What Will You Do With the Time AI Gives Back to You? - with Alex Kuilman, Founder of The Practice

23:14So let's say that I would like the people in my organization, I'd like to hold them in a safe way so I feel that they have a better chance of embracing AI. What does that actually mean? Like, how do I do that? So hopefully in an executive team, you're going to have a regular cadence of meetings, whether it's weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever. Hopefully not quarterly. You had a woman, Chantal, talk about. Chantal Pratt, yeah. Chantal Pratt. I love what she spoke about, because if I could link it to some of what Chantal was saying, there's usually a level of fear that would stop one from just learning out something random or developing that curiosity, which I think is the precursor to doing what you guys are asking about?

24:02What is it that blocks someone from being curious? The fear. I'm oversimplifying what you referred to. No, that's exactly right. Exactly right. And so if that's true, when I'm referring to like, as a leader, can I hold all the people who are in my system to make it safe enough to come back to this concept of psychological safety, which Amy Edmondson from Harvard talked about and I think Google did a whole host of studies with a whole host of teams. Aristotle was the name of the project that basically looked at the efficiency that is gained when there is psychological safety in the system. Why?

24:34Because they feel held. They feel that they can be curious. They feel that they can actually say, I'm scared of my, and you mentioned it briefly when we touched on employees who may not want to start engaging in AI. Why? Because it makes their day-to-day relevance of what they've seen themselves as being important about no longer true.

24:54Jeremy:Well, and by the way, the whole narrative right now is AI layoffs. Exactly. That is incompatible with holding space, right? Which is why I think this topic is so important. And also, I think there's a lot of people that when everybody now assumes that everybody uses AI all the time, and a lot of people do, and they do more than they used to. I think, Jeremy, you told me the other day a story where I think you said, how many here use AI and everybody raised their hand and then you added a follow-up question with something like, who has the app installed on their phone or some kind of other qualifier?

25:29And basically everybody took it down.

25:31Jeremy:Actually, just to clarify the record there because it's interesting and insightful, how many of you feel tired of talking about AI? Everybody raised their hand. And then I said, keep your hand up if I can throw you the clicker and you're ready to share your screen to show everybody what you're doing. Every hand went down. There we go. So I said, wow, we're talking about it, but not doing it. Yeah. So like the, as I understanding the emotional safety, I would imagine that nobody feels safe saying in the organization or how, I understand that AI is important. I don't really get it. And I don't really use it that much.

26:07That is not what you hear a lot, right? And you're saying that isn't part a safety issue. I think there's many issues. I think the one that likely gets not a lot of airtime is this question of psychological safety. Because for so many, and we started in the conversation, like it's woo-woo. Feelings, woo-woo. We're here to deliver on shareholder return. Basta. Well, how do we get there is my challenge in saying it is just, and it's proven. This is what's so fascinating. and I refer to Amy Edmondson as one, but there's others who've done the research. It's just proven that in an efficient system, one of the component parts is, do I feel safe enough to test and try?

26:49And if we're looking at the Keegan model, which says, as sort of test the big assumption, you need to be able to safe enough to test and try a few things that make this question of fear that you think is a given be not true. But until such time as you feel safe enough to say, you know, at week one of AI being imposed on me, because we all have been given a license to try something, I don't want to look incompetent in front of my buddies and colleagues as an idea. And so, okay, great. So that incompetence, try a few times and then go back to your buddies to see, do I look incompetent if I'm not getting to where I want to?

27:24I'm the poster child of incompetence when it comes to my relationship with Henrik, because he just laughs at me most of the time because of how I am not capable of, you know, taking on these ideas more effectively. But because I feel safe enough to do these experiments now with him, I'm way further up the curve than I would have expected had these conversations with Henrik not making it safe.

27:48Jeremy:What do you think about this? And I won't. So someone famous who's a household name, she is a organizational leader. and she said something that I really liked, but I would like to test whether you think it's sufficiently safe. So she said in my SLT, I do weekly, I won't even use the phrase so that if it's out in the public, she won't expose her identity. But she said, I have people share either a success they're proud of or a failure they're embarrassed by. And her phrase, which I love, which I don't think is public. So I'm just, I'm avoiding Google ability. She says, either is okay, neither is not.

28:27Jeremy:I love that actually as like, as a, as a holding mechanism. Is that, but, but my question not, well, I don't mean to influence you by saying, but as I'm hearing you talk about elements of psychological safety, the pressure, I don't, I wonder what role pressure and expectation play. And I don't know. What do you think? I think they play a huge, a huge part And this is maybe where I go to down the woo-woo lens, but there's a piece of the puzzle that if I go back to Mikkel's work, unless we're able to feel what psychological safety is, I think we're missing the boat. And so even in the example you're giving, there's a level of like, there's a structural solution.

29:11The questions I'm going to pose are going to be this or that. Either one is good, neither is not. So there's a pressure now set up that if I don't actually feel safe enough, so the precondition for answering it honestly is going to be this executive's ability to hold her people and likely role model it by doing it herself over a few times because once is fine, but two or three times makes a little bit more of a role model. But it's the sensate feeling, to go back to Mikkel's words, how do we have people feel not just in a binary way practice a gimmick? And that to me is the missing piece that too often is lost.

29:53That's beautiful. I know that you work with a lot of big companies and very senior people. If I walked into a chief innovation officer and said, you know what, dude, what you're, or dudette, dude, gender neutral, what your problem is, is not that you don't have clock code. It's not that the technical team only wants you to use the oldest model. It's not all these different things. It's basically that you don't have enough emotional safety in your organization. he'll probably hire you to take a hike yeah she he will just be like I maybe but I mean like we're 3000 people I don't really make that kind of environment here my job to be done is to yeah just to get more tokens used you know like yeah and so so how do you I'm sure you've been met that too right like in your line at work how do you how do you help this person I don't know because I don't know the person.

30:59But what I would say is you can deliver the harshest messages to people if your own practice is to hold that conversation differently. And so part of the practice, I think, is recognizing if I'm going to sit in front of a CEO, which I spend a lot of my time doing, delivering messages that they may not want to hear, I have to have that sense, that sensorial experience of slowing everything down in my own body, enabling myself to not feel the nerves and the potential risk that I'm going to face if I'm chucked out of this person's office, they innately capture that sensation, that feeling. Because I'm not coming in all flustered.

31:42No, I'm hopefully enabling them to implicitly experience the comfort of got a harsh message for you, that I've both built up the credibility over a few conversations with them, but I've also done it in the immediacy of there's a crisis. I've been asked to go in by the supervisory board to give a message to a CEO, and that message has to be delivered, not only delivered, but then taken on board. And my job is then enabling myself to practice this holding of myself, which I do in many ways, which I can share. But it's also, So going back to what Mikkel refers to is, can the person sitting in front of me experience me in that more, we call it basics, in this more pure neutral place?

32:33If I do that with this example you're giving, there's a higher likelihood that the conversation then becomes where are the little places we could practice doing what I'm suggesting you might benefit from, Mr. C or Mrs. CIO. Although you're asking the question, I'm kind of turning it around saying, what is your Henrik's state as you go into doing the conversation? That'll likely have an equal, if not more important.

32:58Jeremy:I like the phrase you use, hold yourself. And it's one thing to hold space for a team. It's another thing to hold yourself. You said, if you're willing, I would actually love to hear. You just kind of made an aside comment. There are ways that I, I think you said, hold myself, if I'm not mistaken. How does one hold oneself? And is that a precursor actually to being able to hold space for a team? If so, it seems like that's a great place to start. I would agree. There are many practices. There's at the practice, we generally love working with kind of elite, what we call practitioners in the space.

33:32And one of these practitioners is a woman named Linda, who's taught us what I referred to before as basics. And she says, before you engage in any contested environment or what she says, an environment that is not coherent. Because usually when there's a lack of coherence, that's where you're going to get friction and that's where you're going to get resistance. And so her first thing is, okay, ground yourself. So just imagine yourself, we could do it right now. Imagine yourself having roots. It's going to get a bit woo-woo, so I apologize. But imagine literally that you have roots growing out of your feet.

34:04And if you don't want to do that, yeah, there, you're going. Great. Imagine that you're just actually like, I get executives to take the shoes off and socks off and have their feet literally on the carpet floor or hopefully better outside and having them feel that sensate experience of being grounded.

34:22Jeremy:What you're saying there, just to be clear, and it's similar to what you said earlier, it's not enough to say it, you have to feel it. And in this case, in a way you're saying it's not enough to imagine it, you have to feel it. So feel it while you imagine it maybe as a way to say it. Well, what did you, you closed your eyes just now and you, what did you feel? Well, I'm wearing slippers, actually, and I took them off so my feet are bare and I put them on the wood floor. Did anything change? Yes. 100%. Yes, I can say. How would you describe that experience? It went from being a head experience to a body experience.

34:56Beautiful. So that would be stage one of what we're referring to as basics and you just ground yourself. So that's the beginning, I think, of anybody who wants to hold himself. It has to start with ground. Jeremy, would you dare go into your next workshop? And before you start all your heady stuff, which I know you do so well, to say to people, hey, we've tried a lot of stuff. You organization have been through like the ringer this. You invited me because you want to do something new and different. What are we going to do before I show you how Claude will be able to record your screen and turn it into a skill.

35:38I want you to feel grounded in this experience. I'm going to take edge to edge. I mean, it's wild.

35:45Jeremy:So, Henrik, here's how I'll answer your question. One, two-part answer. One, the class I teach at Stanford or that I taught historically, I'm not teaching right now, I'm in book mode, but the class I taught historically, I taught with the head of the dance department at Stanford, Alita Hayes, and we're all this match between head and body. So I am already a believer in somatic stuff. Okay. So that's as a preface, very important preface and shout out to Alita. She's amazing. Invite her to all your things. She's great. The second, if I were like, if I picture, as I said, I have this actual executive team that I'm working with, I would want to have the support of the CEO.

36:26Jeremy:I would want to speak with this person privately at a time and say, I'm going to do this. Everyone in the room is going to look at you and whether your eyes are closed. if your eyes are not closed, I can't do this. I think it's very important. Do I have your agreement that you will be the most enthusiastic participant because I'm going to call on you first? If that person, and usually if I put it straight to a leader who really wants to be high performing, they go, whatever you need, I'll do it. Right. Um, I would never do it without getting the leaders, like they say, like never go to a board meeting without telling all the board members what's going to happen.

36:59Jeremy:Right. I would never go to that meeting without clearly alignment, at least with the CEO, because that's the person everybody's looking to, that they are willing to go woo-woo with me. Yeah. I think a wise counsel and wise caution. I would then challenge you to prepare yourself differently because even in what you're describing, there's a level of fear to dot, dot, dot. What if you were to engage with yourself, ground yourself to start, and then actually engage with the SLT, looking at the CEO, and if he or she doesn't follow you, that becomes data for you to work with, that there's a level of fear in the system that you may not actually be able to engage at the level that you'd like to.

37:38So you have to adjust the way you're intervening.

37:40Jeremy:And you're saying, so just to riff with you, you're saying there, instead of talking to the CEO ahead of time, doing it as a way to gather information about the degree of openness. Because to your point, actually, I think it's quite insightful. And even I said it myself, a CEO, if I ask him, is going to say yes. But saying yes and doing it kind of superficially aren't necessarily, aren't tantamount to the psychological safety. Interesting. Exactly. Yeah. And this is why I think very often we miss the boat is because we do predetermine, as you said, supervisory board, which is a whole other kettle of fish, which I'd love to come back and discuss at a later time because, you know, doing board reviews becomes an interesting concept because I would say many executive teams now are embarking on these journeys that we're discussing.

38:24Supervisory boards may not be just yet. Happy to talk about that as a separate conversation. But the capacity to hold a system predicates the person holding, which in this case is an outsider coming in to support, having the capacity to hold, which means I have to hold myself. And we had step one of their other steps to do. But they, from years of doing this, the experience that the SLT in this case will have will be, there's a different feeling. Something is different. I can't determine what it is, but something is different. Because one thing, Jeremy, we could kind of observe is we talked about Wade a few times in this podcast and we, the CEO of Asevia, our founder and CEO.

39:09And when we talk about him in the past, we've often mentioned that he called the Code Red. He does hackathons every quarter. We're very tactical in the way that we prescribe how he's successful. Great point. But when you meet him, he holds me when we talk to him. I feel very safe in his company. And so I wonder if there is something in some of the leaders that we've seen do the same thing. Well said.

39:41Jeremy:That's very insightful. And you're right. I reference Wade regularly, and it's always tactics. It's not the psychology. Let's take Bryce, former Moderna, now open AI. Same thing. Feel incredibly calm in his company. Very thoughtful, very grounded. Jeremy, you mentioned something. I just want to flag it because I do think it's important. Yes, there is an element of psychology. I'm not a psychologist. I'm fascinated by the human experience, which is why, if we go back, I love that you had Mikkel on the podcast talking about what is the body-sensates ability versus just the cognitive ability that we've been educated to look at.

40:23More and more, and this fabulous woman, who, by the way, I would love to meet, the dancer, what is her name?

40:29Jeremy:Elita Hayes. Elita Hayes. I'd love to meet her. I'd be happy to connect you. She's fabulous. She and you together. She sounds amazing. And to have the combination of a Jeremy and Elita in a room for students must be extraordinary. And so if there is a piece of the puzzle that is now being discovered, which is ultimately, I would say, the angle that humanity can bring in conjunction with AI as it is becoming a necessary combo. We need to focus our energy and attention much more onto the core skills of humanity, which is sensate, it's somatic, it's body awareness. The cognitive capacity is something that AI can do for us better than we can do for ourselves at this stage.

41:11Can I just take away a little bit to this thing I heard Andrew Sockerman say the other day? He's very well known for his work with Apple and an artist, but also does brands and multi-skill. He's an incredible, incredible person. He basically made the point the other day that one of the things that AI does for us is that offload cognitive capacity. And I think we've heard that before. And then we were like, oh, that's an issue. Like we get lazy stuff like that. He says, thank God, because the last hundred years we have gone from understanding how to use our body to walk out in the woods to smell, to listen, and we have gone full heady.

41:54And he's like - I think therefore I am. He goes, what if what AI is going to give us is our ability to nothing, to feel? And so I thought it was very positive, a bit woo-woo, but very positive. And suddenly it opens up for this whole world. Sorry, Alex. No, this is exactly the route in providing for the grounding and the basics. The spaciousness is what we lack. You hit it 100 % right, Henrik. The spaciousness is what we lack. We do not, if we look at the standard executive schedule, it is back to back to back to back. Block myself two hours to make sure I can go to the gym, which is just back to back to back.

42:39Like there is very, very little time for spaciousness of exploration, of curiosity. city, the joy of doing nothing, the joy of going for a walk in the woods. That's where a lot of this stuff becomes relevant because that's where there's an opening to taste again, to feel again.

42:57Jeremy:Now, there is an interesting contrast here by just to flag it. We started the conversation by saying the wrong answer is make time to experiment. And we've now come full circle to the conversation saying the problem is people don't have enough space, which, which feels like at least a tension, if not a contradiction. What do we think about that? Yeah. I love it because it's usually in the tension, we're going to find a solution. I would hold the tension. I would apply the example that you gave because the fact that what I'm just going to refer to as the Claude Code example that you provided, but it just becomes, it's not additive to your calendar.

43:37It's actually, there's nothing that's actually, it's you're supplementing in your, you know, locked in schedule. You're just adding another reality that wouldn't have otherwise been there, but for the Claude example of recording. So fabulous. Now that may allow you in a couple of weeks, year, months or years to say, okay, I don't need to put my schedule in this frenetic pace all the time. And I would like to take an hour a day just to actually detox, go for a walk, not to talk to anyone. Don't take my phone. It's the little experiments that ultimately, I think, are going to get us back to a sensate experience of the life that we're living.

44:15Jeremy:So this is actually one of, Henrik and I, we haven't talked about this in a couple months, but this, I think, Alex, is one of the most fascinating and counterintuitive discoveries of the AI age. And I'd love to get your reaction to it, especially as a self-proclaimed not AI person. There is a concept that folks have referred to as the AI vampire. Have you heard of this? No. It's basically the idea that once you become more productive, you don't do less work, you do more. And so ostensibly, now you can do in one hour what you used to be able to do in 10, which means you should be able to do in half a day's work what you used to do in a week.

44:50Jeremy:We call it a 40-hour work week. What we're observing and what the most kind of AI-forward people are finding is not that now they only work four hours instead of 40, but now they work 80 because they can do 800 hours in those 80. whereas before they were working 60 say and so there's this interesting tension that i and i i'm obsessed with it because one i i think one of the kind of uh you know theoretical benefits of ai is that it could restore our humanity it could restore our ability to as you say i love spaciousness for nothing as a phrase i think it's beautiful what i've observed and and many and i mean i i told Henry this, I asked kind of a WhatsApp group of some of the most AI proficient folks in the world.

45:34Jeremy:I can't understand 95 % of the conversation. I put a poll in the chat. What are you doing with your newfound productivity now that you're 10Xing yourself? Are you investing in your health, in your family, in your community, or more work? 90 plus percent of people said more work, not health, family, community, right? And so to me, it's a very, it's maybe tragic. It's maybe The ironic, I don't know, but it strikes me that the observed reality is not spaciousness for nothing. It's in fact less space for more or whatever the opposite is. What do you, what do we make of that? A couple of thoughts. Um, the term I use is corporate numbing.

46:17I think to a large degree, we've come to a place in our own, in sort of the societal norming, at least in Western culture, that it is really pleasurable to numb oneself in the busyness of life. So that's one bucket that we can dig into a little bit. But I think corporate numbing cannot be underestimated because if there is a level of inefficiency and systems, it's because people have become numb. And your reference to the 90 % would be an example of that. I can just like, just further, that resonates so much. The ability to feel safe by sitting and replying email versus coming up with something that my six-year-olds find enjoyable, like his night and day.

46:57Jeremy:Six-year-old is so much harder to deal with than an inbox. So much harder, right? And so it's easier just to say, daddy has a few emails to do and it feels justified. But in fairness, Henrik, and now I may be revealing too much, but you and I had a chat before going to spend time with your son. And it was an experiment, which was an extremely positive outcome of like, oh my God, This kid is fabulous to hang out with. And the creativity that came from the hours that you spent with him was like off the dial. Absolutely. Is it exhausting? Is it hope? Like I've got kids myself, so I understand the counterpoint.

47:31Jeremy:Work as numbing. That's a great term. And to me, then what that says is the solution is not systemic and it's not organizational. The solution, one could say to be woo-woo, is enlightenment, is recognizing your own longing for numbing and deciding you want to feel your life. I mean, that's actually the perfect opposite to sensory, right? Numbing is the opposite to sense it. Maybe that's why you chose the word actually. I'm just catching up here, Alex. Oh, I doubt that. Look, I do think it's a relevant term because it just, it does put it in opposition. And frankly, I love the fact that we can talk about the polarities as both being true.

48:15I don't like we're looking for solutions of which I don't think there are ready-made solutions. What I do think is the capacity to have the conversation we're having gives people the chance to make little experiments, to try what fits into their own day-to-day operational life. And then they get to choose, is it helping, not helping. I see a lot of primarily men because it's still today, which is, I think it's a systemic shift that needs to happen. Most CEOs that I'm working with are men between 45 and 65. In that age range, there is something that Jung referred to as the back end of life and where you literally, men, I'm in that bucket.

48:52I start asking myself a bunch of questions that I certainly didn't ask between 35 and 45 and probably only started asking in the last maybe 10 years. And so if that's true, I think there's a whole demographic that's going to start posing questions that might lead them to realize the numbing isn't actually serving them in the way that they like to be. But where can they talk to people about this? Where can they engage in the conversation? Where can they feel the polarity of, but I still have to provide and I still have FOMO? And I think, you know, as we talked about earlier, Jeremy, there is the, where I feel there is a blind spot of using AI is, and we talked about that as the negative space, the unspoken space, and the space that is not currently in world models, right?

49:40Because right now the AI world is in text written, but really text written since 91 to now on the internet, right? And so it is text written. That is really when you think about the world, like a somewhat limited skew of the world right it's big but it's and the thing that i guess uh andrew soggerman was talking about like walking out in the forest and observing art and listen to music and playing what you're sexual is like obviously a failed experience which we don't have and so maybe the unlock to all this creativity and this originality is ironically that we need to kind of like step away for all this to get back to it that's where we're going to find the new ideas and once we i mean i guess we could post a positive version of the AI future where we have uploaded all this thinking time to machines and so that we can go out in the world.

50:33It doesn't have to be in the forest, but it could be just like hanging with our colleagues and figure something completely new out because suddenly we're kind of back to using a full sensory spectrum. What if we could make that reality something more exciting because you'd actually get more done? What if we can make it safe enough to have the conversation to be more effective because you're taking that spaciousness. Like it's how do you make it palatable for someone who just looks at you and says, like, you're talking complete nonsense. I got to get stuff done. Let me get on with it. Your woo-woo stuff isn't helping.

51:07I think we're missing the boat because we're not actually engaging in making this other alternative more interesting than the numbing that they're experiencing.

51:15Jeremy:Can I, I just realized I had two thoughts. one that we talked about, about the AI vampire in regards to spaciousness for nothing. So coming back to that as kind of like a banner, you know, for this part of the conversation, one thought I had was the AI vampire and the realization that AI doesn't lead us to spaciousness necessarily. The second thing that I just thought of that I wanted to run by you is Elon Musk. And I don't know how people feel about Elon. Unequivocally, he's a effective entrepreneur. Let's put it that way. Um, I have, I was pointed by a couple of different friends to Isaacson's book and other resources.

51:51Jeremy:And the thing that strikes me is how little spaciousness he has in his life to the point that sometimes he's just sitting on the edge of his bed, even in the middle of the night, like his wife and partner. And he's just, he cannot sleep. He sleeps. He's famously sleeps on the factory floor with people. Right. And so one thing that's, and I don't know what do with it and perhaps it's just hold the tension and that's sufficient. But the, the kind of the thrust of our conversation is more spaciousness does lead to better and yet, or that it could at least. Yeah. And yet probably the preeminent example of at least entrepreneurial, you can say organizational efficiency or effectiveness is an example of no spaciousness.

52:38Jeremy:So it's probably less spaciousness for himself and his direct reports than any manager who's ever lived. And so I'm just trying to kind of wrestle with that duality or seeming contradiction. I don't know how to answer that other than he is one example of an extremely effective, busy man. Do we all have the capacity to do that? I don't know. I don't know many people who actually can do that. Proof is in the aiding the pudding. There are very few people who are are even remotely close to the capacity to deliver on what he says he can deliver. So he might be an outlier. Is it statistically relevant, therefore, to follow that one outlier?

53:18Jeremy:Yeah, it's exactly actually the problem of reasoning by anecdote is, you know, the prior probability. Yeah, I totally, even as you're saying that, you're exactly right. We, just because he does, doesn't mean any of us can or should. And I don't know enough about Elon to say, well, maybe there is a part of his life that is going to start changing and he may embark on a moment when he is getting between this thing that I'm referring to back end of life. That actually does force him to say, interesting, is there a spaciousness that I've lacked and therefore is there a capacity for me to live differently while benefiting from this incredible wealth that I have created?

53:55And I mean wealth, not just financial, but what he's brought to the world is extraordinary.

53:59Jeremy:Yeah. Yeah. Well said. I'd love to have the conversation with him. If he's listening, give me a buzz. Elon, can we get him to come? Let's get him to come. I find this conversation to be refreshingly new in the context of Jeremy, what we're trying to help people, like to try to find new ways of using AI for good in their life and their organization. I have promised you, Jeremy, to get you out of here in about 10 minutes. Yeah, I do. I, one thing I would say, Alex, is your, you, you started the conversation by kind of caveating how little, you know, about AI. And it's somewhat of my obsession. Henrich knows this.

54:41Jeremy:I've got a book coming out later this fall called the human advantage, which is all about the, the most special thing about AI is actually you. And the more expertise you have, the more special you are. And so what I, like, I just felt like as a friend and as a person, what I want to say to you on the record, off the record, doesn't matter. You have the potential to derive leverage and value from proficient collaboration with AI that few others in the world do, specifically because of your human expertise. You don't need technical ability, but if you will bring your ability, the way you connect as a human, if you will start to think about the way I say it is treat AI like a teammate, not like a tool.

55:19Jeremy:if you'll start to use some of the techniques that you use as a, as a highly capable collaborator to people. And as someone who is uniquely, I would say familiar with techniques to get exceptional work out of this weird, intelligent thing called humans, you are uniquely qualified to get exceptional work out of this weird, intelligent thing called AI. And that's, that's basically, I'm happy to send you a book if you want. I'm happy to just, I would love a friend because Because I think that's like, I've taught MBAs for years, for example. If I'm teaching a one hour long class, who's going to get more out of that hour?

55:53Jeremy:Say it's on negotiations, right? The whip smart undergrad with no real world experience, but you know, a 2400 SAT or the sales veteran with 10 years experience under her belt, right? She's going to leave the class with a thousand times more knowledge, even though they both set through the same hour. Why? Because of the knowledge they brought to that hour. And I use that as just a metaphor to say the person who's going to get the most out of AI is you because of what you bring to AI, provided that you bring your humanity, so to speak. So anyway, I just I want I mean, you have Henrik in your life, so you're you're never going to get away from AI just for the record.

56:28Jeremy:But insofar as you're tempted to opt out because it feels like, you know, it's tech, it's a young person's game, whatever. No, don't. Thank you. It's very generous of you to say. And please do not take on my self-deprecation is probably something I should work on. Before coming to this conversation, I had multiple conversations with Claude. I find it extremely helpful and in fact requested that within the company, the practice, that we actually have regular conversations about how are we using it to make what is our tagline is bringing more humanity in the business. how do we make it that much more effective to do one of the pieces of the puzzle we talked about, which is in the cadence of an executive, I don't want to add an extra thing for them to do.

57:14But boy, oh boy, if I can have the capacity to record and to help them actually in their regular cadence of life and then feed back to them at a later point, these are two or three tweaks because I've heard you on multiple occasions, nothing additive in terms of extra time. This is just like one, I practice that and then keep recording it. So there's again, an iterative practice in what they're doing. AI does that beautifully. So we're in it. I just, I feel like a little student with my dunce hat on when I'm speaking.

57:44Jeremy:I think honestly, what I would say, what I would say, and this is actually the perfect place to wrap is behind is the new normal. If you don't feel behind, you are delusional. I love that. If you feel behind, congratulations. Welcome to 2026. Great way to wrap. I know that. Thank you. Okay, Henrik, you started this episode by introducing Alex. I got to say, I love that guy. What a fantastic human. I can understand, one, why you want to meet with him, and two, probably you want to meet with him so often that you can't afford to pay him. So I like how your arrangement has worked out, because otherwise you'd be in the poorhouse, my friend.

58:25I think, unfortunately, that is very true. I mean, I call him sometimes when I'm kind of wound up about stuff, And I think what I realized in this call is like he holds me, like he provides me a little like a space to just kind of feel safe for a little bit. I think, though, as we talk here, you know, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how you become better of using AI in your own life and in your organization. And I think in many ways, a lot of the conversation are similar in nature. They're different kind of like versions of it. And so what I thought inspiring with this conversation is one of the first time that we've had a few times, but it's one of the few times where somebody went and said something and I'm like, oh, this is really different from kind of like what a conversation would normally be like in this thing.

59:13And while uncomfortable, I do recognize that often when I have success doing entrepreneurship or innovation or kind of promoting AI, it is when I create an environment where people feel safe to try, safe to kind of talk about like where they are on the journey and stuff like that. And so definitely like a tool that I think I'm going to try to explore a little bit more. Yeah.

59:40Jeremy:The, the, uh, distinction between saying something and feeling something, or you could say hearing something and feeling something, I think is quite profound. And your observation of both Wade and Bryce as kind of prototypical examples of people who do say the right things, but who more importantly on your reflection, which I totally agree with help you feel a certain way. I think it's something I don't think I've ever really thought about like that before. When Wade and I, by the way, it would be kind of fun to talk to Wade and Bryce about this, but Wade's playbook, you know, and he's written quite extensively about the transformation of Zapier.

1:00:22Jeremy:I don't think it includes anything about psychological safety, to my knowledge. I don't think it includes anything about his personal leadership philosophy, et cetera. And so that's, that's quite interesting. I really hope I'm going to see if Amy Edmondson, I'm even, I'm putting this to recording right now. I'm going to try to get Amy on the show. She actually blurred my book and she was on a previous podcast that I ran years ago prior to this one starting. She's a fabulous thinker. And she, I mean, she literally wrote the book on psychological safety, but I think it's a, it's a really rich topic.

1:00:50Jeremy:And of course, as Alex mentioned, we hit on it a little bit with Chantel when we talked to her about how fear prevents learning. And she, you know, she shared with us, I think the pace model of fear prevents curiosity maybe. And so we've, we've kind of touched on the topic before, but I think, I think it'd be a really fascinating deep dive. And Amy's another one of those people. She'll be the first to say she's not an AI expert, which I think increasingly we go, great. We want experts beyond AI so that, so we can have a conversation about the principles they've discovered in their field and apply them.

1:01:23Jeremy:So let's see if we can do it. What was your, what was your quote on innovation? Like innovation happens when two non-relevant. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Arthur Kessler, the collision of apparently unrelated frames of reference. It's a good memory, by the way. That's well done. And the other thing I got to say, which I think is just really fascinating is when we were talking about the AI vampire, I mean, there's so much here. I want to listen to this episode many times, actually myself. His point that work can be, not as always, but can be a numbing mechanism and your observation that dealing with your email is easier than dealing with a six-year-old, I think there's something really, really deep there that I don't think many professionals would regard their professional pursuits as avoidance tactics, as avoidance of, or even more running from responsibility.

1:02:21Jeremy:Like if you think about my example that I gave at the beginning of the, of the recording, right. That I travel to provide, right. I do not think of my travel as running from family obligations. I think of it as a fulfillment of family obligations. And I just, I want to personally sit with it. And I would personally invite our audience as well to consider is the amount you're working right now actually about, is it a justification to avoid the things you really need to be doing? That's a question I'm personally going to be sitting with. And I'm, I'm tremendously grateful you brought Alex into my life and into this episode.

1:03:00I appreciate that. And as, as you know, I'm an incredibly huge fan of Alex. I had a, I had a staff member the other day come to me and say, I'm probably five to 10 times more efficient than I was a year ago when you hired me. And I was like, yeah, you should go. So I'm going to take Fridays off. And I was like, hmm. And very difficult to argue, right? You know, I haven't put her salary up 10X since she's getting more 10X. And so where does this unleashed energy, where does that flow to? And who does it belong to? I think it's an interesting question. You posted with, you know, your question to the AI group, when you are now more efficient, when you've created another agent that gives you back 20 minutes, are you going to give it to the gym?

1:03:48Are you going to give it to yourself for thinking? Are you going to give it to your family, to your community, whatever? And I think that's a question that, you know, like back to your point, am I just giving it back to more emailing because that is where I feel emotionally numb? It's super fascinating question.

1:04:06Jeremy:Yeah, yeah, it's challenging. and I love the challenge. So thank you. I appreciate it. And on that note, there's only one thing left to say and that is, bye-bye.