September 15, 2025 • 56 mins
Technological revolutions come and go, but the fourth industrial revolution – powered by artificial intelligence – promises to transform business in ways we're only beginning to comprehend. In this thought-provoking conversation, we explore how organizations can harness AI's potential through value-based implementation strategies with Venkat Lakshminarayanan, author of "AI-Driven Value Management."
The discussion quickly moves beyond surface-level AI applications to explore what Venkat calls "meta-level thinking" – the ability to discover solutions to problems we don't yet know exist. This cognitive framework represents perhaps the most valuable skill in navigating technological disruption: "Knowledge of what you don't know is the ultimate knowledge."
For business leaders, the stakes couldn't be higher. As Ron points out, approximately 50% of businesses in the construction equipment channel disappear every 20 years. Those who fail to adapt – even while currently profitable – eventually become obsolete. The central question isn't whether to adopt AI but how to implement it in ways that deliver measurable value.
Venkat's approach begins with discovery – understanding customer challenges before proposing solutions. This value conversation connects business objectives directly to quantifiable outcomes like increased revenue, reduced costs, and mitigated risks. What once required "hundreds of millions of dollars" in consulting, research, and specialized tools can now be accomplished more efficiently through AI-powered systems.
The conversation takes a personal turn when discussing AI literacy as individual responsibility. Through the example of an overworked teacher, we see how AI can eliminate administrative burdens and create space for more meaningful work and family time. This represents the human side of technological advancement – not replacing people but liberating them from tasks that prevent them from realizing their potential.
Whether you're a business leader navigating industry transformation or an individual seeking to develop AI literacy, this conversation offers valuable insights for thriving in an age of unprecedented technological change. The path forward isn't about technology for technology's sake but about aligning innovation with genuine human needs and measurable business value.
Ready to transform your approach to AI implementation? Connect with us to learn how these principles can drive better outcomes in your organization.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation,
again continuing our discussionabout artificial intelligence
and robotics and the fourthindustrial revolution.
Nick Maverick has introduced anincredibly talented young man.
He smiles when I say young manVenky I'm not going to pronounce
(00:26):
your last name, sir, but I canand we're just going to wander
across the field talking aboutwhat artificial intelligence
does for us, doesn't do for us,and the challenges that we have
in life with the unbelievablyrapid change in technological
(00:47):
advances.
So with that as an introduction, nick, good afternoon to you on
the East Coast and Venky, goodmorning.
You're still.
Yeah, it's still before noonfor you.
Welcome aboard and let's haveat it.
So how about we start this way,nick?
Why did you want to put Venkyand I together?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So thank you, ron, and it's always a blessing to be
with you, Venky spontaneouslyme being one of the village
idiots on the planet it finallyI've been gifting Venky's book
to whoever I can think of andnumber one person on that list
should have been you and I'vebeen doing it for months because
(01:30):
when Venky you hear of peoplewriting books and Venky is very
humble and he downplayed hisbooks like most humble people
would but when I received andread his book called AI-Driven
Value Management, it is anoperating manual of how to
(01:53):
deploy AI at scale within yourenterprise.
It goes from strategy all theway down to tactics.
It covers multi-departments andI would never, I'm going to say
through the grace of God.
I know Venky.
Venky is a past chief strategyofficer for one of the divisions
(02:13):
of a very large company calledServiceNow and he has been an
advisor and a friend to me, butas an advisor to Build Data and
on our advisory board, and Ijust felt you two would really
benefit about as in, throughyour great work and learning
without scars, build onto yourvision and attach a very, very
(02:41):
detailed operating manual abouthow OEMs, dealers and rental
companies can just instead ofjust skimming the surface on AI
can really transform theirenterprise, which is your vision
.
So that's why I thank you verymuch.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh, and I thank you for that.
So Vinke Nick has told me aboutyour book on the frame that it
basically is a how to become AIliterate and AI functional in
business.
Is that a reasonably faircharacterization?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
It is Ron.
Sorry, ron, it is Ron.
I want to start by saying howexcited I am to be in your
company and Nick.
I think I can say Nick and Idebate about who's more
fortunate to have met the otherperson.
I think I can win that debate.
I think I've been the receivingend of a lot of kindness and
(03:40):
generosity from Nick and Ipromise to pass it on and give
it back, and so I'm so excitedto be in your company A very
interesting topic that youbrought up.
So just to talk a little bitbriefly about the book, in fact,
before we started recordingthis conversation, you talked
(04:01):
about an authentic conversationthat involves listening,
thinking and discovery.
So I'll just zoom in on thatterm discovery.
So much of conversation todayseems to be about you know,
seeking to be understood, ratherthan seeking to understand, and
(04:25):
I think, when you bring it intothe world of business, what it
robs you of is the ability toyou know, bring value to your
customer, in the sense thatfirst, you need to understand
where your customer is at, andthat involves listening.
That doesn't involve hey, Ineed to know the following
things from your customer is at,and that involves listening.
That doesn't involve hey, Ineed to know the following
(04:46):
things from your customer,starting with do you have the
money to give me?
Starting with, when can you buymy product?
No, you want to listen withempathy and to discover what it
is.
That is an area that I can addvalue to and then see if your
product or your solution or youroffering fits into it.
(05:09):
So what the book tries to do ishelp people have a value
conversation, and what a valueconversation means is to align
the business objectives of anenterprise, the problems that
they're trying to solve for thechallenges that they are trying
to solve, for the challengesthat they are encountering in
achieving their objectives withthe product or the solution that
(05:31):
you're offering, as perhaps atechnology vendor or perhaps a
capital equipment provider, andconnect the two, which is here
is the problem and here is thesolution, or here is the
opportunity and here is thesolution, and it is worthwhile
to have the conversation if thesolution is going to help
(05:52):
deliver some quantifiableoutcomes.
Business is all aboutquantifiable outcomes and those
quantifiable outcomes arealigned to the objectives, and
the objectives can be as simpleas I want to increase revenue by
X percent.
I want to increase revenue by Xpercent.
I want to reduce costs by Xpercent.
I'm keeping it, ron.
I love the term and it's aborrowed term jargon monoxide.
(06:14):
I love it because I don't loveit.
I don't love using it, buttherefore I'm going to try and
stay away from jargon monoxide.
Increase revenue, increaseefficiencies in the business,
reduce risk in the business.
If your technology product orwhatever product isn't doing any
(06:34):
of these things to a business,it is not adding any value.
So the book helps you forgetabout AI.
The book helps you firstunderstand how to speak that
language, how to do thatquantification, how to connect
your product with the customer'sobjectives and problems.
So that's the primaryfoundation of the book.
And back to what you told usjust before we started recording
(06:58):
, which is the importance ofdiscovery, which is the very
first step.
And you just talked about thehighest form of discovery, which
is blue sky, opening it up andbeing open to possibilities.
Now, where does AI come intothe picture?
(07:22):
As it turns out, prior to theevolution of AI to the state
that it is in today, thisexercise of quantifying,
communicating and helping yourcustomers understand value takes
hundreds of millions of dollarsin an enterprise to do.
It is not something that youput your product in front of the
customer.
Yeah, I get it.
I can see how I can grow mybusiness, protect my business
(07:45):
and run my business with yourproduct.
So it takes intentional,proactive, heavy lifting a lot
of tools, a lot of content, alot of services, a lot of
consultants, a lot of sellers,value selling, all through the
customer lifecycle, all the wayfrom the first step of marketing
to the first step of sales,from the first step of marketing
(08:05):
to the first step of sales, tothe first step of implementation
, to the first step of customersupport and all the way to
renewal.
And you got to.
This is called the value motion.
It is not just the customerlife cycle, it is not just the
sales motion, but it is thevalue motion.
And the book, uh, happened atthe time when I was simply going
to write you know and share.
(08:25):
I'd spent 15 years doing this.
So I was simply going to writeyou know and share.
I'd spent 15 years doing this.
So I was just going to write abook.
My co-author and I, you know,my co-author is a gentleman
called Craig LeBourin, who's thefounder and CEO of a company
called Mainstay, one of theearly pioneers in the art and
science of value management.
I learned value managementthanks to Mainstay and we wanted
to write a book and say, hey,you know what, you guys can have
(08:47):
it for free.
This is how to do valuemanagement.
And why even do valuemanagement?
What is the benefit ofquantifying and communicating
the value of your product interms of business outcomes to
your customer?
The benefit is that you doubleyour pipeline, you double your
revenue and you double yourrenewals.
I mean it's obvious, right, it'sintuitive.
When the customer understandsvalue, they buy more and they
(09:09):
buy with more conviction andthey go out into their company
and convince the C-level and theboard that this product is
delivering this kind of value.
I want to buy more.
So we wanted to write a manualor book, a blueprint, a playbook
for other people to say ifyou're a B2B player, if you are
selling any product to anotherbusiness, you will find
(09:31):
something of use in this bookand AI happened upon us and I
realized that you know you don'thave to spend hundreds of
millions of dollars to achievethese 2x 2x outcomes.
You could do it with far lessthe research that it takes, the
consulting work, that far lessthe research that it takes, the
consulting work that it takes,the workflow that it takes, all
of the heavy lifting, thecontent and the services and the
(09:51):
tools that is involved in thepractice of value management can
now be done supercharged by AIand therefore it requires that
you can do it bigger, better,faster, cheaper than before.
That's the book.
I'll stop there and I hope itwasn't a whole lot and I hope
that made sense.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
It made a lot of sense and, nick, thank you,
because, first of all, using theword value in what we're trying
to provide or do changes thewhole dynamic.
One of the exercises that Iused to do a lot of with
(10:32):
companies was get all theemployees that touch customers
into a room with a flip card, awhiteboard, a laptop whatever,
and just start whiteboard, alaptop, whatever and just start.
What do you folks believe thecustomer's needs and wants are?
And it takes a while to getpeople to talk because they
(10:54):
don't really trust.
Communications is not easy.
Patrick Lencioni wrote awonderful book called the Three
Signs of a Miserable Job, and itstarts with anonymity.
The employees feel that nobodyin the company knows who they
are, whether they're married,children, sick, have a debt or
(11:14):
whatever.
And then it goes to irrelevance, meaning that they don't
understand what their role is inthe company and where it fits.
Role is in the company andwhere it fits.
And then, finally, toimmeasurability.
They don't know how to measuretheir performance every day,
unless you're in a blue collarfactory floor when you go home.
How did I do today?
So when we go through thebuyer's needs and wants, it
(11:38):
takes a while for people to openup.
But once they do, they start,and I'd start scribbling on the
whiteboard or whatever it is,and at the end of that it takes
about an hour and a half or so.
At the end of that we go backand we consolidate them.
There's similar elements and wejust make a list and I stop at
10.
The following month I bring inhalf a dozen customers same
(12:02):
audience, same people that touchthe customers but in front of
the room now are the customersand I asked them the same
questions what do you folks needand want from us?
And they start talking.
And then we engage and I startwriting and everything's good
and everybody says thank you, welike each other, we're still
friends and we separate the nextone.
(12:25):
So we're spending 60 days.
It's relatively short, but longenough for people to think a
little bit.
And thinking is not somethingthat a lot of us do anymore.
We get into ruts.
We just obediently followwhatever the heck we're supposed
to.
We don't look over the wall.
So then we get together and Igot these two lists now the
(12:46):
customer list and our list.
First order of business is whatdo we have in common?
And many times there's out of10, maybe there's three and
there's maybe three.
That my goodness, I never evendreamt about that.
And all of a sudden we canstart engaging in what the devil
we're doing.
My purpose in life is verysimple.
(13:08):
Number one I want to makepeople happy.
That's kind of an easy one.
But the principle one is I tryand help you identify your
individual, professional andpersonal potential.
And that's nasty, becausepeople don't really think about
themselves that way.
I was very lucky.
(13:28):
At a young age I was a swimmer,and in swimming you learn very
quickly.
It doesn't matter what yourposition was.
We can have eight people on arace and I finished last.
But if the time I achieved wasbetter than anything I'd ever
had before, I won.
So I learned very quickly.
I don't have to compete withanybody other than me, which
(13:51):
changes the whole dynamic on howI deal with people.
And Nick's seen that and heardthat.
So then that's chapter A.
Chapter B I view technologychange from the lens of the
steam engine in the 1880s.
Here comes the electric engine.
(14:12):
It's cheaper, it's faster,there's less maintenance.
It got implemented right away,but they didn't change any of
the processes for a wholegeneration.
It took 20 years.
And then I translate that intotoday's world 1950, roughly.
Here comes the computer, 1960,here comes database, 1970, here
(14:35):
comes the internet, 1980, herecomes global positioning, 1990,
here comes sensors.
We have unbelievable technologyand if we translate that to the
steam engine, mankind,humankind, have become victims.
They don't know what to do withall this stuff.
They don't understand it.
(14:57):
Worse the leadership, theexecutive, they don't understand
it either.
The leadership, the executive,they don't understand it either.
They don't know what to do.
So if your book opens the eyesof people and kind of gives them
a roadmap, like you say, aplaybook, what a wonderful start
in a world that's reallyconfusing today.
(15:20):
Nick, what do you think?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I think the I tell you I'm I feel so alive, I feel
that we're blessed.
You know, so many things happenin our, in our lives.
One is the internet.
Um, I was listening tosomething yesterday with uh and
it was an interview with benhorowitz, from indreason
horowitz who's may I tell you ifI, you, I could have lunch or
(15:48):
coffee with somebody like him,or Mark Andreessen.
It's just that he's fun tolisten to because he comes
across as real and he talksabout the Internet and how it
was very expensive to monetizethe Internet in the early days
and that's why I think hementioned evite and evite had a
staff of 300 programmers and hesaid that's you know, in so many
(16:12):
words, so many of thesecompanies.
That's why there was this bustin uh, the internet.
Now, of course, we know, yearslater, it took quite a while to
monetize the internet, speaking,as I understand it, with AI.
He then shifts in AI and hetalks about the monetization
factor and the efficiencies.
(16:34):
And, ron, a lot of what I'velearned from you and your guests
, your colleagues, people likeSteve Clegg, jay Lucas and
others are companies, know theyhave to change, they know their
cheese is moving In the pastwhen they're able.
They've only been able to makeincremental changes and I
believe on the Jay Lucas podcastthat you did.
(16:56):
I believe, unless I'm imaginingit, there was a notion of
buying back distribution.
Certainly, you and I've talkedabout that, and what's kind of
cool is not to speak to theboogeyman.
The boogeyman is here.
There's no doubt about it in mymind.
But there's a tremendousopportunity now to you have a
lot of options other than justcutting costs and reorganizing
(17:21):
your business, and I can giveyou a legitimate sort of.
You can jump with.
You know your hot sink jumpingfrom the hot pot to spring water
.
So I think, with your vision,this industry can take very
practical steps to increase itsprofitability, which really
(17:43):
means providing for people andfamilies, and you said helping
people.
Right, that's certainly.
I know why you're here For me.
I enjoy the helping people morethan I do the business, so to
speak, and I know Venky does.
My wish is that you and Venkyconnect to break down the
(18:03):
practical side about how to makeAI approachable, how to take
your knowledge and hisexperiences at companies like
ServiceNow and break it down.
These efficiencies don't haveto be a heavy lift anymore.
If you went back 10 years.
Yeah, terenki said it veryheavy, lift Lots of blood and
(18:25):
guts that normally companieswouldn't pursue because
effectively they're a turnaround.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We've got and let me just come in and try and put
some glue in there.
One of the things that wasinteresting for me there was a
gentleman in Canada by the nameof Ian Sharp.
He was British by heritage andbirth and he started a company
called IP Sharp Associates whichwas Internet-based.
Xerox was one of their majorclients and, coincident with
(18:59):
that, one of Ian's best friendswas a man by the name of Ken
Iverson.
Ken Iverson created APL.
Name of Ken Iverson.
Ken Iverson created APL.
Ken Iverson was basically putinto slavery by IBM.
He couldn't work with anybodybut IBM and he's the guy that
created DOS, os, DB1, kix allthe major software and he wasn't
(19:21):
allowed to do it with anybodyelse.
And that's fine.
Ian and he were best friendsand Ken had two sons.
Ian hired those two boys and hecreated Sharp APL and it's
instead of a binomial, zero-onetype of programmation, it's an
array.
So if you're a mathematicianand you like math, this is
heaven and there's a lot to it.
(19:42):
But what that also meant was hewas on the internet in 1971.
There was hardly anybody thereWorld Bank, oecd, the government
, stock markets, things of thatnature and, interestingly, I was
one of the people that he gaveaccess to.
That's how I started myconsulting work, and when he
(20:05):
sold it, he sold the business toReuters.
I think everybody on the planetknows what Reuters does and
inside.
What Reuters bought was alittle piece of software that
Reuters sold to MichaelBloomberg, and that was the
Bloomberg 75,000, 125,000terminal that allowed you to do
(20:26):
financial analysis.
It was amazing what things aredone.
So transition that now to dataanalytics and artificial
intelligence.
A week before last, there was avery smart man who said 10 years
from now, computers will be10,000 times smarter than
(20:48):
humankind.
I have no doubt that's true,because they'll have access to
every piece of data that hasever been published and put out
there.
However, our challenge now isgoing to be data is dirty.
It's not clean.
Md Anderson's digitizing everymedical record in the United
States from 2000 to 2020.
Imagine what information that'sgoing to do and what it's going
(21:12):
to do for the development ofcures for health.
Elon Musk comes along and has acompany called Neuralink which,
with implanting things in yourbrain, can give people that are
born blind sight.
We're on the verge of thingsthat are just unbelievably
fantastic and leadership outthere, and I love them to death
(21:35):
and I'm one of them and a lot ofthe guys in the construction
world are friends of mine andthey're above my age.
They don't know what to do.
They've never made this muchmoney.
They don't know how come andand I chastise them saying
you're putting profit ahead ofcustomer service, you're putting
profit ahead of people.
(21:56):
And if you think about americain the last 20 years, everybody
says loyalty has gone away,customer loyalty, our customers
aren't loyal anymore.
Well, we've worked awfully hardto make them disloyal.
We don't answer the phoneanymore, we go to voicemail.
We don't have technical support.
That's local, it's in India,it's in Europe, it's all over
(22:20):
the darn place.
Now we've got cybersecurity andit scares the devil out of
people.
I know a lot of people thatlost a lot of money, got
cybersecurity and it scares thedevil out of people.
I know a lot of people thatlost a lot of money.
And even with a playbook, it'shard like heck for me to get
people to say yes, let's goforward, because they're so damn
anxious, nervous, apprehensive,and it's true with every work.
(22:43):
I call this the new era ofslavery.
It's just a new definition.
There's a lot of people workingpaycheck to paycheck.
Anything goes wrong.
Boy.
They're in trouble as a resultof that.
They keep their head down andthey don't want to change much.
They're okay, they understandit.
I'm in Russia.
One last tidbit in Moscow,maybe 15, 18 years ago, a man in
(23:05):
his 50s, three children,married for 20 years Executive
position, and I have a standardquestion If you could wave a
wand, what would you change inyour job to make your life
easier?
And the answer I got back wasdon't ask questions like that,
just tell me what you want me todo.
I felt so sorry for the man,but most people operate that way
(23:30):
.
That's a hell of a challenge toovercome that, venti.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well, ron, you gave me so many friends with what you
just said Sorry, no, novaluable friends and I want to
sort of use them as scaffoldingto talk about a few thoughts.
I want to go back to theindustrial revolutions that you
(23:59):
talked about all the way from,you know, hundreds of years ago
to now, and it seems like everytime there is a change of that
nature which is disruptive and,you know, it sort of takes
people to another orbit.
You have two choices asindividuals, and I'm not even
(24:20):
talking business andprofessional being different.
We have a choice to wait and bedragged into adoption, and
sometimes that's okay, butsometimes it causes pain and
damage and lost opportunities,and sometimes it leaves some
(24:42):
people behind.
Or you have an option to learn,and that, you know again, gives
me another frame that youprovided, which is what is the
role of AI literacy?
What is almost, I would say, apersonal responsibility now of
(25:03):
an individual, of an individual,maybe somebody in a household,
a parent or as a friend?
What can you do to promote andgive yourself AI literacy?
So, two options.
The first option we talkedabout is not a good option Just
(25:24):
wait and watch and be draggedinto adoption.
The second option we talkedabout is not a good option Just
wait and watch and be draggedinto adoption.
The second option involvesliteracy, but that literacy
could be in my thinking, it's oftwo types.
One is the literacy about thetopic itself.
Let's just pick one of thoseevolutions from on-premise
(25:46):
hardware and software to cloudcomputing or global positioning
systems or mobility that we havenow everything is on the
smartphone, whatever.
It involves learning about thetechnology, learning about the
business and all of that, butcognitively, it involves moving
(26:14):
a meta-level up to think interms of possibilities that you
haven't thought of before.
It's about knowledge of whatyou don't know about, and I
think the meta level thinking isa fundamental skill set that,
uh, you know, all of us can workon all the time.
You know we don't have to waitfor the next disruption and no
(26:36):
bigger challenge than thisparticular cycle of disruption
that is going on in innovation,that's going on with ai, which
we are not.
The two applications for AIcould be oh, how can we solve
today's problems that I knowabout, that I have knowledge of
better with AI?
Fair question what is it that Ido not know AI can solve for?
(26:58):
And that is the meta-levelthinking, and that kind of
thinking is not just, you know,it is about exercising and
building the muscle to thinkmeta level.
Um, and there are so many otherframes that I, I kind of
mentally noted in yourconversation.
Uh, I, um, you know, I wastempted to take my notebook and
(27:18):
start writing because I don'twant to forget them, because I
want to hang my hat on a lot ofthose things.
But one, it is a personalresponsibility.
And two, those business leaderscoming to the world of business
that are making a choice not todo anything because, you know,
profits are coming, revenue isgrowing, it's great, are, you
(27:45):
know, planting a time bomb ontheir own business?
Because eventually, eventually,they're going to be disrupted
one fine day.
And there are so many examplesof that.
And guess what?
I'll give you a short storythat opened my eyes more than
the person who was asking me forthis question.
I went to a conference and, youknow, on the way back to the
(28:09):
airport, you know, I called foran Uber and I was in the Uber
going and this guy, you know,was asking me hey, why are you
here?
What brought you to this city,as it was a conference, and what
is the conference all about.
And eventually the topic of AIcame about and I asked him.
I chat with people in airportsand cars, with drivers.
(28:35):
Just love chatting with peopleto get to know Ron again.
Another thing I want to hang myhat on is the magic wand
question that you asked.
I'm curious, without beingoverly curious, about.
You know, tell me, give me alittle slice of your life and
let's see, you know, if we canmake a connection.
And so this person happened tobe a, a school teacher in a
(29:00):
public school, and his publicschool, uh, you know, short of
funds, doesn't have enoughteachers, and so this person
works.
First of all, drives a verylong distance.
I think he said something likeyou know over 50 miles to get to
the school, starts at 6 am andends at 6 pm and he teaches all
(29:24):
the way from kindergarten tosixth grade, or something like
that.
And he said all the way fromkindergarten to sixth grade or
something like that.
And he said so much of this isnot about the teaching itself,
it's about, you know,administration, the paperwork,
and you know being like 100things to the kids at the same
time, and a lot of it is not funto do.
And then I asked like, why areyou driving uber?
(29:46):
And I kind of knew the answerto it, but I wanted to hear it
from him.
He said, um, you know I I'm notmaking enough money, so I'm
doing this now.
This was already evening that hewas driving me to the airport
and I said, like you know whatkind of mental and physical
fatigue you're in right now tobe doing this?
(30:06):
He said, yeah, I go, and then Idon't get enough time with my
family.
And you know it comes back tothis question of you know this
is I'm sorry to use that term,but this is a form of slavery.
Unfortunately, again, I'mhanging my hat on another thing
that you told me.
I'm glad I'm rememberingwithout noting down.
So, very good, I'm pattingmyself on the back.
(30:29):
And then he asked me thisquestion hey, you know, since
you said AI, I asked him hey,have you ever used ChatGPT or
Gemini or any of these things?
You know, maybe they can helpalleviate some of the pains and
take some load off yourshoulders as you're preparing
for things?
And I said you know what Lookslike we've got another 15
minutes left.
Let's brainstorm some areaswhere you could go home today.
(30:52):
Just go to chat, gpt orwhatever one of those things
large language models and sayhelp me come up with a course
plan, help me come up with aquestion answers for whatever
multiple choice quiz.
And we were brainstorming allof those things.
Then I just stopped and saidmeta level thinking uh, I got to
(31:15):
exercise that muscle.
I said you know what?
Don't ask me for ideas.
Go to chat GPT.
Uh, say that you're a publicschool teacher.
They'll chat you.
You're totally stretched, youdon't have any time to think.
Another one I want to hang myhat on very strongly, which is I
really believe that we don'tthink at all at work.
(31:37):
We are like robots alreadyUnfortunately not the kind of
robots that will replace us.
They're going to be advancedrobots.
So I asked him why don't youactually go to ChatGPT and ask
here?
So I asked him why don't youactually go to chat GPT and ask
here is me, here is my situation, here is what I'm solving for.
(31:58):
How can you be my assistant tohelp me get another five hours
back in the days where I canspend time with my family and
also be good in my school andmaybe not ever need to drive
Uber again?
And that thought came to meeven as I was trying to answer
the question, that we shouldreally be asking Chachi Pitti
(32:19):
itself.
And so you know, in that 20minutes of conversation, I hope
he took away some useful things,but I took away, you know, the
fact that you know, oh, we'vegot to exercise this muscle so
that.
So the knowledge of what youdon't know is, I think, the
ultimate knowledge.
I mean, you want to ask people,okay, here's my work, can you
review it, can you correct it,whatever?
(32:42):
But the most valuable questionis always what am I missing?
What is it that I do not knowthat needs to be here?
So I feel, with everydisruption, with every evolution
of technology into a betterorbit, into a bigger orbit,
we've had that challenge, andthe faster you give yourself the
(33:04):
education and today there is noexcuse to not give yourself the
education, because you could goto a chat GPT again and say I
don't know anything about AI.
I'm in the constructionequipment industry, I'm a dealer
and you know what?
I've got a small sales team andI always find it challenging to
(33:26):
deploy them efficiently andeffectively.
Thousands of opportunities areout there, thousands of
customers are out there.
How do I deploy them on that20% of the footprint.
That is going to give me 80% ofthe results.
I don't know how to do it.
You know, use that as yourquestion.
That will educate yourself onhow to do it.
(33:47):
And, by the way, that's exactlywhat Nick is solving for.
But anyway, I am sorry for thelong answer, but I want to hang
my hat on as many of yourconcepts as possible.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
No, it's perfect.
And again I use an example thatthere's 100 of us, 150 of us,
and we go to school for thefirst day and we're all 10 years
old and currently the educationsystem says you're 10 years old
(34:20):
, there's the grade you go into.
What I want to do and whatwe're doing with Learning
Without Scars, is I want everychild to take two or three hours
worth of testing.
I'm going to find out whattheir skills are, what their
knowledge is, what theiremotions are, what their desires
are, and then they're going togo home.
The following Monday is thefirst day of school and they
(34:43):
come to school and we assignthem a classroom from grade
three to grade nine.
We match the students' needswith a learning path.
So we take and createassessments 90 to 180 questions,
multiple choice for jobfunctions I think we've got 24
(35:06):
job functions, which covers 90to 95% of the labor hours of
people touching customers,leading people or managing
assets and we come up with ascore.
And so I get people that are 20years in the job, 30 years in
the job.
They kind of boo-boo this.
It's only 50 bucks, so it's nota big deal and they start out
(35:29):
and they come back with a scoreof 40%.
How can that be?
Because, to the point, you madeoff the scaffold and what Nick
looks at, charlie Munger and alot of his work that we're
playing with.
They don't know what they don'tknow.
(35:49):
Like you said, donald Rumsfeldwas mocked when he was Secretary
of Defense.
When he says the problem withus in the military is we don't
know what we don't know, well,that's the magic question.
And you got to be prepared as aperson to recognize your
ignorance.
In classes, I ask people I'mkind of weird, you know, it's
(36:14):
kind of funny.
As a teacher, I've beenteaching my whole darn life and
I talk too much.
But one of the things I ask isat the very beginning of almost
every class I've ever been infront of and this goes back to
when I was teaching atuniversity every class I've ever
been in front of and this goesback to when I was teaching at
university to doing consultingwork what's the definition of
ignorance?
And nobody knows anybody.
(36:36):
There's 20 people in the class,100 people, whatever.
So they're careful, they don'twant to look like a fool.
And I say well, it's prettysimple.
Don't be shy.
Ignorance is not knowing whatto do.
Oh, yeah, okay, I get that.
That's pretty simple.
I said, okay, what's thedefinition of stupidity?
And now we've got some peoplethat are understanding how this
(36:59):
thing works and they don't feelbad if they make mistakes, and
every now and again in a room,somebody comes up with it.
Stupidity is knowing what to dobut not doing it.
That's pretty straightforwardalso.
And then I add the third element, which is what is insanity?
And I either use Mark Twain orEinstein, who said insanity is
continuing to do what you'vealways done, expecting different
results.
And then I say to them in thisclassroom when you leave here,
(37:23):
you're not going to be ignorantbecause I'm going to tell you
what to do.
So I'm leaving you the choiceof being stupid or insane.
And, looking around the room, Idon't see a padded room in your
future.
So how many of you want toleave here and be stupid?
And then we start the class andpeople don't really know.
(37:44):
I put them off balance rightoff the bat, and that allows the
real person to be exposed andthat gives them confidence,
because I'm not going to shootthem down and their peers aren't
going to shoot them down.
And then, last little thing andthen I want to get Nick, to
(38:04):
climb in Change is tough, butchange at work is pretty easy.
And what I say to everybody youmarried, you're living with
somebody, yeah, okay.
Well, I want you to go hometonight and tell your partner
you're going to sleep on theother side of the bed and
tomorrow, when you come back towork, I want you to tell me what
the couch was like, because youdon't get to choose.
(38:25):
That my friend, somebody else,did.
That is real change At work.
It's easy, come on.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Nick.
You know as a bridge Ron, andI'm going to not omit some
details just to save whateverHappy to tell you.
But Vicki and I looked atsomething earlier today.
It's an example.
It was an enterprise softwareapplication that somebody
(39:01):
reverse engineered.
Keep in mind.
These licenses cost about$2,000 a person.
This company can make a healthymarket at 80% less you and I
let me say it in positive termsbecause I feel like I've been
thinking too much from thebottom recently.
(39:22):
There's a tremendous amount.
This industry's margins cangrow tremendously from the OEM
and the dealers.
We know that by getting them tobecome better team members
because they're effectively not.
That's what I've seen.
You have much more experiencethan I do.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
No, you're right.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Then they can extract .
Why should this industryoperate on such crazy low
margins?
Based on all the value meaningconstruction spending to the US
economy is 4% of GDP.
It's going to end the yearabout $2.2 trillion.
Why not rip these?
(40:07):
Engaged learning without scars,engage Benke in his book who to
speak?
And go in there and assess whatprocesses you can absolutely
rip out within months, expensesyou can rip out with months and
offer more value to the customerand your company won't have to
(40:30):
go through these ridiculouscycles that are effectively boom
and bust that are pushing many,not only dealers it's already
happening but OEMs to becomingturnarounds.
It's severe.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
We're having unbelievable difficulties.
And let me just throw somestatistics In the construction
equipment world forestry, mining, on highway trucking, etc.
About every 20 years the numberof people in that channel, in
(41:09):
that space, is reduced by 50%.
So if in 1985, I had 100dealers, in 2005, I've got 50,
in 2025, I've got 25.
And I talked to these leadersand Vinke does and you do, and
as long as their revenue isgoing up, they're fine.
(41:31):
And for the last couple ofyears or so I've been saying
well, I expect your revenue togo up.
The number of people you'recompeting with is down by half.
What the heck.
And they never considered thatthe men that are running and
women that are running thebusiness today they don't know
how the business operates.
Today.
The person that's selling partsanswers the phone, gives the
(41:57):
customer a price, gives thecustomer availability, customer
says thank you very much, hangsup, goes away.
That's the end of the job.
Last night, if there's a B2Btype of internet-based inquiry,
certain electronic catalogs andall the rest of the technology,
and hardly any of the dealersuse that or provide it.
(42:18):
But the next morning I want totalk to everybody that looked at
my site, check the price, checkthe availability.
I want to ask the question didyou order it?
That's the job today.
Nobody does that.
It's kind of like you getmarried.
Are you happy, sweetheart?
(42:38):
What can I do to make youhappier?
What do you want?
I used to ask people that workwith me when I was working in
dealerships about every three tosix months I'd go out and say,
okay, what do I do that you likethat I do and you want me to
continue?
What do I do that you don'tlike I do and you want me to
stop?
And what do I do that doesn'tmatter to you?
And the first order of businesswas what doesn't matter to you.
(43:01):
Well, what the heck am I doingit for?
Is that something somebody elseshould be doing?
Give me some time back.
If they liked what I was doing,well, I should give that to
somebody else, because obviouslythey're comfortable with me.
Let me get them comfortablewith somebody else, a different
vision, and the stuff that theydon't like that I do.
Is it my style or is itsomething else?
(43:24):
And if it's a something else,venti, that's taking us to where
you want to go, to the metallevel.
Why are we doing it this way?
I I've always asked thatquestion.
I my parents, must've gonecrazy.
You know why do we do that.
And and you know, there was anexam in Harvard for your MBA
(43:45):
years ago.
Everybody it was at MIT, Ithink.
Everybody had to takephilosophy to get an MBA.
Oh Jesus, murphy, what is it?
And the final exam was 100%.
No classwork through the year.
One question worth 50%.
The question was simply why.
Now it's philosophy and Nick'sheard this before and I'm not
(44:08):
going to do it to you but therewere three answers, or there was
one answer that was worth 100%,one answer worth 50% and
everything else was zero.
Well, if you got the zero, youdidn't get your degree.
If you got 50%, you better bedamn good at everything else.
If you got 50%, you better bedamn good at everything else.
(44:30):
The 100% answer to the questionwhy is why not?
And people need to look at lifethat way.
If your child is pushing back,they're a little rebellious
encourage it, don't sit on them.
I want people that are going to.
You know what's on the otherside of that wall?
(44:51):
There's so many.
It's a wonderful world.
Can you imagine living at anytime better than this?
So much going on.
It's beautiful, but you got toread.
There's some wonderful stuffbetween the covers of a book.
I'm sure your book, when I readit, is going to be the same
thing.
Ikigai, the Japanese pursuit ofhappiness.
(45:13):
Everybody needs to be happy inwhat they're doing.
So I hope that this is going tobe the first of many that we
can many chats like this.
We can have many candidconversations, because there's
so much depth on this screen, inthis conversation, that I want
(45:34):
my audience to hear and I wantmy audience to be thinking about
.
And those of you that are stillwith us I hope you're
scratching your head and maybe,like Venky, you've got a pad out
and you're starting to writethings down furiously so that
you can think about it after wehang up and any of you that want
to make comments, please sendin emails, send texts, reach out
(45:58):
, because this isn't a one-way,two-dimensional discussion.
This is a geometric approach tolife.
There are no simple solutions.
There's only intelligentchoices, and the problem is we
don't expose ourselves to allthe options to make that choice.
Sorry, nick, I didn't mean tocut you off.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
No, no, I apologize, I got excited and I was going to
pipe in and, if it'sappropriate for your guests,
your network, to people who needaccess to knowledge, this is a
good book and it's relativelyinsignificant.
(46:38):
What I'm about to say is but ifyou had 100 people built data,
will ship it to them on behalfof Learning Without Scars and
free book, free knowledge.
I will say this about, I knowthis about you, and I say this
about Venky.
If there are folks listening tothem, first thing I would do is
(47:03):
call Ron Slee.
Second thing I would do is callVenky, and it may be tied for
second, as Steve Clegg and JayLucas.
Right, it's hard to establish asecond place, but each of these
individuals, starting with you,ron, is unbelievably accessible.
So if somebody needs help insolving a problem, they should
(47:25):
engage.
Have you know any of theseindividuals?
You, steve, jay Benke, there'sothers, I'm sure would welcome
the opportunity to jump in tohelp somebody, no question.
So if it's appropriate to youknow, offer this book to folks.
Just you send me, tell me whereto ship them.
And there's.
(47:45):
You know why not?
Why not learn today?
Speaker 1 (47:50):
We have such an exciting world.
And let me in the constructionequipment.
Let me narrow it down tosomething that I've been in for
almost 60 years.
We've got Caterpillar, komatsu,john Deere, volvo, and I might
find one other to put in there,but those are the big dogs.
(48:13):
Then we come down a level andwe look at people like Case and
JCB and a whole bunch of others.
And then we come down anotherlevel and we look at Mahindra
and Kubota and Yanmar and peoplelike that and there's hundreds
of those dealers.
(48:34):
They're mostly small businesses,maybe 20 to 30 employees, maybe
10 to 50 million max.
And they've got somebody whohas a passion for what he's
doing or she's doing.
Maybe it's a chef and they loveto bake, maybe it's an
(48:58):
accountant who likes to helppeople doing their taxes or
planning their pensions.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Those people need to haveaccess to education, the
traditional education model.
We got a curriculum of 300classes and a couple of months
ago there was a study and itcame back that something in the
(49:19):
range of low 30s of the degreesthat were offered have the
capacity to pay for the debtthat they get into.
So 70% they're not going to payfor themselves.
Education, to me, has aresponsibility of providing the
tools to go into the workforce.
They're failing miserably atthat and business has, to me,
(49:48):
the obligation of continuing todevelop their people.
These are not tools in atoolbox that you know your
skills are.
No, I'll get rid of you andI'll bring somebody else into
the next toolbox.
We've got to completely reorder.
It's got to be disruptive.
As you're calling it Venky, Icall it revolutionary reformers
(50:09):
and that's why I call thecompany Learning Without Scars.
I've got enough scars on mybackside from going out before
anybody else got there thatother people don't have to
suffer them anymore.
I can tell you how to avoid theproblems.
I can tell you some things todo that are based on my
experience, and my experiencerelative to today's workforce is
(50:30):
very shallow.
You know, I'm almost 80 yearsold and people that are 30 can
run circles around me.
My grandkids master's degree.
My grandson in the nuclear navyone of the toughest places to
get into.
He's a nerd.
He's 20 years old, astrophysicsand nuclear engineering degrees
already, but he goes to school8 o'clock in the morning to 5 at
(50:53):
night, 5 days a week and does 4hours of homework on the
weekend.
The people I work with in Asia.
The parents are really analabout helping their children
have a better life.
That's what we used to be like.
Look at India.
My goodness the opportunities.
The guy that does my socialmedia work is in Bangladesh.
I can't send him a checkbecause my check isn't passable
(51:16):
in Bangladesh.
I have to go through with athird or fourth or fifth partner
.
I use a transcription serviceout of Austria called Whisper
Transcribe that I'll takesomething like this and digitize
it.
Then I go to ChatGPT or I go toCopilot or Gemini or all these.
My goodness, what's out there.
It's amazing.
(51:37):
And yet people are strugglingto live.
They don't give themselves timeto help themselves and their
kids because both parents areworking.
They're the big losers.
This is not a nice picture, butit's easy to change and easy to
(52:01):
fix.
We just need more apostles outthere, more people passing along
the message.
Like you Venky, like you Nick.
It's so much fun if people justgive themselves the freedom to
make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Well, it is a great time to be alive.
Ron, I want to say thank youfrom the bottom of my heart.
When I get one of your podcastdownloads, all I want to do is
run through it quickly and thenreplay it a few times.
(52:38):
So thank you for being ablessing to the industry.
Thank you.
Thank you for you, ron.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
this should arrive to you today, according to my uh,
you just wanted to give mesomething to do this weekend.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I know how you work well I'm curious how you think
this book overlays with the onethat mined at plague.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
So my debt of gratitude is growing and I'm
excited that I will now haveopportunity to give back and
pass it on.
And, ron, there are so manyother frames and sort of
placeholders for conversationthere.
(53:17):
I'll just say one thing Start,stop, continue is in every
organization, and you just addedanother thing to it that may be
the most important thing, whichis start, stop doesn't matter,
and continue.
And also, I think everythingthat you spoke about today calls
for a certain amount ofself-awareness in individuals.
(53:38):
Yes, sir, and if you have thegift of self-awareness in
individuals, yes, sir, and ifyou have the gift of
self-awareness, there arevarious ways to develop and
cultivate that capability.
But if you have it, great.
If you don't have it, yousuggested an alternative, which
is great, which is go and asksomebody else Start, stop,
(53:59):
doesn't matter, continue is oneof them.
And you're really beautiful,tying together of ignorance,
stupidity and insanity.
And then there are two levelsof ignorance, right, which is I
don't know about this topic, butthere is a higher level of
ignorance, which is I don't knowwhat.
I don't know about this topic,but there is a higher level of
(54:21):
ignorance, which is I don't knowwhat I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, it's justbeautiful.
I mean, there is so much totalk about with you, ross.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
I think I'm going to wrap it up now because I'm
worried a little bit about thesmoke coming out of the ears of
the people that are listening.
Sir, I hope everybody hasenjoyed this discussion because
I'm going to have more of themIf these two gentlemen will
agree.
I'm trying in everything I doto provoke thought.
(54:51):
I want you to evaluate anythingand everything that you're
doing and just think about mymetaphor of a swimmer.
I finished last, but I beat mybest time.
I'm not competing with anybodybut myself, and think about
society.
In order to get ahead, we lookaround the room and I got to
(55:14):
beat that guy, I got to beatthat girl, I got to be better
than that's wrong.
Don't even think about that.
Think about yourself.
So, to everybody listening,thank you, I hope you enjoyed
this.
I hope you wrote some notes and, nick and Venky, I'm forever in
your debt.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to close therecording now and I'm going to
(55:35):
say Mahalo, and I look forwardto having everybody back with us
at another Candid Conversation.
Mahalo.
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation,
again continuing our discussionabout artificial intelligence
and robotics and the fourthindustrial revolution.
Nick Maverick has introduced anincredibly talented young man.
He smiles when I say young manVenky I'm not going to pronounce
(00:26):
your last name, sir, but I canand we're just going to wander
across the field talking aboutwhat artificial intelligence
does for us, doesn't do for us,and the challenges that we have
in life with the unbelievablyrapid change in technological
(00:47):
advances.
So with that as an introduction, nick, good afternoon to you on
the East Coast and Venky, goodmorning.
You're still.
Yeah, it's still before noonfor you.
Welcome aboard and let's haveat it.
So how about we start this way,nick?
Why did you want to put Venkyand I together?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So thank you, ron, and it's always a blessing to be
with you, Venky spontaneouslyme being one of the village
idiots on the planet it finallyI've been gifting Venky's book
to whoever I can think of andnumber one person on that list
should have been you and I'vebeen doing it for months because
(01:30):
when Venky you hear of peoplewriting books and Venky is very
humble and he downplayed hisbooks like most humble people
would but when I received andread his book called AI-Driven
Value Management, it is anoperating manual of how to
(01:53):
deploy AI at scale within yourenterprise.
It goes from strategy all theway down to tactics.
It covers multi-departments andI would never, I'm going to say
through the grace of God.
I know Venky.
Venky is a past chief strategyofficer for one of the divisions
(02:13):
of a very large company calledServiceNow and he has been an
advisor and a friend to me, butas an advisor to Build Data and
on our advisory board, and Ijust felt you two would really
benefit about as in, throughyour great work and learning
without scars, build onto yourvision and attach a very, very
(02:41):
detailed operating manual abouthow OEMs, dealers and rental
companies can just instead ofjust skimming the surface on AI
can really transform theirenterprise, which is your vision
.
So that's why I thank you verymuch.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh, and I thank you for that.
So Vinke Nick has told me aboutyour book on the frame that it
basically is a how to become AIliterate and AI functional in
business.
Is that a reasonably faircharacterization?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
It is Ron.
Sorry, ron, it is Ron.
I want to start by saying howexcited I am to be in your
company and Nick.
I think I can say Nick and Idebate about who's more
fortunate to have met the otherperson.
I think I can win that debate.
I think I've been the receivingend of a lot of kindness and
(03:40):
generosity from Nick and Ipromise to pass it on and give
it back, and so I'm so excitedto be in your company A very
interesting topic that youbrought up.
So just to talk a little bitbriefly about the book, in fact,
before we started recordingthis conversation, you talked
(04:01):
about an authentic conversationthat involves listening,
thinking and discovery.
So I'll just zoom in on thatterm discovery.
So much of conversation todayseems to be about you know,
seeking to be understood, ratherthan seeking to understand, and
(04:25):
I think, when you bring it intothe world of business, what it
robs you of is the ability toyou know, bring value to your
customer, in the sense thatfirst, you need to understand
where your customer is at, andthat involves listening.
That doesn't involve hey, Ineed to know the following
things from your customer is at,and that involves listening.
That doesn't involve hey, Ineed to know the following
(04:46):
things from your customer,starting with do you have the
money to give me?
Starting with, when can you buymy product?
No, you want to listen withempathy and to discover what it
is.
That is an area that I can addvalue to and then see if your
product or your solution or youroffering fits into it.
(05:09):
So what the book tries to do ishelp people have a value
conversation, and what a valueconversation means is to align
the business objectives of anenterprise, the problems that
they're trying to solve for thechallenges that they are trying
to solve, for the challengesthat they are encountering in
achieving their objectives withthe product or the solution that
(05:31):
you're offering, as perhaps atechnology vendor or perhaps a
capital equipment provider, andconnect the two, which is here
is the problem and here is thesolution, or here is the
opportunity and here is thesolution, and it is worthwhile
to have the conversation if thesolution is going to help
(05:52):
deliver some quantifiableoutcomes.
Business is all aboutquantifiable outcomes and those
quantifiable outcomes arealigned to the objectives, and
the objectives can be as simpleas I want to increase revenue by
X percent.
I want to increase revenue by Xpercent.
I want to reduce costs by Xpercent.
I'm keeping it, ron.
I love the term and it's aborrowed term jargon monoxide.
(06:14):
I love it because I don't loveit.
I don't love using it, buttherefore I'm going to try and
stay away from jargon monoxide.
Increase revenue, increaseefficiencies in the business,
reduce risk in the business.
If your technology product orwhatever product isn't doing any
(06:34):
of these things to a business,it is not adding any value.
So the book helps you forgetabout AI.
The book helps you firstunderstand how to speak that
language, how to do thatquantification, how to connect
your product with the customer'sobjectives and problems.
So that's the primaryfoundation of the book.
And back to what you told usjust before we started recording
(06:58):
, which is the importance ofdiscovery, which is the very
first step.
And you just talked about thehighest form of discovery, which
is blue sky, opening it up andbeing open to possibilities.
Now, where does AI come intothe picture?
(07:22):
As it turns out, prior to theevolution of AI to the state
that it is in today, thisexercise of quantifying,
communicating and helping yourcustomers understand value takes
hundreds of millions of dollarsin an enterprise to do.
It is not something that youput your product in front of the
customer.
Yeah, I get it.
I can see how I can grow mybusiness, protect my business
(07:45):
and run my business with yourproduct.
So it takes intentional,proactive, heavy lifting a lot
of tools, a lot of content, alot of services, a lot of
consultants, a lot of sellers,value selling, all through the
customer lifecycle, all the wayfrom the first step of marketing
to the first step of sales,from the first step of marketing
(08:05):
to the first step of sales, tothe first step of implementation
, to the first step of customersupport and all the way to
renewal.
And you got to.
This is called the value motion.
It is not just the customerlife cycle, it is not just the
sales motion, but it is thevalue motion.
And the book, uh, happened atthe time when I was simply going
to write you know and share.
(08:25):
I'd spent 15 years doing this.
So I was simply going to writeyou know and share.
I'd spent 15 years doing this.
So I was just going to write abook.
My co-author and I, you know,my co-author is a gentleman
called Craig LeBourin, who's thefounder and CEO of a company
called Mainstay, one of theearly pioneers in the art and
science of value management.
I learned value managementthanks to Mainstay and we wanted
to write a book and say, hey,you know what, you guys can have
(08:47):
it for free.
This is how to do valuemanagement.
And why even do valuemanagement?
What is the benefit ofquantifying and communicating
the value of your product interms of business outcomes to
your customer?
The benefit is that you doubleyour pipeline, you double your
revenue and you double yourrenewals.
I mean it's obvious, right, it'sintuitive.
When the customer understandsvalue, they buy more and they
(09:09):
buy with more conviction andthey go out into their company
and convince the C-level and theboard that this product is
delivering this kind of value.
I want to buy more.
So we wanted to write a manualor book, a blueprint, a playbook
for other people to say ifyou're a B2B player, if you are
selling any product to anotherbusiness, you will find
(09:31):
something of use in this bookand AI happened upon us and I
realized that you know you don'thave to spend hundreds of
millions of dollars to achievethese 2x 2x outcomes.
You could do it with far lessthe research that it takes, the
consulting work, that far lessthe research that it takes, the
consulting work that it takes,the workflow that it takes, all
of the heavy lifting, thecontent and the services and the
(09:51):
tools that is involved in thepractice of value management can
now be done supercharged by AIand therefore it requires that
you can do it bigger, better,faster, cheaper than before.
That's the book.
I'll stop there and I hope itwasn't a whole lot and I hope
that made sense.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
It made a lot of sense and, nick, thank you,
because, first of all, using theword value in what we're trying
to provide or do changes thewhole dynamic.
One of the exercises that Iused to do a lot of with
(10:32):
companies was get all theemployees that touch customers
into a room with a flip card, awhiteboard, a laptop whatever,
and just start whiteboard, alaptop, whatever and just start.
What do you folks believe thecustomer's needs and wants are?
And it takes a while to getpeople to talk because they
(10:54):
don't really trust.
Communications is not easy.
Patrick Lencioni wrote awonderful book called the Three
Signs of a Miserable Job, and itstarts with anonymity.
The employees feel that nobodyin the company knows who they
are, whether they're married,children, sick, have a debt or
(11:14):
whatever.
And then it goes to irrelevance, meaning that they don't
understand what their role is inthe company and where it fits.
Role is in the company andwhere it fits.
And then, finally, toimmeasurability.
They don't know how to measuretheir performance every day,
unless you're in a blue collarfactory floor when you go home.
How did I do today?
So when we go through thebuyer's needs and wants, it
(11:38):
takes a while for people to openup.
But once they do, they start,and I'd start scribbling on the
whiteboard or whatever it is,and at the end of that it takes
about an hour and a half or so.
At the end of that we go backand we consolidate them.
There's similar elements and wejust make a list and I stop at
10.
The following month I bring inhalf a dozen customers same
(12:02):
audience, same people that touchthe customers but in front of
the room now are the customersand I asked them the same
questions what do you folks needand want from us?
And they start talking.
And then we engage and I startwriting and everything's good
and everybody says thank you, welike each other, we're still
friends and we separate the nextone.
(12:25):
So we're spending 60 days.
It's relatively short, but longenough for people to think a
little bit.
And thinking is not somethingthat a lot of us do anymore.
We get into ruts.
We just obediently followwhatever the heck we're supposed
to.
We don't look over the wall.
So then we get together and Igot these two lists now the
(12:46):
customer list and our list.
First order of business is whatdo we have in common?
And many times there's out of10, maybe there's three and
there's maybe three.
That my goodness, I never evendreamt about that.
And all of a sudden we canstart engaging in what the devil
we're doing.
My purpose in life is verysimple.
(13:08):
Number one I want to makepeople happy.
That's kind of an easy one.
But the principle one is I tryand help you identify your
individual, professional andpersonal potential.
And that's nasty, becausepeople don't really think about
themselves that way.
I was very lucky.
(13:28):
At a young age I was a swimmer,and in swimming you learn very
quickly.
It doesn't matter what yourposition was.
We can have eight people on arace and I finished last.
But if the time I achieved wasbetter than anything I'd ever
had before, I won.
So I learned very quickly.
I don't have to compete withanybody other than me, which
(13:51):
changes the whole dynamic on howI deal with people.
And Nick's seen that and heardthat.
So then that's chapter A.
Chapter B I view technologychange from the lens of the
steam engine in the 1880s.
Here comes the electric engine.
(14:12):
It's cheaper, it's faster,there's less maintenance.
It got implemented right away,but they didn't change any of
the processes for a wholegeneration.
It took 20 years.
And then I translate that intotoday's world 1950, roughly.
Here comes the computer, 1960,here comes database, 1970, here
(14:35):
comes the internet, 1980, herecomes global positioning, 1990,
here comes sensors.
We have unbelievable technologyand if we translate that to the
steam engine, mankind,humankind, have become victims.
They don't know what to do withall this stuff.
They don't understand it.
(14:57):
Worse the leadership, theexecutive, they don't understand
it either.
The leadership, the executive,they don't understand it either.
They don't know what to do.
So if your book opens the eyesof people and kind of gives them
a roadmap, like you say, aplaybook, what a wonderful start
in a world that's reallyconfusing today.
(15:20):
Nick, what do you think?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I think the I tell you I'm I feel so alive, I feel
that we're blessed.
You know, so many things happenin our, in our lives.
One is the internet.
Um, I was listening tosomething yesterday with uh and
it was an interview with benhorowitz, from indreason
horowitz who's may I tell you ifI, you, I could have lunch or
(15:48):
coffee with somebody like him,or Mark Andreessen.
It's just that he's fun tolisten to because he comes
across as real and he talksabout the Internet and how it
was very expensive to monetizethe Internet in the early days
and that's why I think hementioned evite and evite had a
staff of 300 programmers and hesaid that's you know, in so many
(16:12):
words, so many of thesecompanies.
That's why there was this bustin uh, the internet.
Now, of course, we know, yearslater, it took quite a while to
monetize the internet, speaking,as I understand it, with AI.
He then shifts in AI and hetalks about the monetization
factor and the efficiencies.
(16:34):
And, ron, a lot of what I'velearned from you and your guests
, your colleagues, people likeSteve Clegg, jay Lucas and
others are companies, know theyhave to change, they know their
cheese is moving In the pastwhen they're able.
They've only been able to makeincremental changes and I
believe on the Jay Lucas podcastthat you did.
(16:56):
I believe, unless I'm imaginingit, there was a notion of
buying back distribution.
Certainly, you and I've talkedabout that, and what's kind of
cool is not to speak to theboogeyman.
The boogeyman is here.
There's no doubt about it in mymind.
But there's a tremendousopportunity now to you have a
lot of options other than justcutting costs and reorganizing
(17:21):
your business, and I can giveyou a legitimate sort of.
You can jump with.
You know your hot sink jumpingfrom the hot pot to spring water
.
So I think, with your vision,this industry can take very
practical steps to increase itsprofitability, which really
(17:43):
means providing for people andfamilies, and you said helping
people.
Right, that's certainly.
I know why you're here For me.
I enjoy the helping people morethan I do the business, so to
speak, and I know Venky does.
My wish is that you and Venkyconnect to break down the
(18:03):
practical side about how to makeAI approachable, how to take
your knowledge and hisexperiences at companies like
ServiceNow and break it down.
These efficiencies don't haveto be a heavy lift anymore.
If you went back 10 years.
Yeah, terenki said it veryheavy, lift Lots of blood and
(18:25):
guts that normally companieswouldn't pursue because
effectively they're a turnaround.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We've got and let me just come in and try and put
some glue in there.
One of the things that wasinteresting for me there was a
gentleman in Canada by the nameof Ian Sharp.
He was British by heritage andbirth and he started a company
called IP Sharp Associates whichwas Internet-based.
Xerox was one of their majorclients and, coincident with
(18:59):
that, one of Ian's best friendswas a man by the name of Ken
Iverson.
Ken Iverson created APL.
Name of Ken Iverson.
Ken Iverson created APL.
Ken Iverson was basically putinto slavery by IBM.
He couldn't work with anybodybut IBM and he's the guy that
created DOS, os, DB1, kix allthe major software and he wasn't
(19:21):
allowed to do it with anybodyelse.
And that's fine.
Ian and he were best friendsand Ken had two sons.
Ian hired those two boys and hecreated Sharp APL and it's
instead of a binomial, zero-onetype of programmation, it's an
array.
So if you're a mathematicianand you like math, this is
heaven and there's a lot to it.
(19:42):
But what that also meant was hewas on the internet in 1971.
There was hardly anybody thereWorld Bank, oecd, the government
, stock markets, things of thatnature and, interestingly, I was
one of the people that he gaveaccess to.
That's how I started myconsulting work, and when he
(20:05):
sold it, he sold the business toReuters.
I think everybody on the planetknows what Reuters does and
inside.
What Reuters bought was alittle piece of software that
Reuters sold to MichaelBloomberg, and that was the
Bloomberg 75,000, 125,000terminal that allowed you to do
(20:26):
financial analysis.
It was amazing what things aredone.
So transition that now to dataanalytics and artificial
intelligence.
A week before last, there was avery smart man who said 10 years
from now, computers will be10,000 times smarter than
(20:48):
humankind.
I have no doubt that's true,because they'll have access to
every piece of data that hasever been published and put out
there.
However, our challenge now isgoing to be data is dirty.
It's not clean.
Md Anderson's digitizing everymedical record in the United
States from 2000 to 2020.
Imagine what information that'sgoing to do and what it's going
(21:12):
to do for the development ofcures for health.
Elon Musk comes along and has acompany called Neuralink which,
with implanting things in yourbrain, can give people that are
born blind sight.
We're on the verge of thingsthat are just unbelievably
fantastic and leadership outthere, and I love them to death
(21:35):
and I'm one of them and a lot ofthe guys in the construction
world are friends of mine andthey're above my age.
They don't know what to do.
They've never made this muchmoney.
They don't know how come andand I chastise them saying
you're putting profit ahead ofcustomer service, you're putting
profit ahead of people.
(21:56):
And if you think about americain the last 20 years, everybody
says loyalty has gone away,customer loyalty, our customers
aren't loyal anymore.
Well, we've worked awfully hardto make them disloyal.
We don't answer the phoneanymore, we go to voicemail.
We don't have technical support.
That's local, it's in India,it's in Europe, it's all over
(22:20):
the darn place.
Now we've got cybersecurity andit scares the devil out of
people.
I know a lot of people thatlost a lot of money, got
cybersecurity and it scares thedevil out of people.
I know a lot of people thatlost a lot of money.
And even with a playbook, it'shard like heck for me to get
people to say yes, let's goforward, because they're so damn
anxious, nervous, apprehensive,and it's true with every work.
(22:43):
I call this the new era ofslavery.
It's just a new definition.
There's a lot of people workingpaycheck to paycheck.
Anything goes wrong.
Boy.
They're in trouble as a resultof that.
They keep their head down andthey don't want to change much.
They're okay, they understandit.
I'm in Russia.
One last tidbit in Moscow,maybe 15, 18 years ago, a man in
(23:05):
his 50s, three children,married for 20 years Executive
position, and I have a standardquestion If you could wave a
wand, what would you change inyour job to make your life
easier?
And the answer I got back wasdon't ask questions like that,
just tell me what you want me todo.
I felt so sorry for the man,but most people operate that way
(23:30):
.
That's a hell of a challenge toovercome that, venti.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well, ron, you gave me so many friends with what you
just said Sorry, no, novaluable friends and I want to
sort of use them as scaffoldingto talk about a few thoughts.
I want to go back to theindustrial revolutions that you
(23:59):
talked about all the way from,you know, hundreds of years ago
to now, and it seems like everytime there is a change of that
nature which is disruptive and,you know, it sort of takes
people to another orbit.
You have two choices asindividuals, and I'm not even
(24:20):
talking business andprofessional being different.
We have a choice to wait and bedragged into adoption, and
sometimes that's okay, butsometimes it causes pain and
damage and lost opportunities,and sometimes it leaves some
(24:42):
people behind.
Or you have an option to learn,and that, you know again, gives
me another frame that youprovided, which is what is the
role of AI literacy?
What is almost, I would say, apersonal responsibility now of
(25:03):
an individual, of an individual,maybe somebody in a household,
a parent or as a friend?
What can you do to promote andgive yourself AI literacy?
So, two options.
The first option we talkedabout is not a good option Just
(25:24):
wait and watch and be draggedinto adoption.
The second option we talkedabout is not a good option Just
wait and watch and be draggedinto adoption.
The second option involvesliteracy, but that literacy
could be in my thinking, it's oftwo types.
One is the literacy about thetopic itself.
Let's just pick one of thoseevolutions from on-premise
(25:46):
hardware and software to cloudcomputing or global positioning
systems or mobility that we havenow everything is on the
smartphone, whatever.
It involves learning about thetechnology, learning about the
business and all of that, butcognitively, it involves moving
(26:14):
a meta-level up to think interms of possibilities that you
haven't thought of before.
It's about knowledge of whatyou don't know about, and I
think the meta level thinking isa fundamental skill set that,
uh, you know, all of us can workon all the time.
You know we don't have to waitfor the next disruption and no
(26:36):
bigger challenge than thisparticular cycle of disruption
that is going on in innovation,that's going on with ai, which
we are not.
The two applications for AIcould be oh, how can we solve
today's problems that I knowabout, that I have knowledge of
better with AI?
Fair question what is it that Ido not know AI can solve for?
(26:58):
And that is the meta-levelthinking, and that kind of
thinking is not just, you know,it is about exercising and
building the muscle to thinkmeta level.
Um, and there are so many otherframes that I, I kind of
mentally noted in yourconversation.
Uh, I, um, you know, I wastempted to take my notebook and
(27:18):
start writing because I don'twant to forget them, because I
want to hang my hat on a lot ofthose things.
But one, it is a personalresponsibility.
And two, those business leaderscoming to the world of business
that are making a choice not todo anything because, you know,
profits are coming, revenue isgrowing, it's great, are, you
(27:45):
know, planting a time bomb ontheir own business?
Because eventually, eventually,they're going to be disrupted
one fine day.
And there are so many examplesof that.
And guess what?
I'll give you a short storythat opened my eyes more than
the person who was asking me forthis question.
I went to a conference and, youknow, on the way back to the
(28:09):
airport, you know, I called foran Uber and I was in the Uber
going and this guy, you know,was asking me hey, why are you
here?
What brought you to this city,as it was a conference, and what
is the conference all about.
And eventually the topic of AIcame about and I asked him.
I chat with people in airportsand cars, with drivers.
(28:35):
Just love chatting with peopleto get to know Ron again.
Another thing I want to hang myhat on is the magic wand
question that you asked.
I'm curious, without beingoverly curious, about.
You know, tell me, give me alittle slice of your life and
let's see, you know, if we canmake a connection.
And so this person happened tobe a, a school teacher in a
(29:00):
public school, and his publicschool, uh, you know, short of
funds, doesn't have enoughteachers, and so this person
works.
First of all, drives a verylong distance.
I think he said something likeyou know over 50 miles to get to
the school, starts at 6 am andends at 6 pm and he teaches all
(29:24):
the way from kindergarten tosixth grade, or something like
that.
And he said all the way fromkindergarten to sixth grade or
something like that.
And he said so much of this isnot about the teaching itself,
it's about, you know,administration, the paperwork,
and you know being like 100things to the kids at the same
time, and a lot of it is not funto do.
And then I asked like, why areyou driving uber?
(29:46):
And I kind of knew the answerto it, but I wanted to hear it
from him.
He said, um, you know I I'm notmaking enough money, so I'm
doing this now.
This was already evening that hewas driving me to the airport
and I said, like you know whatkind of mental and physical
fatigue you're in right now tobe doing this?
(30:06):
He said, yeah, I go, and then Idon't get enough time with my
family.
And you know it comes back tothis question of you know this
is I'm sorry to use that term,but this is a form of slavery.
Unfortunately, again, I'mhanging my hat on another thing
that you told me.
I'm glad I'm rememberingwithout noting down.
So, very good, I'm pattingmyself on the back.
(30:29):
And then he asked me thisquestion hey, you know, since
you said AI, I asked him hey,have you ever used ChatGPT or
Gemini or any of these things?
You know, maybe they can helpalleviate some of the pains and
take some load off yourshoulders as you're preparing
for things?
And I said you know what Lookslike we've got another 15
minutes left.
Let's brainstorm some areaswhere you could go home today.
(30:52):
Just go to chat, gpt orwhatever one of those things
large language models and sayhelp me come up with a course
plan, help me come up with aquestion answers for whatever
multiple choice quiz.
And we were brainstorming allof those things.
Then I just stopped and saidmeta level thinking uh, I got to
(31:15):
exercise that muscle.
I said you know what?
Don't ask me for ideas.
Go to chat GPT.
Uh, say that you're a publicschool teacher.
They'll chat you.
You're totally stretched, youdon't have any time to think.
Another one I want to hang myhat on very strongly, which is I
really believe that we don'tthink at all at work.
(31:37):
We are like robots alreadyUnfortunately not the kind of
robots that will replace us.
They're going to be advancedrobots.
So I asked him why don't youactually go to ChatGPT and ask
here?
So I asked him why don't youactually go to chat GPT and ask
here is me, here is my situation, here is what I'm solving for.
(31:58):
How can you be my assistant tohelp me get another five hours
back in the days where I canspend time with my family and
also be good in my school andmaybe not ever need to drive
Uber again?
And that thought came to meeven as I was trying to answer
the question, that we shouldreally be asking Chachi Pitti
(32:19):
itself.
And so you know, in that 20minutes of conversation, I hope
he took away some useful things,but I took away, you know, the
fact that you know, oh, we'vegot to exercise this muscle so
that.
So the knowledge of what youdon't know is, I think, the
ultimate knowledge.
I mean, you want to ask people,okay, here's my work, can you
review it, can you correct it,whatever?
(32:42):
But the most valuable questionis always what am I missing?
What is it that I do not knowthat needs to be here?
So I feel, with everydisruption, with every evolution
of technology into a betterorbit, into a bigger orbit,
we've had that challenge, andthe faster you give yourself the
(33:04):
education and today there is noexcuse to not give yourself the
education, because you could goto a chat GPT again and say I
don't know anything about AI.
I'm in the constructionequipment industry, I'm a dealer
and you know what?
I've got a small sales team andI always find it challenging to
(33:26):
deploy them efficiently andeffectively.
Thousands of opportunities areout there, thousands of
customers are out there.
How do I deploy them on that20% of the footprint.
That is going to give me 80% ofthe results.
I don't know how to do it.
You know, use that as yourquestion.
That will educate yourself onhow to do it.
(33:47):
And, by the way, that's exactlywhat Nick is solving for.
But anyway, I am sorry for thelong answer, but I want to hang
my hat on as many of yourconcepts as possible.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
No, it's perfect.
And again I use an example thatthere's 100 of us, 150 of us,
and we go to school for thefirst day and we're all 10 years
old and currently the educationsystem says you're 10 years old
(34:20):
, there's the grade you go into.
What I want to do and whatwe're doing with Learning
Without Scars, is I want everychild to take two or three hours
worth of testing.
I'm going to find out whattheir skills are, what their
knowledge is, what theiremotions are, what their desires
are, and then they're going togo home.
The following Monday is thefirst day of school and they
(34:43):
come to school and we assignthem a classroom from grade
three to grade nine.
We match the students' needswith a learning path.
So we take and createassessments 90 to 180 questions,
multiple choice for jobfunctions I think we've got 24
(35:06):
job functions, which covers 90to 95% of the labor hours of
people touching customers,leading people or managing
assets and we come up with ascore.
And so I get people that are 20years in the job, 30 years in
the job.
They kind of boo-boo this.
It's only 50 bucks, so it's nota big deal and they start out
(35:29):
and they come back with a scoreof 40%.
How can that be?
Because, to the point, you madeoff the scaffold and what Nick
looks at, charlie Munger and alot of his work that we're
playing with.
They don't know what they don'tknow.
(35:49):
Like you said, donald Rumsfeldwas mocked when he was Secretary
of Defense.
When he says the problem withus in the military is we don't
know what we don't know, well,that's the magic question.
And you got to be prepared as aperson to recognize your
ignorance.
In classes, I ask people I'mkind of weird, you know, it's
(36:14):
kind of funny.
As a teacher, I've beenteaching my whole darn life and
I talk too much.
But one of the things I ask isat the very beginning of almost
every class I've ever been infront of and this goes back to
when I was teaching atuniversity every class I've ever
been in front of and this goesback to when I was teaching at
university to doing consultingwork what's the definition of
ignorance?
And nobody knows anybody.
(36:36):
There's 20 people in the class,100 people, whatever.
So they're careful, they don'twant to look like a fool.
And I say well, it's prettysimple.
Don't be shy.
Ignorance is not knowing whatto do.
Oh, yeah, okay, I get that.
That's pretty simple.
I said, okay, what's thedefinition of stupidity?
And now we've got some peoplethat are understanding how this
(36:59):
thing works and they don't feelbad if they make mistakes, and
every now and again in a room,somebody comes up with it.
Stupidity is knowing what to dobut not doing it.
That's pretty straightforwardalso.
And then I add the third element, which is what is insanity?
And I either use Mark Twain orEinstein, who said insanity is
continuing to do what you'vealways done, expecting different
results.
And then I say to them in thisclassroom when you leave here,
(37:23):
you're not going to be ignorantbecause I'm going to tell you
what to do.
So I'm leaving you the choiceof being stupid or insane.
And, looking around the room, Idon't see a padded room in your
future.
So how many of you want toleave here and be stupid?
And then we start the class andpeople don't really know.
(37:44):
I put them off balance rightoff the bat, and that allows the
real person to be exposed andthat gives them confidence,
because I'm not going to shootthem down and their peers aren't
going to shoot them down.
And then, last little thing andthen I want to get Nick, to
(38:04):
climb in Change is tough, butchange at work is pretty easy.
And what I say to everybody youmarried, you're living with
somebody, yeah, okay.
Well, I want you to go hometonight and tell your partner
you're going to sleep on theother side of the bed and
tomorrow, when you come back towork, I want you to tell me what
the couch was like, because youdon't get to choose.
(38:25):
That my friend, somebody else,did.
That is real change At work.
It's easy, come on.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Nick.
You know as a bridge Ron, andI'm going to not omit some
details just to save whateverHappy to tell you.
But Vicki and I looked atsomething earlier today.
It's an example.
It was an enterprise softwareapplication that somebody
(39:01):
reverse engineered.
Keep in mind.
These licenses cost about$2,000 a person.
This company can make a healthymarket at 80% less you and I
let me say it in positive termsbecause I feel like I've been
thinking too much from thebottom recently.
(39:22):
There's a tremendous amount.
This industry's margins cangrow tremendously from the OEM
and the dealers.
We know that by getting them tobecome better team members
because they're effectively not.
That's what I've seen.
You have much more experiencethan I do.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
No, you're right.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Then they can extract .
Why should this industryoperate on such crazy low
margins?
Based on all the value meaningconstruction spending to the US
economy is 4% of GDP.
It's going to end the yearabout $2.2 trillion.
Why not rip these?
(40:07):
Engaged learning without scars,engage Benke in his book who to
speak?
And go in there and assess whatprocesses you can absolutely
rip out within months, expensesyou can rip out with months and
offer more value to the customerand your company won't have to
(40:30):
go through these ridiculouscycles that are effectively boom
and bust that are pushing many,not only dealers it's already
happening but OEMs to becomingturnarounds.
It's severe.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
We're having unbelievable difficulties.
And let me just throw somestatistics In the construction
equipment world forestry, mining, on highway trucking, etc.
About every 20 years the numberof people in that channel, in
(41:09):
that space, is reduced by 50%.
So if in 1985, I had 100dealers, in 2005, I've got 50,
in 2025, I've got 25.
And I talked to these leadersand Vinke does and you do, and
as long as their revenue isgoing up, they're fine.
(41:31):
And for the last couple ofyears or so I've been saying
well, I expect your revenue togo up.
The number of people you'recompeting with is down by half.
What the heck.
And they never considered thatthe men that are running and
women that are running thebusiness today they don't know
how the business operates.
Today.
The person that's selling partsanswers the phone, gives the
(41:57):
customer a price, gives thecustomer availability, customer
says thank you very much, hangsup, goes away.
That's the end of the job.
Last night, if there's a B2Btype of internet-based inquiry,
certain electronic catalogs andall the rest of the technology,
and hardly any of the dealersuse that or provide it.
(42:18):
But the next morning I want totalk to everybody that looked at
my site, check the price, checkthe availability.
I want to ask the question didyou order it?
That's the job today.
Nobody does that.
It's kind of like you getmarried.
Are you happy, sweetheart?
(42:38):
What can I do to make youhappier?
What do you want?
I used to ask people that workwith me when I was working in
dealerships about every three tosix months I'd go out and say,
okay, what do I do that you likethat I do and you want me to
continue?
What do I do that you don'tlike I do and you want me to
stop?
And what do I do that doesn'tmatter to you?
And the first order of businesswas what doesn't matter to you.
(43:01):
Well, what the heck am I doingit for?
Is that something somebody elseshould be doing?
Give me some time back.
If they liked what I was doing,well, I should give that to
somebody else, because obviouslythey're comfortable with me.
Let me get them comfortablewith somebody else, a different
vision, and the stuff that theydon't like that I do.
Is it my style or is itsomething else?
(43:24):
And if it's a something else,venti, that's taking us to where
you want to go, to the metallevel.
Why are we doing it this way?
I I've always asked thatquestion.
I my parents, must've gonecrazy.
You know why do we do that.
And and you know, there was anexam in Harvard for your MBA
(43:45):
years ago.
Everybody it was at MIT, Ithink.
Everybody had to takephilosophy to get an MBA.
Oh Jesus, murphy, what is it?
And the final exam was 100%.
No classwork through the year.
One question worth 50%.
The question was simply why.
Now it's philosophy and Nick'sheard this before and I'm not
(44:08):
going to do it to you but therewere three answers, or there was
one answer that was worth 100%,one answer worth 50% and
everything else was zero.
Well, if you got the zero, youdidn't get your degree.
If you got 50%, you better bedamn good at everything else.
If you got 50%, you better bedamn good at everything else.
(44:30):
The 100% answer to the questionwhy is why not?
And people need to look at lifethat way.
If your child is pushing back,they're a little rebellious
encourage it, don't sit on them.
I want people that are going to.
You know what's on the otherside of that wall?
(44:51):
There's so many.
It's a wonderful world.
Can you imagine living at anytime better than this?
So much going on.
It's beautiful, but you got toread.
There's some wonderful stuffbetween the covers of a book.
I'm sure your book, when I readit, is going to be the same
thing.
Ikigai, the Japanese pursuit ofhappiness.
(45:13):
Everybody needs to be happy inwhat they're doing.
So I hope that this is going tobe the first of many that we
can many chats like this.
We can have many candidconversations, because there's
so much depth on this screen, inthis conversation, that I want
(45:34):
my audience to hear and I wantmy audience to be thinking about
.
And those of you that are stillwith us I hope you're
scratching your head and maybe,like Venky, you've got a pad out
and you're starting to writethings down furiously so that
you can think about it after wehang up and any of you that want
to make comments, please sendin emails, send texts, reach out
(45:58):
, because this isn't a one-way,two-dimensional discussion.
This is a geometric approach tolife.
There are no simple solutions.
There's only intelligentchoices, and the problem is we
don't expose ourselves to allthe options to make that choice.
Sorry, nick, I didn't mean tocut you off.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
No, no, I apologize, I got excited and I was going to
pipe in and, if it'sappropriate for your guests,
your network, to people who needaccess to knowledge, this is a
good book and it's relativelyinsignificant.
(46:38):
What I'm about to say is but ifyou had 100 people built data,
will ship it to them on behalfof Learning Without Scars and
free book, free knowledge.
I will say this about, I knowthis about you, and I say this
about Venky.
If there are folks listening tothem, first thing I would do is
(47:03):
call Ron Slee.
Second thing I would do is callVenky, and it may be tied for
second, as Steve Clegg and JayLucas.
Right, it's hard to establish asecond place, but each of these
individuals, starting with you,ron, is unbelievably accessible.
So if somebody needs help insolving a problem, they should
(47:25):
engage.
Have you know any of theseindividuals?
You, steve, jay Benke, there'sothers, I'm sure would welcome
the opportunity to jump in tohelp somebody, no question.
So if it's appropriate to youknow, offer this book to folks.
Just you send me, tell me whereto ship them.
And there's.
(47:45):
You know why not?
Why not learn today?
Speaker 1 (47:50):
We have such an exciting world.
And let me in the constructionequipment.
Let me narrow it down tosomething that I've been in for
almost 60 years.
We've got Caterpillar, komatsu,john Deere, volvo, and I might
find one other to put in there,but those are the big dogs.
(48:13):
Then we come down a level andwe look at people like Case and
JCB and a whole bunch of others.
And then we come down anotherlevel and we look at Mahindra
and Kubota and Yanmar and peoplelike that and there's hundreds
of those dealers.
(48:34):
They're mostly small businesses,maybe 20 to 30 employees, maybe
10 to 50 million max.
And they've got somebody whohas a passion for what he's
doing or she's doing.
Maybe it's a chef and they loveto bake, maybe it's an
(48:58):
accountant who likes to helppeople doing their taxes or
planning their pensions.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Those people need to haveaccess to education, the
traditional education model.
We got a curriculum of 300classes and a couple of months
ago there was a study and itcame back that something in the
(49:19):
range of low 30s of the degreesthat were offered have the
capacity to pay for the debtthat they get into.
So 70% they're not going to payfor themselves.
Education, to me, has aresponsibility of providing the
tools to go into the workforce.
They're failing miserably atthat and business has, to me,
(49:48):
the obligation of continuing todevelop their people.
These are not tools in atoolbox that you know your
skills are.
No, I'll get rid of you andI'll bring somebody else into
the next toolbox.
We've got to completely reorder.
It's got to be disruptive.
As you're calling it Venky, Icall it revolutionary reformers
(50:09):
and that's why I call thecompany Learning Without Scars.
I've got enough scars on mybackside from going out before
anybody else got there thatother people don't have to
suffer them anymore.
I can tell you how to avoid theproblems.
I can tell you some things todo that are based on my
experience, and my experiencerelative to today's workforce is
(50:30):
very shallow.
You know, I'm almost 80 yearsold and people that are 30 can
run circles around me.
My grandkids master's degree.
My grandson in the nuclear navyone of the toughest places to
get into.
He's a nerd.
He's 20 years old, astrophysicsand nuclear engineering degrees
already, but he goes to school8 o'clock in the morning to 5 at
(50:53):
night, 5 days a week and does 4hours of homework on the
weekend.
The people I work with in Asia.
The parents are really analabout helping their children
have a better life.
That's what we used to be like.
Look at India.
My goodness the opportunities.
The guy that does my socialmedia work is in Bangladesh.
I can't send him a checkbecause my check isn't passable
(51:16):
in Bangladesh.
I have to go through with athird or fourth or fifth partner
.
I use a transcription serviceout of Austria called Whisper
Transcribe that I'll takesomething like this and digitize
it.
Then I go to ChatGPT or I go toCopilot or Gemini or all these.
My goodness, what's out there.
It's amazing.
(51:37):
And yet people are strugglingto live.
They don't give themselves timeto help themselves and their
kids because both parents areworking.
They're the big losers.
This is not a nice picture, butit's easy to change and easy to
(52:01):
fix.
We just need more apostles outthere, more people passing along
the message.
Like you Venky, like you Nick.
It's so much fun if people justgive themselves the freedom to
make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Well, it is a great time to be alive.
Ron, I want to say thank youfrom the bottom of my heart.
When I get one of your podcastdownloads, all I want to do is
run through it quickly and thenreplay it a few times.
(52:38):
So thank you for being ablessing to the industry.
Thank you.
Thank you for you, ron.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
this should arrive to you today, according to my uh,
you just wanted to give mesomething to do this weekend.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I know how you work well I'm curious how you think
this book overlays with the onethat mined at plague.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
So my debt of gratitude is growing and I'm
excited that I will now haveopportunity to give back and
pass it on.
And, ron, there are so manyother frames and sort of
placeholders for conversationthere.
(53:17):
I'll just say one thing Start,stop, continue is in every
organization, and you just addedanother thing to it that may be
the most important thing, whichis start, stop doesn't matter,
and continue.
And also, I think everythingthat you spoke about today calls
for a certain amount ofself-awareness in individuals.
(53:38):
Yes, sir, and if you have thegift of self-awareness in
individuals, yes, sir, and ifyou have the gift of
self-awareness, there arevarious ways to develop and
cultivate that capability.
But if you have it, great.
If you don't have it, yousuggested an alternative, which
is great, which is go and asksomebody else Start, stop,
(53:59):
doesn't matter, continue is oneof them.
And you're really beautiful,tying together of ignorance,
stupidity and insanity.
And then there are two levelsof ignorance, right, which is I
don't know about this topic, butthere is a higher level of
ignorance, which is I don't knowwhat.
I don't know about this topic,but there is a higher level of
(54:21):
ignorance, which is I don't knowwhat I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, it's justbeautiful.
I mean, there is so much totalk about with you, ross.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
I think I'm going to wrap it up now because I'm
worried a little bit about thesmoke coming out of the ears of
the people that are listening.
Sir, I hope everybody hasenjoyed this discussion because
I'm going to have more of themIf these two gentlemen will
agree.
I'm trying in everything I doto provoke thought.
(54:51):
I want you to evaluate anythingand everything that you're
doing and just think about mymetaphor of a swimmer.
I finished last, but I beat mybest time.
I'm not competing with anybodybut myself, and think about
society.
In order to get ahead, we lookaround the room and I got to
(55:14):
beat that guy, I got to beatthat girl, I got to be better
than that's wrong.
Don't even think about that.
Think about yourself.
So, to everybody listening,thank you, I hope you enjoyed
this.
I hope you wrote some notes and, nick and Venky, I'm forever in
your debt.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to close therecording now and I'm going to
(55:35):
say Mahalo, and I look forwardto having everybody back with us
at another Candid Conversation.
Mahalo.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.