Sonja Blignaut
And we make these technologies, we want it to be a map or a GPS versus a compass. And I think it’s a completely different. And then also, as you say, be more experimental. Don’t try and get everything right in the beginning. Just take a step and then learn, reorient, take another one.
[10:21:31:05 – 10:21:39:03]
Lochner Eksteen
And I think I can testify and you can as well, for anybody who’s listening, thinking they’re way behind. Nobody’s really way behind.
[10:21:40:13 – 10:21:56:17]
Lochner Eksteen
My experience has been when you speak to medium, bigger size customers, they’re behind and they’re anxious. And when I say they’re behind, it’s because I saw yesterday I was on a call with a customer and I asked them to bring up their forecast and it’s a big, almost a brilliant marketing.
[10:21:58:04 – 10:21:59:02]
Lochner Eksteen
And I bring up a spreadsheet.
[10:22:00:07 – 10:22:22:18]
Lochner Eksteen
That’s not even in the cloud. Somebody updates it and then they send it off to somebody else and they need to update it and playing human riddle. But they’re successful, but they now all of a sudden need to, they want to, they’ve got this urge. And I think something I want to quote you on as well, Sonia. Complexity consciousness is not something we learn, but something we remember.
[10:22:24:06 – 10:22:41:18]
Lochner Eksteen
It’s a felt sense that we are not outside complexity, but entangled within it. So what I’m sensing is that people want to do something, and I know exactly what, but it’s almost as if it’s based in some memory of how things should be or could be. I don’t know if I can,
[10:22:43:05 – 10:22:45:08]
Lochner Eksteen
if you can run on that a little bit.
[10:22:45:08 – 10:23:09:12]
Sonja Blignaut
One of my frustrations is it feels like we’ve made complexity, this thing that sits somewhere outside of us. And we’ve labeled it things like wicked problems. And we problematize it, but we’ve always been in complexity. We’re in complexity now. We don’t know where this conversation is going. It’s emergent. So we are present.
[10:23:10:12 – 10:23:25:07]
Sonja Blignaut
We know that things are slightly unknown here, but when children, and you probably will be able to say much more about this, but children are naturally complexity fit. They’re curious. They don’t need certainty.
[10:23:27:01 – 10:23:42:09]
Sonja Blignaut
It’s taught out of us. But then also, when you go home to your wife, you don’t go with a spreadsheet, and you don’t have targets that you set. And you don’t expect certainty. So in social contexts, and when we parent,
[10:23:43:12 – 10:23:58:08]
Sonja Blignaut
we bring that complexity consciousness, but then we step over the threshold into the workplace, and all of a sudden we expect everything to be very predictable and certain. And so our bodies know how to be in complexity.
[10:23:59:13 – 10:24:21:18]
Sonja Blignaut
Our minds get tangled because we want to be certain and we want to know. And if you try and figure the complexity out, that’s when you get tangled. So I think if you almost normalize, you’ve always been in complexity. Your body’s complex. I mean, your mind is one of the most complex things in a consciousness itself is complex. So if you can just normalize that,
[10:24:22:23 – 10:24:30:21]
Sonja Blignaut
then you can be in that liminality, in that continuous change. But as long as you expect certainty and stability,
[10:24:32:00 – 10:24:34:06]
Sonja Blignaut
it’s going to not go so well for you.
[10:24:34:06 – 10:24:49:02]
Carien Human
But Sonia, why do you think we do that? Why do we have an expectation that we have to get out of complexity? Are we scared we’re gonna fail? Or scared we’re not gonna make enough money? Or why did we unlearn that?
[10:24:51:05 – 10:24:56:07]
Sonja Blignaut
I think it’s many things, but I think over time we’ve become addicted to certainty.
[10:24:58:00 – 10:25:13:02]
Sonja Blignaut
We like things to be predictable. We like stability. If you think about it, the last few decades, so let’s say after the Second World War, we’ve had this almost like an abnormal time of relative stability and we’ve gotten used to it.
[10:25:14:04 – 10:25:21:04]
Sonja Blignaut
And now we have all of these predictive technologies as well. So I think it’s Esther Perel. I was listening to one of her podcasts.
[10:25:22:06 – 10:25:35:19]
Sonja Blignaut
And she said, “We are living in this form of assisted living where Spotify tells you what to listen to, Netflix tells you what to watch. It’s like we no longer make decisions ourselves.
[10:25:36:20 – 10:25:49:09]
Sonja Blignaut
And so now we’re kind of living this world where we expect everything to be stable and certain. And so we’ve almost unlearned how to be with uncertainty. And we don’t like discomfort.”
[10:25:50:22 – 10:26:00:01]
Stephen Wardle
So just as you were telling, it brings something, and the whole idea of home and work, I’m glad you stepped on it, because it’s so fascinating.
[10:26:02:16 – 10:26:07:04]
Stephen Wardle
My eldest has just started, very bright kid,
[10:26:08:06 – 10:26:09:00]
Stephen Wardle
bumped up a year.
[10:26:09:00 – 10:26:09:12]
Lochner Eksteen
Your genes.
[10:26:09:12 – 10:26:10:03]
Stephen Wardle
No,
[10:26:11:06 – 10:26:33:13]
Stephen Wardle
definitely not, definitely not. But the one thing where is, and it’s something we share, is had to choose subjects for the last three years of school. And we’re strong in the sciences, but also strong in art. And I said, “Well, and the school’s quite small, so you have to do art at a sort of academy off the premises.” And I said, “Oh, do art. Because if you’re doing science and biology and stuff, it’s just a nice antidote.”
[10:26:34:17 – 10:27:01:11]
Stephen Wardle
And a couple of weekends ago, it just comes as this idea, and wants to recreate the Tower of Babel, and next thing is paper mache everywhere. And I’m kind of sitting a bit like, “Where’s your plan?” And then I realized, “Look, I’m sounding like my dad now. Where’s your plan?” He was a project manager, a concertee. Where’s the plan? Where’s the plan? But I saw this child deal with the complexity and the planning in a very natural way.
[10:27:02:11 – 10:27:30:09]
Stephen Wardle
And I felt myself having to sort of challenge my own thinking. And the background is, it’s just not right. You can’t do a project this big without doing a small one. And then I’m going, “Hang on, I’m questioning my conversations about scale.” This child was not scared of scale. It’s building something big. It’s taking over our house. It’s just getting bigger and bigger. But that freedom around complexity was actually reassuring.
[10:27:31:10 – 10:28:03:20]
Stephen Wardle
And Elle’s working backwards towards technique. Whereas we taught, and I think this is a problem with the workplace, we work forward from getting the basics right to complexity. And we’ve got to think of the younger people coming into our workforce. They’re more familiar with complexity. We’ve gone through an experience of all our managers over time have said, “Deliver something that is predictable.” And now suddenly, delivering a predictable, consistent outcome isn’t really what the market wants.
[10:28:05:00 – 10:28:15:08]
Stephen Wardle
So that’s weird. That’s a different space to be in. So I think we should be encouraging complexity and allowing people to have these ideas and work backwards
[10:28:16:08 – 10:28:20:15]
Stephen Wardle
instead of saying, “Oh, there’s this new technology.” But if you do all of these things, you get to play with that new…
[10:28:20:15 – 10:28:21:22]
Lochner Eksteen
Give us a practical example.
[10:28:21:22 – 10:28:41:09]
Stephen Wardle
So I think, I mean, it looks like a conversation the other day with a customer and they say, “Oh, we really want to have these forums when people just come up with ideation around AI.” And I’m going, “Okay, that’s great.”
[10:28:44:03 – 10:28:45:22]
Stephen Wardle
You inherently going into complexity.
[10:28:47:08 – 10:28:52:18]
Stephen Wardle
But let’s ask some really good leading questions so we can try and frame it down. So there’s this technology, it’s AI.
[10:28:54:05 – 10:29:08:12]
Stephen Wardle
What lever are you trying to pull? So it’s not like I’m telling you, you have to fill out a business case. Just what lever are you trying to pull? There’s a thing, am I trying to resist churn? Am I trying to grow the market? What is this technology going to do?
[10:29:09:12 – 10:29:13:08]
Stephen Wardle
Then, okay, look at what is the job to be done. And it’s simplest form.
[10:29:14:08 – 10:29:30:22]
Stephen Wardle
And once you’ve understood what that job to be done is to say, I want a bot that predicts, looks at my historical sales records and says, “Based on where this customer is now and historically where customers were, there’s a churn risk.” So it’s a bit predictive, but there’s something else to it. Okay, fine.
[10:29:32:10 – 10:29:33:13]
Stephen Wardle
What about this job?
[10:29:34:13 – 10:30:03:21]
Stephen Wardle
Doesn’t need to eat, doesn’t need to sleep. It can run 24 seven. And then you start airing into towards that compute space. And then you think, oh, there’s actually something quite novel about the solution. I think there’s, much like my daughter’s art project, there’s a big idea, but all you can do is come from the science and say, okay, what is it about the tower of Babel that interests you? How can I assist you with that? How can I be a companion to the technology you want to deliver? Whether it’s an art project or a bot or an agent,
[10:30:05:03 – 10:30:14:11]
Stephen Wardle
I think you can apply the same rules. There are some frameworks that you can bring in to just help sort of cement. What is it you’re trying to achieve?
[10:30:14:11 – 10:30:25:15]
Lochner Eksteen
I’m just wondering if there’s a, actually, I can’t remember if I had a conversation around this or I just thought about it. I think it was a, we did an auto I, we were busy with the auto I calculation for a customer.
[10:30:26:18 – 10:30:34:09]
Lochner Eksteen
And one of the stuff you need to input is the average salary for that person in that function that we’re trying to automate.
[10:30:35:15 – 10:30:38:20]
Lochner Eksteen
And with my partners in the Middle East,
[10:30:40:23 – 10:30:48:23]
Lochner Eksteen
you see the variance and salaries, it’s massive, right? So I’m just wondering if it’s part of our challenge here is to,
[10:30:51:01 – 10:31:00:01]
Lochner Eksteen
the economics doesn’t make sense at the moment. I’m asking you if it does. So a lot of these easily trodden paths in the forest that people are trying to automate
[10:31:01:09 – 10:31:05:19]
Lochner Eksteen
is trying to replace work done by people who’s costing on average 10 to 15 grand a month.
[10:31:07:01 – 10:31:32:06]
Lochner Eksteen
And you’ve got 20 of them sitting there doing the work. And then you look at the quite of the implementation and the technology to actually implement the AI. And you’re thinking, this doesn’t make business sense. It’s still cheaper to have the humans doing this because in South Africa, labor is cheap, cheaper than in other markets. How is that affecting the potential for us to grow into and leveraging AI tools in business?
[10:31:33:14 – 10:32:19:12]
Stephen Wardle
I think getting started, Lachna, is the problem. I think you’ve, that ROI culture is where we need to start. A lot of customers are struggling there. And I actually have a degree of empathy because I think there’s pressure from a board level and then from an investor level to say, okay, you’ve got to do this AI thing. And it is kind of, yeah, okay, and what? And then that pressure sort of just slides downhill. And then you look at, well, it’s gonna cost this amount per action, per topic, whatever framework there is. There’s still gonna be a cost associated to it. And it’s shifting from a user-based license quite often to something that’s metered. So there’s other shifts commercially that are there. So in the wrong hands, it could be a reason to not do something.
[10:32:20:17 – 10:32:31:16]
Stephen Wardle
But I think there’s a counterpoint to our South African challenge in that, yes, there are these 10,000, 15,000 rand salaries.
[10:32:33:01 – 10:32:52:10]
Stephen Wardle
But at the same time, I’m having conversations with customers. Why do I keep on having to bring in international resource to implement X? Because we’re not getting people out of their 15,000 rand slot. So I think the question really should be, how many companions can we bring to that person that helps them grow their career to be 25K consultants
[10:32:53:10 – 10:33:04:08]
Stephen Wardle
and move them on? Because previously, when I was in the SAP consulting world, I’d noticed that we were losing people. Five years qualified, Australia,
[10:33:05:10 – 10:33:40:22]
Stephen Wardle
UK, Netherlands. We’ve got, I think, if we want to be more self-sufficient in South Africa with technology, we’ve got to use technology to accelerate people’s growth and not just look at their salary and how we can replace it with a bot. Because it doesn’t put those people on a continuum. You have to think about where that 10,000, 15,000K resource is gonna be in five years’ time. And I think that’s possibly what’s missing offering an equation. It’s not keeping, continue replacing this 10, 15K resource with AR. Yeah. No, I think that’s the wrong framework.
[10:33:40:22 – 10:33:43:07]
Carien Human
But I like what you’re saying that,
[10:33:44:13 – 10:33:50:13]
Carien Human
if you, I really like the word companion. Because if you move from, am I replacing staff
[10:33:51:15 – 10:34:07:19]
Carien Human
with a computer or a robot or whatever, versus how can I use tech to give my staff member a companion, then essentially what we’re doing is we’re removing the anxiety. Because what I’m hearing from you is that the anxiety is,
[10:34:08:19 – 10:34:33:06]
Carien Human
am I gonna make a mistake if I move to tech too quickly and then I don’t make as much money because it’s more expensive than my staff? Or am I gonna make a mistake if I don’t move to tech and then I’m behind, which brings it back to what you said earlier, you know? And so if the tech is not a replacement but a companion, then you dissolve that issue, which gives you maybe more tolerance for the complexity.
[10:34:35:05 – 10:34:44:13]
Sonja Blignaut
I think something that I, you know, to refer back to the zoo and the jungle, I feel, and this is a personal frustration, it feels like we are looking at this new technology
[10:34:46:20 – 10:34:54:14]
Sonja Blignaut
that, I mean, it’s one of the most powerful technologies that humans have ever had access to. And we’re looking at it through a zoo mind.
[10:34:55:19 – 10:34:57:09]
Sonja Blignaut
We’re trying to essentially,
[10:34:58:16 – 10:35:05:00]
Sonja Blignaut
how do we bring it in our organizations to make us more efficient? So we’ve got that efficiency lens.
[10:35:05:00 – 10:35:07:04]
Lochner Eksteen
With the predictability lens.
[10:35:07:04 – 10:35:17:09]
Sonja Blignaut
And also, you know, I think the thing that, you know, I’m stating it a little bit stronger than normal, you know, like you need efficiency, yes. But you also need effectiveness.
[10:35:18:10 – 10:35:32:00]
Sonja Blignaut
And effectiveness sometimes requires a little bit of inefficiency. You need some messiness, you know, you need redundancy, you know, all of these things that help you become more resilient. But what many organizations, you know, and I have a friend, this is a real example.
[10:35:33:10 – 10:35:36:23]
Sonja Blignaut
She’s based in Sweden and her husband,
[10:35:38:21 – 10:36:08:00]
Sonja Blignaut
she’s joined his business, they make heat pumps. And it’s a scale up there, like growing like the kleppers. And she said to me the other day, her biggest frustration is that all of the AI conversations are focused around internal efficiency and replacing people. Or, you know, it’s the HR efficiency angle. She said, and all the while there’s technologies out there, also AI based, that can make their product 70% more effective.
[10:36:09:11 – 10:36:12:15]
Sonja Blignaut
And so there’s this internal efficiency focus
[10:36:13:17 – 10:36:17:21]
Sonja Blignaut
that I don’t necessarily feel is necessarily, you know, going back to the forest analogy.
[10:36:19:01 – 10:36:25:17]
Sonja Blignaut
Sometimes we need to look completely outside of where everybody else is looking to find the real opportunity.
[10:36:27:09 – 10:36:42:17]
Sonja Blignaut
But we’re bringing this zoo mentality, like how do we cut costs with AI? How do we, you know, make things more efficient? And what I’m also seeing in some organizations is they’re taking broken processes that should have been redesigned long ago.
[10:36:43:17 – 10:36:49:13]
Sonja Blignaut
And now they’re bringing in AI to automate things that, actually, it’s just going to make things worse.
[10:36:49:13 – 10:36:50:02]
Speaker 9
Yeah.
[10:36:50:02 – 10:37:11:19]
Sonja Blignaut
So how do we take a step back? I love Heifetz. Ron Heifetz wrote a book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. And he spoke about, sometimes you need to get off of the dance floor and onto the balcony. And I think sometimes when that pressure comes, executives are so in the weeds that we just need to make a decision fast.
[10:37:13:00 – 10:37:23:11]
Sonja Blignaut
When do you take a step back onto the balcony and look at what are the patterns, where else is there opportunities that we haven’t thought about? That’s not only about efficiency.
[10:37:23:11 – 10:37:27:00]
Stephen Wardle
True. Yeah, but as you’re chatting, I mean,
[10:37:28:01 – 10:38:33:04]
Stephen Wardle
big data and predictive analytics five years ago was the talking about it, five, six, seven years ago. So it’s dealing with the customer then. I was very much on the fringe of the project and it was an equipments company and how could you use predictive analytics to sort of say, well, at what intervals do we need to maintain this vehicle? If it’s at the coast, we need to do X, if it’s up in Kumburg, we need to do Y. And the proof of concept with Brinnant, where it failed was the customer had to change so many of the inherent processes because they couldn’t actually handle what the machine was telling them. And I think that that’s 100% right. Everyone is on the dance floor. OK, and then suddenly someone changed the track. No one knew how to dance. And it was just the most amazing thing. It was a total, total win. It was a completely successful proof of concept. It wasn’t adopted because of the ability to actually change processes based on the new insight. Now, if you take the generative phase that we’re in right now,
[10:38:34:11 – 10:38:37:13]
Stephen Wardle
we’re aggregating content in a way that’s never been done before.
[10:38:39:09 – 10:38:41:09]
Lochner Eksteen
Just explain that in layman’s terms.
[10:38:41:09 – 10:38:42:06]
Stephen Wardle
So basically,
[10:38:43:11 – 10:39:22:19]
Stephen Wardle
what AI minds is stuff that we’ve put out there? Are they historical? What would have been on your bookshelf as a kid as the encyclopedia? It’s also the conversation that happened in the playground. It’s also what’s happening in the magazine. At no point in human history have we been able to take all three data sources and hammer them together so that when you ask a question, you get an encyclopedia’s point of view, the playground’s point of view and the magazine’s point of view. And it’s all there in front of you. And it says it’s still nuanced enough to say, “Do you want to look at it from this angle?” Or, “Do you want to look at it from that angle?” You’re like, “Geez, of course I want to look at it.” And then you go down the wormhole and you have a bit of fun with it. But this is unprecedented.
[10:39:23:19 – 10:39:32:18]
Stephen Wardle
You’re having all of these data points at once. But how can the brain handle that? Because before, if I’m doing research, I go to my encyclopedia.
[10:39:33:20 – 10:39:43:22]
Stephen Wardle
If I’m having a chat, I go to the playground. If I want a little bit of slightly interesting but not heavyweight, I’d go to my magazine. Now you’re thrusting all three of those things to me at once. Hang on.
[10:39:45:18 – 10:40:14:01]
Stephen Wardle
And, you know, but that’s possibly the negative side. But to go back to the Swedish example, that’s exactly what your friend’s saying. You actually need a bit of the playground and encyclopedia to figure out what processes you can change. And I think that’s where the prompt engineering, which is funny enough, a term that everyone was talking about, “Oh, you’re going to have armies of prompt engineers.” 18 months ago, everyone was mad about that. That conversation seems to have dissipated. But I still think there’s a very valid play to say, “Ask a better question.”
[10:40:14:01 – 10:40:14:16]
Speaker 9
Mm.
[10:40:15:21 – 10:40:22:22]
Stephen Wardle
And that, once you understand that the aggregation of content is really what’s being mined with AI,
[10:40:23:23 – 10:40:24:18]
Stephen Wardle
I think that helps.
[10:40:25:21 – 10:40:31:10]
Stephen Wardle
Because if you point it directly at your historical processes, guess what? You’re just in a predictive story again.
[10:40:31:10 – 10:40:31:16]
Speaker 3
Yeah.
[10:40:31:16 – 10:40:36:00]
Stephen Wardle
You know, so I hope that answers the question. But that’s, I like to sort of frame it.
[10:40:37:06 – 10:40:37:11]
Lochner Eksteen
Sure.
[10:40:40:05 – 10:40:48:02]
Lochner Eksteen
I think to try and keep it as, you know, the risk with these type of conversations, like we said, is it can get too much in the abstract.
[10:40:49:05 – 10:40:53:08]
Lochner Eksteen
And what we’re trying to do is to give practical advice, but testimony.
[10:40:55:12 – 10:40:57:02]
Lochner Eksteen
There’s a question for you, Sonia.
[10:40:58:02 – 10:41:27:18]
Lochner Eksteen
If prediction doesn’t work in complex systems, because in effect, people are, like you said, trying to use this tech to become more predictive, more efficient. If it doesn’t work in a complex system, and when we say complex system, it’s from the business system, the staff, the product, the software, whatever the case might be, into a bigger community complex system, into the global Iran system. So the question is, what’s the skill that replaces forecasting?
[10:41:29:12 – 10:41:44:21]
Sonja Blignaut
So I think maybe they will be, so in any complex system, there are complicated or ordered spaces. You know, so it’s not to say that you can predict nothing. So that’s the, so there are some things that’s still predictable.
[10:41:46:08 – 10:41:58:17]
Sonja Blignaut
I think the problem with forecasting is, again, it’s that, it’s what does the forecasting give you? It gives you a sense of certainty, and it gives you a false sense of certainty.
[10:41:58:17 – 10:42:00:21]
Carien Human
I mean, like a weather forecast.
[10:42:00:21 – 10:42:01:20]
Speaker 5
Yeah.
[10:42:02:23 – 10:42:03:17]
Carien Human
Just saying.
[10:42:03:17 – 10:42:05:00]
Speaker 3
Especially in context.
[10:42:06:19 – 10:42:08:15]
Sonja Blignaut
Luckily, I never worked on a weather forecast.
[10:42:09:21 – 10:42:15:12]
Sonja Blignaut
But I think it’s, you know, you even get it with things like scenario planning.
[10:42:16:19 – 10:42:45:16]
Sonja Blignaut
Your scenario plan, or your scenarios are always based on past knowledge. It’s what you think is possible. So, Nassim Taleb with these black swans, you know, it’s even those to some extent, you know, you have an idea of what might. But I think the key thing for me here is pattern intelligence. Like, can you shift your focus from trying to predict what will happen to can I better monitor for weak signals?
[10:42:46:19 – 10:43:45:21]
Sonja Blignaut
Where are things starting to change? Where is change bubbling under? You know, and you can, AI would be really good with something like this. So it’s shifting from what might happen to really being present. What is emerging? Where is the potential that nobody else is seeing? And how can I organize fast enough to be able to benefit from it? Or how do I nip an emerging risk in the bud? But sometimes what we do is if we’re forecasting, it’s almost like putting blinkers on. We only monitor for the things we think we know are coming. So I think there’s pattern intelligence. It’s how do we monitor for weak signals? And that you need some openness for that. Because some of these things you might say, well, I don’t think, you know, earlier we were talking about sugar and avocados. It’s a little bit like, can you be open to what’s emerging? And then one of my favorite words recently has been discernment. I think we really lack discernment. Wisdom.
[10:43:48:17 – 10:43:55:23]
Sonja Blignaut
So yeah, and then one last thing is in linking back to what you just said, to be able to get off the dance floor onto the balcony.
[10:43:57:14 – 10:43:58:05]
Sonja Blignaut
You need time.
[10:43:59:06 – 10:44:04:19]
Sonja Blignaut
And almost the one single thing I hear in all the clients that I work with is, we don’t have any time to think.
[10:44:05:21 – 10:44:08:23]
Sonja Blignaut
And it’s like meeting after meeting after meeting, nobody has time.
[10:44:10:07 – 10:44:22:23]
Sonja Blignaut
And that I think is really, it’s one of the things that’s creating so many problems in organizations that executives and even just people everywhere, they’re not taking time to think. They’re just on the dance floor.
[10:44:22:23 – 10:44:44:19]
Carien Human
But sorry, but that brings back to something you said earlier. You hinted towards the idea of being willing to sit with mess and messiness, right? I think that’s the scary thing about taking your time is then you have to sit in the messiness, then you go and just quickly fix and clean it up. And that’s what people are scared of, right?
[10:44:46:00 – 10:45:02:12]
Carien Human
So I’m thinking about this concept of radical acceptance. We just accept reality as it is. You don’t fight it. And you realize it’s not a catastrophe. So it’s not a catastrophe if you take your time. It’s not a catastrophe if you tiny, a little bit slower than what you think the guy next to you is going.
[10:45:03:14 – 10:45:05:18]
Lochner Eksteen
But I think if you can maybe I think.
[10:45:07:05 – 10:45:09:19]
Lochner Eksteen
I believe you’ve got a lot of wisdom, courage and discernment.
[10:45:10:21 – 10:45:23:01]
Lochner Eksteen
That word is very important because knowing, forecasting, understanding and discernment is not the same thing. Why don’t you expand a little bit on the discernment skills? Because I think people out there should.
[10:45:25:05 – 10:45:39:22]
Lochner Eksteen
Focus, you know, it’s not it’s not a wish. There was a artificial wisdom, sort of artificial intelligence, because a lot of this is discernment is wisdom based. It’s not something you can quickly find on Claude or JB.
[10:45:39:22 – 10:46:11:09]
Carien Human
The thing that comes to mind for me is that I don’t think you can be wise or good at discerning if you’re not aware of your own blind spots and your own experience and your own fears. Right. So I think that’s an important thing is I can’t discern if whatever I have to predict or decisions I have to make in my company is good or bad. If I don’t know what I’m scared of, if I don’t know where I typically miss a pattern.
[10:46:12:19 – 10:46:27:22]
Carien Human
So which brings us back to a previous conversation about doing this alone. Right. So if you if you’re alone, it’s very difficult to discern. I think this wisdom in the voices of more people, I think this wisdom in having good self-awareness.
[10:46:29:04 – 10:47:00:14]
Carien Human
And I think there’s a lot of wisdom and discernment if you if you if you can can almost hold the tension of the dialectics. So am I in my emotional mind? Shibit, I’m going to have to retrench people. We’re going to lose money. I have to keep up that it or am I in my completely like rational mind? Like this is the theory. This is the this is how the system work. This is what I said. I’m just going to stick with that. But if you can combine the two in all space for both, I think your discernment might be better.
[10:47:01:17 – 10:47:03:10]
Sonja Blignaut
No, I’ll add to that. Sorry.
[10:47:05:08 – 10:47:12:10]
Sonja Blignaut
So in the collective, I think one of the other things that contribute to this is can you really value diversity?
[10:47:13:17 – 10:47:15:02]
Sonja Blignaut
Like diversity of perspective.
[10:47:16:10 – 10:48:04:21]
Sonja Blignaut
You know, you mentioned ADHD and you know, can you actually because that’s where I think real wisdom comes is if you can have all of these perspectives and you can value them. But then the other thing is that I think we’ve lost and I’ll speak for myself. It took me 50 years to realize my body is not only there to carry my head around. You know, I was completely in my mind. A lot of discernment also sits in your intuition. But we’ve been taught that’s fluffy gut feelings. But actually, I think if you can learn also to like, what am I experiencing in my body now that I need to make this decision, not only in my mind, but that is something that we’ve unlearned. And I think it’s critical that we almost befriend and learn to listen to our intuition again.
[10:48:04:21 – 10:48:15:02]
Carien Human
Which, by the way, is one of the things that’s advisable if you’re in a luminal space is to be more in your body and to be more grounded because then you tolerate it better.
[10:48:15:02 – 10:48:33:22]
Stephen Wardle
I think that that that grounding is a practical example. So working with it with the customer and they’re building out some proof points and the view that what does success look like. And it’s always a struggle on projects. What is the definition of done?
[10:48:35:04 – 10:48:39:06]
Stephen Wardle
And to this customer’s mind, well, the fact that it could produce something repeatedly.
[10:48:40:15 – 10:49:01:15]
Stephen Wardle
Drop down. I’m going, no, I think we’re missing each other because to that sort of companion idea, how can this technology pick up something that you might have missed? I mean, it’s a little bit to the left that actually is where the biggest opportunity is. And you kind of mentioned earlier the difference between sort of like that effective the curse of being efficient.
[10:49:02:17 – 10:49:20:14]
Stephen Wardle
You know, when clients come back to you, think about your day today, when you end up engaging with someone in business or in a store owner, it’s when they said, but try this, look, look a little bit to the left. He has an idea. You’ll do business with that person more often instead of saying he has an outcome.
[10:49:21:19 – 10:50:20:07]
Stephen Wardle
We should look at building our technologies in the same way. We should be prepared to be scared of what these technologies throw out, that they come up with something that is didn’t think about that. But you could use that. That’s where I think this technology is really rock and roll and we can get a lot from it. But we’ve got to give ourselves the time to to let to build out the tech so that it’s not the proof of, you know, this we can sound as if we move it into production. Isn’t it completes 100 percent of the task in a very predictable manner? I think for some agents and for some folks, that is the case. But if you’re building some technology that’s going to make you different from your competitor, you’ve got to be prepared to push it into such a way that it throws things out there that you didn’t think about before. Then the real training comes in. How do you get your workforce to deal with this new insight and this new intelligence that’s coming through? I think that is the challenge for all of us as practitioners.
[10:50:21:11 – 10:50:38:08]
Lochner Eksteen
I think a lot of people, Stephen, might be asking, oh, that I’m prepared to do that. I’m prepared to. I’ve got a dynamic team. I can put this tech in and we’ll be able to dance with whatever scenarios it pops out. But what’s the underlying layers that needs to be in place for that?
[10:50:38:08 – 10:50:40:02]
Stephen Wardle
So, you know,
[10:50:41:03 – 10:50:57:15]
Stephen Wardle
this is the switch slightly to when I was actually building out. And I was quite fortunate I was involved in an internal project and inside the technologies, but it’s layman’s terms. You’ve got guardrails. So what do you want this this this this this agent to do or not do?
[10:50:58:20 – 10:51:47:14]
Stephen Wardle
And even if it’s not an agent, it’s just some kind of logical process. What guardrails want to put in? And whilst you go to the testing phase, expect hallucinations. If you’re not getting hallucinations, you’re not pushing your development hard enough because those hallucinations, much like that wild guy in the pub that says something, you know, jeez, that’s a bit wild, but something to consider. That’s what hallucinations are on an I.R. project. I wasn’t expecting to see that double down on that because that shows how whatever it’s looking at from a content point of view within the logical framework you’re applying and building out, something’s not acting as a joke. That hallucination sort of informs, OK, what I need to refine, what guardrails do I need to build? And to that earlier point, when I’m getting close to delivering and signing off on what I’ve built, how human does it seem?
[10:51:49:07 – 10:51:55:21]
Stephen Wardle
That I think is that those are the steps. And if you find that you get towards the end and it’s just seem seeming quite procedural.
[10:51:57:02 – 10:52:06:07]
Stephen Wardle
I think you need to play with your guardrails a bit, a bit more and do a little bit of tuning because, you know, that I think is the practical side of of the build and the technology.
[10:52:07:09 – 10:52:15:20]
Stephen Wardle
The tool is the tools are amazing in terms of the fine tuning you can do and the speed at which you can do it. But the speed at asking questions of it, that’s that’s still difficult.
[10:52:15:20 – 10:52:40:17]
Lochner Eksteen
But I want to challenge you. You’re still assuming you’re making a few assumptions. You showed your hands there. I don’t know what you were mentioning there. The content that where this is getting where what’s that and how you build that for a company, for a company that’s got some complicated lookup sheets and maybe a URP that’s popping up some some reports. How do we get that in place?
[10:52:41:18 – 10:53:00:02]
Stephen Wardle
That’s a good, good, good, good question. So I think that’s the sort of encyclopedia news magazine playground type analogy. Your historical trusted information that has to sort of sit inside your model or be part of one of your models,
[10:53:01:06 – 10:53:32:19]
Stephen Wardle
then you need to be able to. And we had this challenge. It’s like in our own organization slack is where a lot of the conversations happen within Salesforce. If you just sort of look at process and don’t look at the conversations that are happening, it’s a very isolated view. So, OK, well, can we bring that into the model and we can we bring historical information that sits in our CRM? OK, so we can we need to we realize we need to do both. Then in the mechanics, they say, here’s the question coming. Here’s the prompt.
[10:53:34:04 – 10:53:55:14]
Stephen Wardle
Let me look to my language model and look at my content. And when I go out, OK, let me tell validated against a clawed or against a Gemini. So let me take my internal assumptions and test them in the outside world. Then when it comes back, that’s where the validation happens.
[10:53:56:17 – 10:54:22:10]
Stephen Wardle
So it is quite a lot of engineering that needs to happen. I think people kind of skip over that. But inside that structure, when you go out of out of your world as an organization into the unknown of larger in into the playground, you’re going to get some gossip coming back. How do you want to control that gossip? How do you want to control that feedback? How do you want to learn? And I’ve seen a lot of customers skipping that step.
[10:54:23:22 – 10:54:28:07]
Stephen Wardle
And then what you’re just going to get get good at your own stuff. That’s missing the point.
[10:54:29:08 – 10:54:42:15]
Stephen Wardle
So, you know, I think you’ve got to look at and I think it’s an allergy. I mean, I can’t move it now, but you’ve got to look at what’s in the magazine, what’s in the playground and what’s an encyclopedia. And you’ve got to test it with the wider world. You have to have a conversation.
[10:54:43:15 – 10:55:29:19]
Stephen Wardle
So I’d say you have to get those building blocks right in your thinking when you enter this this phase. But I’m encouraged. A lot of customers are thinking this way. And what’s what’s shifted is that customers are spending the time and using different technologies. They’ve got a Claude license and they’ve got a Gemini license and they’ve got a GBT. And they they they wanted to challenge if I ask the same question against the different LLMs, what I come back with. So I think there’s good stuff happening and people are understanding that the underlying technology fairly well. Then it comes down to that point that was made earlier in terms of do I just want predictability or I’m I’m prepared to handle one or two outliers in terms of how I use this in my organization.
[10:55:31:06 – 10:55:37:16]
Lochner Eksteen
So Sonia, questions for you is what’s the hardest conversation you’ve had with a customer where you had to tell them something they didn’t want to hear?
[10:55:38:23 – 10:55:41:11]
Lochner Eksteen
I’m going to ask you the same question. No more technical.
[10:55:46:20 – 10:55:55:01]
Sonja Blignaut
So I think it was one of the things that I do in in the the practical things I do is something called narrative inquiry.
[10:55:56:05 – 10:56:07:01]
Sonja Blignaut
Because if you really want to understand a culture, for example, in an organization or how people are making sense of AI, capture the stories, you know, like the water cooler stories.
[10:56:08:11 – 10:56:15:14]
Sonja Blignaut
And we did a process like that. I won’t name the client, but it’s a name that I already mentioned here.
[10:56:16:14 – 10:56:26:21]
Sonja Blignaut
And it came into that organization just after the leader at hand picked people from all over the world and he created his own leadership team.
[10:56:28:00 – 10:56:33:04]
Sonja Blignaut
And all of the stories that came out of that organization was around how poor the leadership was.
[10:56:35:06 – 10:56:43:09]
Sonja Blignaut
And when it when the data comes as narrative as stories from your own organization,
[10:56:44:10 – 10:56:52:07]
Sonja Blignaut
you can’t blame the consultants. So it’s not our survey that wasn’t right or the data. It’s like these are the stories people are telling.
[10:56:53:08 – 10:57:02:16]
Sonja Blignaut
And that project just died an immediate death, because I think it was if it wasn’t that he had hand picked these people, it would have been different.
[10:57:02:16 – 10:57:03:03]
Speaker 9
Yes.
[10:57:03:03 – 10:57:11:20]
Sonja Blignaut
But he just could not because it was essentially a judgment on his discernment and the people that he chose. So that was one of the most.
[10:57:11:20 – 10:57:13:09]
Lochner Eksteen
And then you hit the button.
[10:57:16:05 – 10:57:20:12]
Lochner Eksteen
The button is quite the sensitive, sensitive button.
[10:57:20:12 – 10:57:37:09]
Carien Human
Yeah, which is the thing we’re trying to say is like, why do we want predictability? So we don’t have to worry about that. We don’t have to worry. It’s it’s predictable. If I pick a couple of leaders that I know are seemingly good leaders, then it will work, which is what we’re trying to guarantee that it will work.
[10:57:37:09 – 10:58:04:06]
Lochner Eksteen
And I think it was Peter Drucker who said that I think he had the story of he wanted to build a base core in the world. So they sent out the engineers to go and find the best engine and the best suspension and the best gearbox. And I found an engine at Rolls Royce in a gearbox. They were even they brought it all together in theory, all the base parts in the world to make the base core. But none of those parts fit.
[10:58:05:17 – 10:58:15:23]
Lochner Eksteen
So there is no system gone like a core because the sports need to fit. And I think that’s what I hear is, you know, when you bring these parts and you don’t consider how they’ll fit to become an engine.
[10:58:17:03 – 10:58:19:13]
Lochner Eksteen
It’s difficult to face that reality.
[10:58:19:13 – 10:58:43:15]
Sonja Blignaut
And in a human system, you know, it’s like at the best of times, human systems don’t work like that. You just you know, you can’t you could potentially sort of cobble together a working car. It could have been the best in the world because it’s a machine. But we’ve got this machine metaphor in the back of our minds when we think about organizations and it simply doesn’t work. We need to. They’re human.
[10:58:44:21 – 10:58:48:09]
Sonja Blignaut
And they’re not always irrational. We need to talk about
[10:58:48:09 – 10:58:51:13]
Carien Human
our lives and things that happen in the background.
[10:58:51:13 – 10:59:08:01]
Sonja Blignaut
But also, I think this one of the going back to the way at the beginning with this being in the liminal phase of the rite of passage, a rite of passage is very much around and I think it’s quite a hopeful framing becoming more mature.
[10:59:09:13 – 10:59:15:05]
Stephen Wardle
When you mentioned the rites of passage was, you know, you said something and I’ve been the been of a similar age.
[10:59:15:05 – 10:59:16:10]
Carien Human
Sorry, what?
[10:59:16:10 – 10:59:18:11]
Stephen Wardle
Not the same.
[10:59:19:15 – 10:59:21:03]
Stephen Wardle
I’m going to take a couple of years on you.
[10:59:23:23 – 10:59:51:00]
Stephen Wardle
This whole thing about a formal versus an informal rite of passage, I think is such a uniquely South African story in terms of where we’ve come in such a short space of time. So I didn’t go to the army. You didn’t go to the army. And for a lot of us, there was tension in the kind of family structure that, you know, this this will sort you out. This will sort out the men from the boys. And it’s a passing kind of framework inside a society. It was a norm.
[10:59:52:03 – 11:00:02:20]
Stephen Wardle
But quite often we don’t get to choose the rite of passage. And I actually think that’s that that lends to more fascinating age. So I was at high school in Johannesburg and it was 1991.
[11:00:03:22 – 11:00:14:04]
Stephen Wardle
Things were proper and it was it was touch and go. So the school just start the school, you’ve got the old hostels, the way sort of Selby and city deep and that kind of thing.
[11:00:15:12 – 11:00:21:17]
Stephen Wardle
And the next thing, two rattles wrapped, wrapped at the front of the school and the back of the squire at boarding school.
[11:00:23:04 – 11:00:27:13]
Stephen Wardle
And we thought, OK, this is a bit of excitement on a Wednesday night. This is not the normal kind of script.
[11:00:28:17 – 11:00:37:15]
Stephen Wardle
And the next thing out of nowhere, you had a holiday guys from the hostels that were all in Carter Freedom Party marching from the bottom of the school to the top of the school.
[11:00:39:15 – 11:00:43:10]
Stephen Wardle
And I mean, you’re in all you’re scared.
[11:00:45:23 – 11:01:13:19]
Stephen Wardle
Yeah, it’s still to the stats. It’s it’s it’s it’s a crazy thing. And then one or two of the guys that you saw in that group were working at the school and two days later, you know, it was just quite arresting. But sometimes you need an event like that. You don’t need to have that formal structure that right. That in itself was a rite of passage. Everyone that was there at that time and experienced it realized that the past is the past, the future. We don’t know. But you’re in it.
[11:01:14:22 – 11:01:29:12]
Stephen Wardle
And I just feel like so that’s things I think we need to give ourselves. And I said that that’s why I want to do business here, because I think we’ve got to give ourselves the grace to know that we are very resilient. We’ve gone through this before and we’ll go through it again. But we’re quite good at transitioning.
[11:01:29:12 – 11:01:30:04]
Speaker 9
Yeah.
[11:01:30:04 – 11:01:56:12]
Stephen Wardle
And I’ve worked overseas for several years and I think we just got to say, give ourselves the grace and just embrace that that change. We’re good at it. I think that inherent robustness that we have as a people is going to serve us well. But we need to, as I think inside a leadership space, realize the trance, the transitory nature of how we embed technologies and organizations for change.
[11:01:56:12 – 11:02:04:10]
Carien Human
So if I hear you right, what I think you’re saying is that fun line where if everything goes bad on your trip, you just say, this is Africa
[11:02:04:10 – 11:02:08:16]
Stephen Wardle
and you wing it. It is what it is.
[11:02:10:03 – 11:02:20:13]
Stephen Wardle
The resistance allows you to do the stomach and chest arch. You can put your shoulders back, brace yourself and move forward. Like I mean, it’s something we do as a people. Now,
[11:02:21:18 – 11:02:24:16]
Stephen Wardle
the ability to kind of do that is a cultural thing.
[11:02:25:18 – 11:02:40:13]
Stephen Wardle
And the interesting thing is it’s actually across all our cultures, not just one culture. It’s across all our cultures. And when it happens, take the time. And I love what you said. Take the time to pause. I don’t think a lot of our execs have been given the time to pause.
[11:02:41:17 – 11:02:45:16]
Stephen Wardle
We were just arbing around the school on a Wednesday night.
[11:02:46:17 – 11:02:52:00]
Stephen Wardle
We were already in a kind of relaxed state. There was a very fortunate thing about that. That’s that’s that story.
[11:02:54:00 – 11:02:58:17]
Stephen Wardle
But it just happened. Just allow it to happen. Take on all the sensations.
[11:02:59:17 – 11:03:04:03]
Stephen Wardle
Don’t try and mask. This is happening. It’s happening. And then go.
[11:03:05:06 – 11:03:06:20]
Stephen Wardle
I think we’re very good at it.
[11:03:07:23 – 11:03:10:06]
Lochner Eksteen
It’s a difficult conversation you had recently with the customer.
[11:03:10:06 – 11:03:20:23]
Stephen Wardle
We had to tell them that. It’s difficult. But it’s technology. It’s building blocks. And halfway through a project, customers says, oh, but I really like that feature and functionality. And I was like, no.
[11:03:22:21 – 11:03:26:09]
Stephen Wardle
And they said, no, but the board has said. And I was like, no.
[11:03:28:02 – 11:03:36:05]
Stephen Wardle
And it was a great point. It was a Ukrainian and a South African. So two people that not really created backing down.
[11:03:37:08 – 11:03:41:15]
Stephen Wardle
So then we just found the meeting of Mars to say it was an education program.
[11:03:42:17 – 11:03:49:19]
Stephen Wardle
And this we take one cohort through the entire process. We can’t build out solutions for alumni. You don’t have alumni.
[11:03:50:21 – 11:03:56:13]
Stephen Wardle
And just breaking it down to say it’s it’s a bit like that US Army, US Navy and Lighthouse kind of scenario.
[11:03:57:19 – 11:04:02:22]
Stephen Wardle
I agree that there’s a point that we need to address that part of the business. We’re just not at that point.
[11:04:02:22 – 11:04:03:12]
Speaker 3
Yeah.
[11:04:03:12 – 11:04:14:09]
Stephen Wardle
And I had to get a bit hairy. But, you know, I had to be the Lighthouse there. So no, we’ve got to we’ve got to get the foundations right. We’ve got to deliver this phase of the project.
[11:04:14:09 – 11:04:26:04]
Carien Human
Are you saying that because of all of the possibilities that’s opening up, it’s difficult for companies to really pick what they want to do and that they can do this, we can do shiny objects in them.
[11:04:26:04 – 11:05:04:18]
Stephen Wardle
It’s not shiny objects, but in the education environment and that’s the joy of the work I do. I’m exposed to different industries all the time. Alumni is where the revenue is at. So suddenly halfway through the project, execs wake up to the fact, well, I’m spending all this money on a system. And right now the revenue is just the fees in order to keep this institution going. I’ve got to tap into the alumni. And so let me show. And that’s where the shiny bell comes in. Let me show some shiny bell at the end of this project to say I’m recognizing I can do something about that. But that would shift the focus.
[11:05:06:12 – 11:05:09:09]
Stephen Wardle
And I just wasn’t going to allow that.
[11:05:10:14 – 11:05:21:17]
Stephen Wardle
And it was taking the time to say. You’re just four years away from what you want to do. Get this cohort through, get them to graduate and then we can start.
[11:05:21:17 – 11:05:27:04]
Carien Human
So we’re not putting a silver lining so it doesn’t look like you’ve spent a lot of money. We acknowledge the mess.
[11:05:27:04 – 11:05:39:14]
Stephen Wardle
We acknowledge that the whole reason you’re implementing the system is to guide your undergraduates to an outcome. And if that’s a positive outcome, you have a happier lump.
[11:05:41:09 – 11:06:29:01]
Stephen Wardle
So stay focused on that. And there’s great stuff in this technology around handling the admissions. And I mean, it really is great tech that the solution itself force has. And I think it deals with diversity. It’s a how can we sort of take you as the students, not just the outcome of the degree and navigate you through. And we’re really focused on the admissions process in terms of like it was great for me as a project because it was for arts and communications and media, that faculty. And the speed at which kids were just putting their portfolios on YouTube and stuff like that. But we focused on saying, is this the right course for you? Setting up questionnaires, setting up processes around that. If we do that well, you’re going to have guys are going to say, what an awesome experience it was going to this institution.
[11:06:30:11 – 11:06:58:09]
Stephen Wardle
And what was really nice about this project is the customer, it was a state run project. They want to be able to say, OK, fine, if we’ve got someone that wants to shoot a form in our country, how many associate directors are we going to have in five years time? How many directors are we going to have in seven years time? So it was all part of a whole ecosystem. And I could see where my counterpart is coming from. He wants to show the middle part. Let’s just get the first part right.
[11:06:58:09 – 11:07:00:05]
Lochner Eksteen
Maybe to land the plane.
[11:07:01:21 – 11:07:13:06]
Lochner Eksteen
Kareen, I’ve got a question for you. So when someone is in this liminal space, personally or professionally, what happens in the body? What does prolong the uncertainty due to the nervous system?
[11:07:14:15 – 11:07:15:19]
Carien Human
What a fun question.
[11:07:15:19 – 11:07:20:14]
Lochner Eksteen
Yes, I think that’s where a lot of people are. I think they’ve burnt out. Tired.
[11:07:21:20 – 11:07:24:08]
Carien Human
I think.
[11:07:26:03 – 11:08:09:07]
Carien Human
To your point earlier, we spoke about why people want the predictability. I think there’s a good case for saying lots of things is, dear, my God, in our lives and we want to have some certainty and we might all be slightly traumatized or whatever. But I think there’s also a different aspect to that. And that’s the part where that’s just how our brains work. It doesn’t really only depend on the environment. Our brains and our nervous system scans the environment the whole time, trying to find a way to keep us safe. Which is a really good thing. It keeps us alive in the forest. Yes, in the forest, especially if we’re going to venture into a forest.
[11:08:10:10 – 11:08:18:02]
Carien Human
So what I think we need to consider maybe is the idea of giving the brain and the body what it needs without.
[11:08:20:16 – 11:09:57:08]
Carien Human
Without letting the forest define that. OK, so, for example, we know that some sense of predictability, some embodiment, those things can give us that feedback. I almost want to say so if I prioritize exercising, being in my body, practicing mindfulness, doing regular breathing, making sure that there’s some predictability in my daily routine and my schedule. I give my brain a lot of the feedback that I need to tolerate, to tolerate the difficult things that’s going to happen if I enter the forest. I actually see this picture the whole time of like you’re going out of the zoo into this forest, not with a GPS, because that would be too predictable. But also not completely blindsided. So you have this guide that’s going to be on the lookout, show you the things in your sideline. But part of going there is go with food, go with your shoes on, go with prep the night before, sleep well, so that you are able to tolerate the difficulties that the forest will give you. And I think we neglect that. I think we think we have to control the forest to our predictability, because our brains do need predictability. Otherwise, we are in fight or flight all the time. But if you can do some prep on the other side, you know, take good care of your relationships, take good care of your mental health, sleep well, then it’s easier to navigate the forest with your guide. Yeah, yes. Absolutely.
[11:09:57:08 – 11:09:58:09]
Lochner Eksteen
I like that.
[11:09:59:15 – 11:10:07:10]
Lochner Eksteen
Guys, anything that we didn’t discuss that you think is I wish we mentioned that or asked that question. Anything else?
[11:10:07:10 – 11:10:41:19]
Stephen Wardle
I think in terms of covering that question, I mean, thanks for the opportunity. It’s a very, very good conversation. But just top of mind, it’s as you as we’ve been chatting, you know, this companion, I think the importance of finding good curators out there. And I was listening to another podcast and there was a guy that sort of really got into this idea of content. I think for my generation, I don’t want to put anyone in the same bucket as I have before.
[11:10:43:12 – 11:11:02:00]
Stephen Wardle
But it’s we’ve gone from kind of listening to the radio and just being there with play record calls and making a mixtape was like a big thing for us. And then we sacrificed the mixtape because we know how to change the Spotify or whatever. And then the algorithm kicked in.
[11:11:03:02 – 11:11:14:01]
Stephen Wardle
The algorithm is a bit of an analogy to where we are because it does become an echo chamber. It does seem to repeat. It just looks at attributes and saying it’s similar to similar to similar to. So there’s an iron element to it.
[11:11:15:14 – 11:11:19:05]
Stephen Wardle
But now sometimes it’s just nice to listen to a DJ.
[11:11:20:11 – 11:11:35:17]
Stephen Wardle
Sometimes it’s nice to sort of let yourself relax and let someone navigate you through a space. So I still tune into the radio stations abroad or sometimes listen to the radio here where I someone’s got my vibe,
[11:11:36:21 – 11:12:11:03]
Stephen Wardle
but he will come up with an art class once in a while. A tune that I wasn’t thinking some obscure track that was found in a vault in Ghana a couple of years ago and someone spun it out. I think it’s very important for our commercial and mental health to take a step out of predictability and let someone be your guide for law and curate a certain space or interest or set of interests for you. I think it’s a very welcome antidote in terms of the speed at which we have to operate these days.
[11:12:12:05 – 11:12:12:19]
Speaker 9
Love that.
[11:12:12:19 – 11:12:28:17]
Lochner Eksteen
Thank you very much. I think we need to wrap this up. We can go in circles with a lot of these topics, but thank you for joining. Karina again, Stephen, for the best with your unpredictable weather in Cape Town and your soon to possibly be. Thank you, Sonja.
[11:12:29:21 – 11:12:32:01]
Lochner Eksteen
And again, thank you.
[11:12:32:01 – 11:12:33:03]
Stephen Wardle
Thank you. Thanks.
[11:12:34:10 – 11:12:35:21]
Lochner Eksteen
The last remark, look at that.
[11:12:37:08 – 11:12:37:19]
Speaker 5
Like it.
[11:12:39:06 – 11:12:41:07]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
You’re welcome to continue talking.
[11:12:41:07 – 11:12:42:16]
Lochner Eksteen
Yeah, it
[11:12:42:16 – 11:12:44:05]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
was so nice.
[11:12:44:05 – 11:12:44:17]
Lochner Eksteen
Loves it.
[11:12:44:17 – 11:12:51:20]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
Kind of, you know, sometimes it reaches a plateau and then it’s time to stop. But you could have actually I
[11:12:51:20 – 11:13:01:16]
Stephen Wardle
mean, I think the out there of the zoo and the forest struck the chord because it’s it’s. Be aware of your own limits.
[11:13:02:20 – 11:13:25:14]
Stephen Wardle
And I think, you know, and that’s why I sort of get bubbled up that story from high school and how because that’s culture, that’s that’s at the heart of culture. There was this cultural event and it’s eased through a culture to say this is the change. It’s a lot harder when it’s not in a culture that when, you know, that that change, but it’s like the zoo,
[11:13:26:14 – 11:13:27:18]
Stephen Wardle
that idea of norms.
[11:13:29:08 – 11:13:31:15]
Stephen Wardle
But the difficult bit is being able to shift your norms.
[11:13:33:01 – 11:13:43:08]
Sonja Blignaut
I think the thing is, and this is where the complexity comes in, you know, there’s. Like the other day, I was speaking to a potential client and they’ve just gone through a CEO change.
[11:13:44:16 – 11:13:57:14]
Sonja Blignaut
The previous CEO was there for decades and he was command and control. It’s my way or now they’ve brought in a new CEO and he’s like, I want an entrepreneurial culture.
[11:13:58:21 – 11:14:03:11]
Sonja Blignaut
And I am assuming that my leaders are mature. I’m not going to tell them what to do.
[11:14:04:19 – 11:14:25:23]
Sonja Blignaut
And there’s this. But now what what he’s it’s not only about the culture and the individual leaders, it’s about an entire system that’s been set up to make sure that you do what you’re told the way that you measure the way that the processes work. So he needs to. It’s not only I mean, I can tell you you need to mature.
[11:14:25:23 – 11:14:26:06]
Speaker 3
Yeah.
[11:14:27:20 – 11:14:29:10]
Sonja Blignaut
But I need to get it.
[11:14:30:19 – 11:14:37:05]
Sonja Blignaut
You need to look at the the systems, how it’s structured, what you measure, how the processes work, the technology.
[11:14:38:07 – 11:14:42:00]
Sonja Blignaut
And then how do I create conditions where my leader.