January 23, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, hosts Amith and Mallory dive into the intersection of leadership and artificial intelligence, exploring why growing your team is the true measure of a leader. Amith shares his decades-long journey of building organizations, candidly discussing the lessons learned along the way. Together, they discuss the critical importance of AI training for teams, why failing to provide it is "leadership malpractice," and the distinct challenges of leading in a time of rapid technological change. From actionable tips to thought-provoking insights, this episode equips leaders to bridge the gap between AI awareness and effective implementation.
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🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
ChatGPT ➡ https://chat.openai.com
Claude AI ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/claude
Google Cloud AI ➡ https://cloud.google.com/ai
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
06:08 - The Sidecar Vision: Growing AI-Literate Teams
13:25 - The Critical Role of Leadership in AI Training
19:19 - Amith’s Perspective on Leadership Mistakes
25:23 - Wartime Leadership: Leading During Rapid Change
39:45 - Why AI Training Is a Leadership Imperative
40:00 - AI Learning Resources for Associations
47:05 - Closing Thoughts: Preparing for the AI-Driven Future
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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.
📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan
Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.
📣 Follow Mallory:
https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Amith (00:00):
As a leader, you have to do unpopular things at times.
You communicate why you'redoing it and then you do it.
That's what a leader is.
Welcome to Sidecar Sync, yourweekly dose of innovation.
If you're looking for thelatest news, insights and
developments in the associationworld, especially those driven
by artificial intelligence,you're in the right place.
(00:21):
We cut through the noise tobring you the most relevant
updates, with a keen focus onhow AI and other emerging
technologies are shaping thefuture.
No fluff, just facts andinformed discussions.
I'm Amit Nagarajan, chairman ofBlue Cypress, and I'm your host
.
Hey, everybody, and welcomeback to the Sidecar Sync, your
(00:42):
home for content all about AIand associations.
My name is Amit Nagarajan.
Mallory (00:47):
And my name is Mallory Mejiaz.
Amith (00:50):
And we are your hosts and we've got something really
interesting for you guys.
Today we are going to betalking about AI because, well,
we really can't help ourselves,but we are going to be talking
about something a little bit offthe AI topic proper in the
context of leadership, and Ican't wait to get into that.
But before we get into ourexciting topic for today on
leadership, let's take a momentto hear a word from our sponsor.
Mallory (01:14):
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(01:34):
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(01:55):
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Amit, how are you doing today?
Amith (02:07):
I'm doing great here in New Orleans.
We're about to go into a deepfreeze which has everyone in New
Orleans freaking out.
I think a couple weeks ago,when we were recording I think,
you were getting snow in Atlantaand we're about to get.
I think four or five inches ofsnow is the forecast for here in
New Orleans and I think that'sgoing to be interesting.
Mallory (02:24):
I knew it was going to be cold in New Orleans.
I didn't realize there wasactually forecasted snow.
Amith (02:29):
Yeah, my kids' schools are shut down tomorrow.
They're out today for theholiday, of course, because
we're recording this on MLK Day,on Monday, january 20th, but
they're out for today and thentomorrow they're already
canceled school.
So the worst thing about snowin New Orleans is I've only been
here one other time whenthere's been snow is like right
after I moved here and it was alittle bit of snow.
(02:49):
But the worst part about it is,you know, our roads here in New
Orleans are not exactly thebest, as you know from living
here for a long time, and whenthere's snow it kind of covers
up the potholes.
Mallory (02:58):
You can't really see where the potholes are are, so
that's a little bit of a problem.
Yeah, if there was enough snow,maybe it would pack up the
potholes and then you couldactually drive.
Amith (03:08):
We would have smooth roads but I guess four to five
inches, not too much.
But New Orleans, like probablymost Southern cities, is not
prepared for snow, so they won'tbe.
They won't have like salt onthe roads or any of the things
that Northern cities ormountainous cities are used to,
and so it's really treacherousfor people to be out there
driving around, or even walkingaround on the sidewalks, because
it'll be icy and slick.
(03:29):
So hopefully people heed thenotice from the local
authorities, who have stronglyrecommended that people do not
go out on Tuesday when the snowis flying.
So we'll see what happens.
Hopefully everyone stays safeand warm.
Mallory (03:43):
For sure.
Amith (03:44):
How are you doing out in Atlanta?
Mallory (03:46):
It's really cold today, right now 25 degrees, and I
think this morning it was like17.
That's pretty cold.
For me, I will say, beingLouisiana born and raised,
that's pretty cold.
We thought we might get snowagain this week I was actually
just checking, but it doesn'tlook like we are shockingly
enough.
But yeah, I will say I'm kindof over the cold a little bit.
It was fun because it was novel, and now I would like to just,
(04:09):
you know, be able to go outsidewithout bundling up.
But things are well, things aregood.
Amith (04:14):
That's good to hear.
I totally agree with that.
Like, if I'm going to be incold weather, I want to be able
to use it, and for me that meansgoing skiing.
So if I'm in somewhere,somewhere where there's no
mountains and there's snow, Ijust it's cool, but it's uh,
it's not nearly as interestingas if you have a mountain to go
ski down.
Uh, it was interesting lastweek.
Um, I was in Florida, um in thepanhandle, so not in South
Florida, but in kind of theNorth, uh West part of Florida,
(04:37):
and we were having a hackathon,uh, across blue Cyprus.
We had 13 people come togetherfrom all over the place.
In fact, someone came in fromCanada but unfortunately he
brought the cold weather withhim, so we had someone coming in
from Winnipeg and then we hadpeople coming in from California
and from all over the place,all over the country, and we had
a great week.
Our hackathon format is prettyinteresting.
(04:59):
We spend five or six days in arow basically writing code for
18 hours a day or so, and thatsounds to some people like
misery, but it's really reallygood fun, and so we get a lot
done.
But it was interesting becausewe always get a nice house
somewhere kind of beach-like, sothat you're on the water and
it's cool, but not a lot of timespent outside, because it was
(05:22):
pretty cold down there too 18hours a day sounds like a long
time to be working, amit, butyou because it was.
Mallory (05:25):
it was pretty cold down there too.
18 hours a day sounds like along time to be working a meet,
but, but you say it was fun.
Amith (05:30):
I enjoyed it.
I think everyone else did.
Mallory (05:32):
Did everyone else enjoy it?
Amith (05:34):
I think so yeah, everyone seemed to be learning a lot and
doing a lot of cool stuff.
So I think the thing is it'sinteresting is, if you're with
that many people working on lotsof interesting projects and
sharing ideas, you end uplearning a you end up doing a
lot more than you thought youwould, and so in five days you
get a month of work done, soit's pretty exciting.
Mallory (05:52):
I think getting everyone in the same room
working together toward a commongoal or even separate goals,
and kind of having that likecollective human capacity all
together, I think is reallyexciting.
Amit, I know we actuallyhaven't mentioned this on the
pod yet, but we've had somereally exciting changes on the
Sidecar front.
I think we've talked about alot on the pod how we've been
(06:13):
building momentum and growingand expanding at Sidecar, and if
you all follow us on LinkedIn,you've probably seen all the
commotion around Sidecar as oflate.
But we actually just brought onErica Salmrench as our chief
marketing officer, which we'reso, so excited about.
Amit, I'll let you talk alittle bit about Erica's
background.
She worked at Rasaio prior andwe are so happy to have her on
(06:36):
the Sidecar team.
Amith (06:37):
Yeah, I'm really excited about Erica's role as CMO.
I think she's going to bringobviously a ton of experience in
AI, in marketing and in theassociation market to Sidecar.
Previously she was COO over atRasa and did that for a number
of years.
She's been with Rasa previouslyfor over seven years and so
(06:58):
she's one of the original teammembers there, and I asked her
to come over to Sidecar becauseof the growth trajectory of
Sidecar and we have some reallyexciting things happening at
Rasa as well.
But on the Sidecar front, wejust have an unbelievable
opportunity ahead of us to goand educate the entire world on
AI, and that's our goal is to goeducate every single person in
the association sector onartificial intelligence in the
(07:19):
next handful of years.
So having Erica as part of theteam is really a remarkable
acceleration for us and we'realready seeing that start to
happen.
You know she's only been onboard since the beginning
officially, but we've alreadyseen some really great things
happen.
Mallory (07:34):
For sure Everybody join us in welcoming Erica to the
team if you see her, or join usin welcoming her on LinkedIn.
But that's not the only newnews we have at Sidecar.
If you visited any of our linksin the past few weeks, you may
have noticed we have a namechange.
Well, not really.
We're still Sidecar, but ourdomain is now Sidecarai instead
(07:54):
of SidecarGlobalcom, which I'mpersonally a big fan of.
Amit, I know you've been tryingto get that domain for a while
now.
How long.
Amith (08:03):
We first started exploring that domain about two
years ago and we finally got it.
So it was a process, butexcited to have Sidecarai.
It really is a good fit for whowe are and where we're heading.
It's obviously a much shorterdomain, which does matter a lot,
and so it's just succinct andhits home in terms of what we're
about.
So I'm really pumped about it.
(08:24):
I think it's a great move forus to have that domain live, and
sidecarglobalcom will stillwork, but everything we do will
be off of the sidecarai domaingoing forward.
Mallory (08:35):
Yep, I think it really fits us in this new year, 2025.
Well, today we have a reallynice conversation lined up for
you all, a bit different fromwhat we normally do.
We are talking about leadership, as Amit mentioned, which has
kind of been a focus for us inthe month of January as the new
year began.
So recently we've been thinkingabout what makes an effective
(08:57):
leader, particularly as AIreshapes, how we work and, of
course, while conversationsoften center on metrics and KPIs
, we believe there's a morefundamental measure of
leadership success that oftengets overlooked, and that is the
growth of your people.
So today we are diving into whydeveloping your team isn't just
a nice to have, but that it's acore responsibility of
(09:19):
leadership.
Leadership and, amit, you havespent decades building teams and
organizations and you offer aunique perspective on what it
means to truly grow people in anera of rapid technological
change.
So I thought we could use thispod to kind of explore that
topic of leadership, of growingyour people, and then also to
ask you and me some questionsabout kind of your own past with
(09:41):
leadership.
I know many of our listenersoften come to me and talk about
how has Amit done this, and I'mso curious how he approaches XYZ
, so I thought this episodewould be a really neat way to
just ask you some of thosequestions and see what you think
.
So, first question being whendid you first realize that
growing people was moreimportant than hitting business
(10:03):
metrics?
Amith (10:05):
Well, it's actually not so much that one is more
important than hitting businessmetrics.
Well, it's actually not so muchthat one is more important than
the other, it's just that Ithink the business metrics are
the result of growing people.
So to me, I started to realizethat, I'd say, fairly early on.
So my journey as anentrepreneur started in the
early 90s, that's when I startedmy first software company and I
wouldn't say it was immediatelyobvious to me that growing
(10:26):
people was the core function ofa leader, which I firmly believe
to be true now and have feltthat way for probably a couple
of decades.
But I had some intuition aroundit, because what I found even
early on was that if I couldtake someone in who had the
aptitude and the attitude, Icould train them to do just
about anything.
So they have to be obviouslycapable in terms of their raw
(10:49):
intellect.
They had to be willing to dojust about anything, to learn
and to grow.
And that's what I always foundvery successful is kind of
finding the raw materials andthen molding and shaping so that
the business's needs were met,of course.
But what ends up happening iswhen you take people who are
both obviously smart andobviously have a hardcore work
(11:11):
ethic they've got to be intenseto work in any of these
companies and then you mix thatwith a lot of different kinds of
experiences, including somesignificant challenges, and,
most notably, put people inpositions where they can succeed
, but they're challenged to dothings that they themselves
probably didn't think they coulddo.
That, to me, is where magicstarts to happen, because people
(11:34):
grow in these amazing ways whenthey realize they can do a lot
more than they thought theycould.
That, to me, is what coaches do.
That, to me, is the fundamentalfunction of a leader is to see
more in your people than theysee in themselves at times and
then to help them achieve those,those bigger things.
So I started figuring that outfairly early because I had those
(11:56):
experiences.
I kind of stumbled into thoseexperiences and I'm like, oh,
this is interesting.
If we can do this at scale, ifwe can hire lots of people, give
them these paths, they're goingto really love it.
I mean, some people will, somepeople hate it.
Right, in our culture it'spretty polarizing in the sense
that you're either going toreally love it here across our
companies or you're going toreally dislike it really quickly
(12:17):
.
And we try really hard on thefront end, when we're
interviewing people, to find theright fit, which I think is
important for any culture, toget the people that align with
your values and the valuesinclude kind of this type of
thinking right.
Are you about learning?
Are you about adaptation?
Are you about intensity?
Do you want to have growth as aperson, or are you more on
(12:38):
autopilot?
And there's cultures that arecool with the latter.
That's not our thing, obviously.
We're always in startup mode,right, it's always day zero in
our environment.
So for us, we had to have toalways find people that are
interested in learning andinterested in continually
adapting, because that's justthe name of the game for what we
do.
Again, not every culture islike that.
(12:59):
I think most cultures couldbenefit from a bit of that, a
bit more of that perhaps, butfor me that's always been.
You know, entrepreneurs tend tobe like that.
I think you know I've got a lotof entrepreneur friends and I
pretty much see this as athrough line with all of us is
that you know we're alwaystrying to drive change, because
you know you don't start a newbusiness typically to do
literally the exact same thingother people have already done.
(13:20):
It's very difficult to do thatand be successful.
You're typically looking todrive some kind of disruption.
Mallory (13:25):
It's easy to talk the talk, amit, but I wanna share
with all of our listeners andour audience that you really do
walk the walk here, becauseabout three years ago at this
point you interviewed me in acoffee shop on Magazine Street
in New Orleans in person and youtalked to me about growing
people and how that wassomething that you were
passionate about and I rememberat the time wanting to believe
(13:45):
you right.
But I didn't really know you atthe time and I didn't know the
family of companies, so Ithought that sounds nice on
paper, but we'll see how itactually plays out and I can
100% attest to everything thatyou just said, that you follow
through on that, that you dobelieve that and that you find
ways to pull things out ofpeople that maybe they didn't
know were within them.
But you said you felt this wayfor a few decades.
(14:06):
I'm curious if there's everbeen a story in your career
maybe earlier in your careerwhere you didn't quite get that
right, or maybe you kind of feltlike you made a mistake as a
leader that you'd want to sharewith the audience.
Amith (14:19):
Well, I've made tons of mistakes.
I've made mistakes hiringpeople.
I've made mistakes, you know,in putting people in the wrong
positions at times.
I've made all sorts of mistakesas a leader.
So, you know, if we havemultiple episodes of a pod, if
people are interested in hearingkind of an encyclopedia of that
I, of an encyclopedia of that Ican.
That's how you learn, right.
I mean, it's just been a verylong journey of making lots of
mistakes and I'm going to makelots more mistakes and I'm fine
(14:41):
with that.
I think that the whole point ofit is like for me as a leader
and for me as an individual tokeep growing myself.
I have to keep pushing myself.
So if I just kind of hit theplay button on something I had
already recorded, so to speak,it's not too interesting.
I get bored really quickly andI want to move on, but also I'm
just I'm not doing anythingparticularly useful.
So I would tell you that someof the mistakes I've made in the
(15:04):
past are being too aggressiveand trying to put people into
roles where they weren't a goodfit.
But I just thought I saw inthem something that made me
believe that they would be goodat X, y or Z, and so the
classical mistake and I've madethis mistake myself more than
once is you take your bestperforming salesperson and you
put them into a leadership roleto manage a sales team and you
(15:24):
think, well, that makes sense,because they're a great
salesperson, therefore they'llmake a great sales manager.
And oftentimes that's not thecase.
In fact, more frequently thannot at least in my experience
individual contributors in salestend to not be great sales
managers.
That's obviously not alwaystrue.
There are people who can takeon that different role, but if
you think about it, managing ateam of salespeople is totally
(15:45):
different than what anindividual salesperson does.
So I think you have to be verythoughtful about the personality
styles that fit best in certainareas.
You have to think about it fromthe viewpoint of team versus
individual, where people'spriorities lie, their personal
values and how they align withroles.
You know we talk about corporatevalues or business values at
the organizational level, andthose are things that ultimately
(16:08):
are non-negotiable and they'recritical parts of like people
either being part of the companyor not.
But then there's subtletieswithin that or there's
additional elements right, wheresome people are fit for the
overall values, but theirpersonal values may make them a
better fit for some roles versusothers.
Obviously there's skills andthen there's this thing called
preferences.
(16:28):
So people obviously have lotsof those and so sometimes you
know a leader says, oh, thisperson's gonna be great at this
and this and this, and maybethey could be, but they just
really dislike it even aftergiving it a try.
So a good example of that is inmy old company.
We used to hire more MBAs out ofTulane University down here in
(16:49):
New Orleans than any otheremployer and we did that for
years and years and years.
We hired a whole crop of MBAsout of Tulane every single year
and it was great.
And these MBAs would come outand they would have, you know,
freshly minted MBAs.
So they had finance backgroundsand they had, you know,
marketing skills.
They had all these things theylearned in business school for
two years of intensity at a very, you know, very high quality
(17:09):
business school.
And what I would do is I'd say,okay, I need you guys to all do
sales, and they'd go.
I didn't go to business schoolto be a salesperson.
It's kind of like looking downthe nose, kind of like, oh, I
don't want to do that.
And I said, well, listen whatdo you want to do in your career
?
Why'd you go to business school?
Almost all of them would say,oh, I want to run a company, I
(17:33):
want to run a division, I wantto not be what you end up doing
full-time every day.
But if you're going to run acompany, you have to know how to
sell.
And so we'd put MBAs through asales process.
They'd have to learn how to dosales, and not all of them liked
it.
Some of them left and that wasfine, and some of the people
that did stick around some ofthem actually went into sales
full-time, some didn't.
(17:54):
Some went into other roles, butthe sales experience for a
number of months was really animportant thing for their
development.
So I don't know, I think themistakes sometimes you make
mistakes based on kind ofmisinterpreting how people react
to things, and sometimes it'salso based on how open people
are with you in terms of howthey really feel about something
(18:15):
.
A lot of people will tell me oh, that's great, yeah, I'm cool
with this, and then you find outlike a month later that they
hated it and then they left orwhatever.
So you know that's going tovary by individual.
Obviously, you get better atthat over time, but you're
always going to.
You're always going to makemistakes if you're trying to
push things.
Mallory (18:33):
I had a realization at the Blue Cypress Leadership
Summit, which we've talked about.
It's an internal leadershipgathering that we host every the
fall of every year in Septemberin Utah, and it's incredible.
But I had the realization of mesitting with you at this last
leadership summit that you havepretty much, I believe, only
(18:53):
worked for yourself like yourwhole career, and I think I
asked you a question about howmany job interviews had you done
and you mentioned one in highschool or something, and so I'm
curious for you.
I know you have spent decadescultivating your leadership,
reading books, learning frommentors, but do you ever wonder
if not having had thatexperience of having worked
(19:16):
under someone has impacted yourleadership?
Amith (19:19):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean.
I think that, first of all,every path has its pros and cons
.
You know, with me, when I wasin high school, I kept getting
fired from jobs.
You know, I worked as a shoesalesman, got fired from that.
I worked at a bank, I got firedfrom that and so and I also was
entrepreneurial, since I waslike really young, you know,
throwing newspapers and doingcar wash businesses and just
(19:39):
anything I could think of tomake money.
So I always had anentrepreneurial element, but I
just figured you know what, andI didn't get fired because I
didn't show up.
I didn't get fired because,like you know, I was late or
anything like that.
I got fired from all these jobsbecause I kept doing things a
little bit differently.
You know, I kept wanting toapproach, like interacting with
my customers a little bitdifferently.
You know, I kept wanting toapproach, like interacting with
my customers a little bitdifferently.
Not that I had any idea what Iwas doing back then.
(20:00):
I was slightly less cluelessback then in my early teens than
I was, than I am now.
But the point is is that I justrealized, ok, well, maybe I
need to figure out something onmy own, like from the beginning,
as opposed to like go worksomewhere.
I do think if you go work atanother company, even if you
have entrepreneurial ambitions,going to work somewhere for a
period of time is a really goodthing if you get experiences in
(20:22):
the right places, right.
So a lot of people say, oh, I'mgoing to go work for this big
corporation because I want tolearn all about big business and
the brand attracts them to gowork for a Google or a PwC or
someone like that, and that canbe a wonderful experience.
But the challenge with thatkind of experience tends to be
that you end up in a veryspecific role where you do the
same thing repetitively and youdon't really see the breadth,
(20:43):
you see kind of the depth of onespecific thing typically, and
so it can take a long, long timeto really get the exposure
across a business to understandit.
If you're starting off in lifeat a very large company, for
some people that's perfect,though I think starting like if
you're going to go worksomewhere, working in a smaller
(21:03):
entrepreneurial company whereyou're given lots of different
chances to try lots of differentthings, probably would be good.
So if I had that opportunitywhen I was younger.
I think that might have beengreat for me, you know.
But you know, you never know.
It's one of these things that'san interesting thing to think
about sometimes.
But the path that I've been on,it was helpful in a way to not
have that experience because Ididn't know what I wasn't
supposed to be able to do.
And that's actually one of thebest things about hiring people
(21:25):
right out of school is that theyhaven't yet been conditioned by
other companies to not believethey can do something right.
Like I hire these young peopleout of a computer science
program and I give them adeadline that a lot of senior
engineers would say there's noway I'm going to get that done,
and they turn around and getdone because no one had told
them they can't do it.
So obviously they have to beintelligent, obviously they have
(21:45):
to work hard, but there's a lotpeople can do if they don't
have this preconditioning.
So anyway, I don't know if I'veexactly answered your question,
but I think it's been aninteresting path.
Mallory (21:56):
Let's say For sure, I think to that point of limiting
yourself.
I think of when we launched thebrand new sidecar website early
last year and how we met withan agency and they told us well
now, if you're launching a newwebsite, right, that's going to
take two to three months, maybe,is what they told us, and I had
never done that before.
And you and me said, well, no,I wouldn't necessarily listen to
(22:17):
them, let's just see how fastwe can do it.
I think we turned that thingout and in two to three weeks, a
new website, which, mind you,not saying it was like the most
perfect website ever, but kindof.
Once you start to getconditioned that things take a
certain amount of time or thatyou shouldn't be able to do
certain things, I do agree thatthat's limiting in a way that
(22:37):
that's limiting in a way?
Amith (22:38):
Yeah, for sure, I mean it's.
There's always frameworks forthinking things through that
people have come up with overtime and sometimes they can be
very helpful.
But you know, if you, if youbreak it all the way down to, is
there any fundamental, like youknow, reason why this can't be
done differently, better orfaster?
A lot of times you find thatit's just, you know, kind of the
doctrine of the thing.
Right, it's like how peoplebelieve and what's what's become
the standard way to do it.
(22:58):
And the website thing is agreat example.
It's like, you know, that'sjust how people think about
these projects.
But there's nothing fundamental.
If you're willing to move fast,if you're willing to take a few
risks along the way, I mean,perhaps there's less quality
assurance than some people wouldlike, but you know, I'm I'm a
little bit less worried aboutthat.
For brand new sites that have,you know, traffic coming to them
initially, you can very quicklypivot.
So, yeah, there's definitely adifferent perspective there.
(23:20):
But you know, for me a lot ofit is if you're, if you have
people, if you are a growthoriented culture and you have
people on your team that don'twant growth, you will fail.
You can't take people who repellearning and repel growth and
somehow inspire them to want tobe, like growth oriented
(23:41):
individuals.
There's some people who justdon't want that, and that's fine
, you know, it's just for usthey're not a fit right and
there's, and sometimes you don'trealize that until people start
working for you.
What I've gotten really reallyintentional about across our
hiring process you alluded to ita moment ago about your own
experience here a few years backis we get really like kind of
upfront about like look, this iswhat this place is about, like
(24:03):
this is what we stand for.
Our goals are ambitious, weexpect a lot out of people and
like you really shouldn't comehere if you don't believe in
these things, because this iswhat your experience is going to
be like.
And some people would say you'rekind of like scaring people off
and the way you are, but it'snot so much that you're.
For people who are interestedin the type of thing we do and
how we do it, it actuallybecomes kind of like a magnet
(24:25):
right.
We end up having much higherlikelihood of getting those
people to say yes, they want tocome here.
And for those that aren't a fit, we make fewer mistakes,
because when we have a failure,when there's someone who's come
on board and we've said allthese things but yet they've
made it through and they'rereally not that, they're really
not someone who likes to go andlearn new things and move fast
they're going to be gone withinprobably 30 to 60 days because
(24:47):
we're going to realize it almostimmediately and we're going to
give them a shot at correctingcourse.
But we're going to say bye veryquickly because I don't believe
in keeping people on board forany length of time if they're a
poor fundamental fit.
That isn't to say that ifsomeone has a bad day or
whatever, that you're lettingthem go right away.
That's not at all what I'msaying.
There has to be a lot ofempathy for people's lives and
integration of life and work,but the idea is, if someone's a
(25:10):
fundamentally poor fit, you'redoing them a horrendous
disservice in their career, notto mention your company and all
of your other team members.
By keeping them on board,you're just going to destroy
your culture and drag down thewhole ship.
Mallory (25:22):
Full stop.
I want to get to this criticalgap that we've talked about when
it comes to leadership,especially on the podcast, where
the acceleration of AI hascreated kind of an interesting
dilemma for leaders.
So many leaders that we talk torecognize AI's importance, but
there's a big gap right nowbetween acknowledging it and
then actually preparing teamsfor it.
(25:43):
So we know AI training I thinkwe can all agree will allow you
to remain competitive as abusiness, but we also see this
as a fundamental duty as leadersto provide that training to
your teams.
You've taken a stronger stanceon this, Amit, referring to the
lack of providing AI trainingfor your team as leadership
malpractice.
We've talked about it quicklyon the pod, but I'm curious what
(26:05):
experiences have led you tokind of frame it in this way.
Amith (26:09):
Yeah, so I know it's a little bit of a strong way to
describe something, but I reallybelieve this to be true.
This is not intended to be,like you know, emotional
clickbait for people.
The whole point about goingaggressive with this this year
and you're going to hear us talkabout this a lot upset some
(26:34):
people, and you know that isn'tthe goal.
We don't want to upset anybody.
But the point is is that if youare not preparing your people
for the future at all times, inall situations, across all
economic cycles and all changesin terms of technological
disruption, you're failing as aleader.
You have to expect a lot fromyour people, but you have to
give them the resources to besuccessful, and there is no
greater measure of a leader thanwhat happens after the leader
(26:55):
is gone.
Once the leader has left, youknow what happens because is the
organization thriving,successful?
Are there people there thathave grown enough to take over
All that kind of stuff right, ordoes the thing fall apart?
That, to me, is the number onemeasure of a true leader.
But while you're there, you canalso measure what's happening
based on the growth of your team.
Are you promoting people intobigger and bigger roles because
(27:16):
they deserve it, not becausethey've been there a long time,
not because they failed at theirindividual contributor jobs.
So, therefore, you move theminto a management job so they
can stop damaging the thing theywere doing individually, which
sounds like a joke but actuallyhappens on a regular basis in
lots of organizations for profitand not for profit.
But you can measure thatsuccess based on the true growth
of your people, and so what Ibelieve is that you have to
(27:39):
prepare your people by givingthem resources.
You have to go out there andsay listen, we're going to not
only give you these resources,but part of it is to demand that
they learn new things, and theworld is changing so rapidly
that if you don't require yourpeople to get on board with
learning AI now, they're likelygoing to be unemployable in the
(28:01):
near future.
There is no task that will notbe touched in some way by AI,
and so if you want your memberservices team or your event
management team or your financeteam or any other team member to
be successful in the future andI hope that you deeply care
about that as a leader you needto get them up to speed, period.
If you don't do that, I feelthat you are failing your team
(28:25):
and that's all there is to it.
You know, in the world that welive in today, it is abundantly
clear, as we enter 2025, that AIis reshaping most aspects of
life and business, and so youhave to prepare for this, and
there's two ways I think youneed to illustrate this.
First is make those resourcesavailable and make them
mandatory.
Don't just say, hey, we've gotthis training resource for AI.
(28:46):
We'd love for you to do it, butwe're not making it required.
That is not leadership to me.
I don't believe that that isthe way that you lead to the
future.
You have to demand that yourpeople do certain things, and
when there is a fundamentalshift happening of this type of
significance, you've got to telleveryone this is your job.
We appreciate everythingeveryone else, everyone does
(29:07):
here.
You need to get trained, youneed to achieve X in terms of
learning, and you have to do itby this deadline and give them a
firm deadline, probably fairlysoon.
Here at Blue Cypress, across allof our organizations, even
though all of our people arefairly involved with AI, we're
demanding that every one of ouremployees across the enterprise
becomes AAIP certified, which is, of course, our own designation
(29:28):
at Sidecar Association of AIProfessional Certification by
the end of this quarter andwe're not directly saying this,
but the bottom line is realsimple is that people who aren't
certified by March 31st willneed to work somewhere else by
April 1st, full stop.
And we're saying that not to bejerks, not to be mean, not to
be aggressive, but because weneed these people prepared,
(29:50):
especially in the role thatwe're in, obviously, as leaders
in this technology, and most ofour folks are so deep in AI that
getting a certification forthem is just a matter of going
through the process.
But a lot of them aren't, youknow, a lot of them aren't in AI
first kind of roles.
So we believe it's critical forour own team and I'd love to
see more and more associationsdo something similar.
Obviously, we'd love it ifeveryone did our certification,
(30:11):
but that's self-serving.
The point about this isn't aboutsidecar.
It's about there are hundredsof different resources for
learning artificial intelligence.
Pick one and demand it, requireit.
And the last thing I'd sayabout it is you, as the leader,
need to do it yourself.
So you shouldn't go out thereand say, hey, all of you guys,
you need to learn this stuff andit's real important, and I am
(30:33):
going to sit back and knownothing about this and I'll know
how to spell AI, but that'sabout it.
That is not acceptable.
So that's also a form ofleadership malpractice, because
people expect you, as the leader, to be competent.
You don't have to know everysingle detail of every single AI
model, you don't have to followall the developments, but you
have to be competent at thebasics of what AI is about and
(30:56):
how it's going to reshape theexpectations of your member
community and, therefore, howyou behave as an organization.
You have to know enough aboutit to be able to work
competently with your teams andto be able to help them think
about the world and think aboutbusiness and processes and
service in the age of AI.
So you know, I don't think thatthere's any other way to put it
(31:17):
, and so, yeah, I'm personallygetting out there and being
pretty aggressive about it, andpart of it is is that I, on the
one hand, 2024 was an amazingyear, certainly for across the
Blue Cypress family.
We all the companies across thedozen, plus businesses within
the family experienced recordgrowth.
Sidecar in particular had aphenomenal year.
It's wonderful.
(31:39):
But I'm actually also reallydisappointed in 2024 because I
was hoping that a lot moreassociations would get really,
really active with thistechnology, and I didn't see it.
I think that there's still avery small minority of
associations that are reallydoing stuff, so we need to get
everyone going right now thisyear, because this stuff is
moving really quickly.
It's not about the technology.
The technology is interestingto some of us.
It doesn't need to beinteresting to everyone, but if
(32:02):
you aren't getting your peopleready for an AI-first future,
you are essentially guaranteeingthat they are going to be
irrelevant and that they will beunemployed within a matter of
possibly months, but definitelyyears, and by the end of this
decade, people who don't knowhow to use AI fluidly are going
to be at an enormousdisadvantage.
Mallory (32:23):
We at Sidecar have an interesting mix of associations
who mandate the AI Learning Hubfor their teams and then those
that don't.
You can kind of never tell.
I feel like talking todifferent associations who will
mandate versus who won't.
But I imagine we have somelisteners here, because I've
heard this multiple times fromuh contacts at associations that
say we cannot mandate anythingelse to our team.
(32:45):
They're overwhelmed.
The more mandates we we mandate, they don't do them.
They don't see the value.
We'd rather encourage ailearning.
Encourage AI education withoutforcing it.
It makes me think of somethingthat you've talked about, amit,
before, which is leading in atime of war versus leading in a
time of peace.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat?
Amith (33:06):
Yeah, so when I've talked about that before, I referred
to this really interesting andfun book called the Hard Thing
About Hard Things by BenHorowitz, who's one of the
founders of the A16Z venturecapital firm and he has a long
entrepreneurial historypreceding that and just super
interesting book doesn't pullany punches, it's very much in
your face and what he's talkingabout is the difference between
(33:28):
a wartime CEO and a peacetimeCEO, and the way you're able to
behave as a peacetime CEO is alot more collaborative,
(33:53):
no-transcript, that mode.
Sometimes the best peacetimeCEOs are horrendous wartime CEOs
and the flip side is is thatsomeone who is an adaptive as a
CEO and by the way, I say CEOit's any leader but someone
who's a great wartime CEO whoreally thrives and is great at
rapid decision making anddoesn't mind ruffling feathers
and all that can make for anawful peacetime CEO?
(34:16):
So what I would suggest toeveryone here is that we are not
in a time of peace when itcomes to business.
We are absolutely in a time ofwar from a business perspective,
and that metaphor kind of onlygoes so far.
But the point about war versuspeacetime in business is
essentially the rate of externalchange exceeding the rate of
internal change, right.
So whenever the pace ofexternal change exceeds the pace
(34:39):
of internal change, you are onthe path to obsolescence.
And that's true for anindividual, it's true for a
business, and so the faster therate of external change relative
to internal change, the morelikely you are to be in big air
quotes war, and so that's whatHorowitz talks about in his book
, and I really believe that'strue.
And I think that mostassociations are built for
(34:59):
peacetime.
They've been around a long time, they're super comfortable,
they're sitting on a lot ofreserves.
Their culture is fairlystagnant, if, to use like a very
direct word, some would saythat their culture is
foundational and their cultureis, you know, based on tradition
, and some of that's great Like.
I don't mean to like disparagetradition, but sometimes you
have to really step back and say, okay, that's cool, but you
(35:22):
know, are we going to be aroundin two years or five years,
right?
Are we going to be relevant?
Are we going to be able toserve our audience?
Independent of what you thinkof your association, the world
around you is shifting reallyquickly, and if the expectations
of your audience for yourcontent, for your services, are
radically different than whatyou're capable of delivering,
you have a big problem.
I mean, a good, simple exampleof this is member services.
(35:44):
I've talked to a lot of peoplewho say, hey, our goal for our
member services department is tobe able to answer inquiries
within 24 business hours of whenwe receive something.
And, generally speaking, peopledon't do that.
In most of the largerorganizations it takes a little
bit longer than that on average,but their goal usually is one
business day, which soundspretty reasonable.
It sounds pretty reasonable asof maybe, say, two, three years
(36:06):
ago and perhaps reasonable tosome people today.
That will not feel reasonablevery soon because people are
expecting essentially real-time,high-quality customer service
coming from what's obviouslygoing to be an AI-powered future
when it comes to the bulk ofthose kinds of inquiries.
And if you're not figuring outhow to do that, you're going to
have a problem because peoplewill go to the lowest friction
(36:29):
solution, not necessarily thehighest quality, not necessarily
the lowest cost, but the lowestfriction, that which fits into
their work stream with the leastamount of pain for them, and if
you're a high pain experience,you've got a problem.
My point about all this iscoming back to people and
culture and leadership and, youknow, tolerance for pain.
Essentially, you kind of haveto look at it and say it's time
(36:52):
for us to, you know, acknowledgewhere we've been, but agree
that we're going to drive changeand not do this through going
through, like, a formal boardapproval that results in, like
you know, the whole membershipvoting on a bylaws change.
I mean that's going to takelonger than you have time for,
but that's where this, you know,there's a lot of discretion in
all positions, including, ofcourse, the CEO role, but others
(37:13):
as well.
You could be a departmentleader and you can stand up and
say, listen, I'm requiring thisfor our team and you can have.
You can go to the team and sayI really believe this is
critical.
I need everyone here to do thisin the next three months and
I'm only asking you to do likein the case of the sidecar stuff
that we talk about.
It's like less than 10 hours ofcoursework.
That's a totally achievablething over the course of three
(37:33):
months.
It's not unreasonable to mandatethat You're not saying, hey, I
want you to go get an MBA or goget a PhD in the next three
months.
We just want you to have somebasic competence and that, to me
, is totally reasonable.
So, going back to the wartimeversus peacetime thing, to wrap
up this whole commentary atwartime, which we are in, you
have to be willing to makedecisions that are unpopular and
(37:55):
are aggressive or feelaggressive at times, and I think
the people who are taking themore passive approach, saying
that it's, it's, we'd like to doit, and just using a carrot,
you know, you see, maybe see howthat works for a couple of
months, but then switch to thestick if you need to, because
sometimes you have to have both.
You're going to have a certainpercentage of your employee
population that's motivated.
They'll say, hey, this isawesome.
Out of my 100 staff at XYZAssociation, 15 of them got the
(38:20):
AI training Awesome.
But what about the 85 whodidn't?
That's where I say you, as aleader, have to mandate that for
the benefit of the organizationand for the benefit of those
individuals.
Mallory (38:31):
And if I were the motivated employee or one of
them on your team and I feltlike I was a part of an
organization that was committingleadership malpractice maybe
some of you listening to thispod I would probably want to get
out of there.
You know, I feel like there'sonly so much you can do at that
point.
Amith (38:47):
Yeah, and I think a lot of people will try to drive
change.
You'll hear some peoplestarting to, like you know,
raise their hand a little bit tothe extent that their
personality style would enablethat where they'll say, hey, I
really think we should be doingmore.
But a lot of times, you know,then the kind of the party line
will be well, you know, we can'tmandate it, like we can't X, y,
z, and I say, why can't you dothat?
(39:16):
Right, is there a law ofphysics that prevents you from
mandating that?
Of course not, you know.
Is there what it is?
It's tradition, it's culture,it's a lack of willingness to
ruffle feathers right and upsetpeople sometimes.
But I think part of it is isthat for the people that you
don't upset like there's somepeople who just don't want to go
do anything, and okay, they'rebusy, I get it, we're all busy,
but they're going to be a lotless busy pretty soon when
they're unemployed.
So don't wait till then.
Help them now so that they endup with a good future.
And so the point I would makereally boils down to this as a
(39:38):
leader, you have to do unpopularthings at times.
You communicate why you'redoing it and then you do it.
That's what a leader is.
Mallory (39:45):
Well, hopefully, at this point in the podcast
episode, you all are at least alittle bit on board with the
idea of understanding that AIpreparation matters and is
important as a leader.
Now making it happen right,that's another thing, and we
understand that.
So, amit, what is the firstthing you tell leaders who come
up to you at conferences, atmeetings and say, amit, I want
(40:05):
to start doing this.
I listened to the podcastepisode, I'm ready.
What do I do?
Amith (40:10):
The number one thing is awareness.
People have to understand thewhy.
People will get behind things.
That if they trust theirleadership, if they believe that
the leaders have their bestinterests in mind and the
organization's best interests inmind, and they understand the
why, even if they don't agreewith it, people understand
fairly deeply what's happeningin the world around them, what's
likely to happen and thereforewhy we need them to adapt as
(40:42):
individuals and why we need toadapt as an organization.
A lot of people say, oh well,like, for example, we do this
thing called the AI executivebriefing and we provide that to
organizations and it's kind oflike this landscape view of AI.
It's not about a particulartechnology like a chat, gpt or
perplexity or whatever.
It's more about the exponentialdynamics, what's happening
(41:02):
around us and why that's drivingchange at such a rapid rate,
and therefore, like what's areasonable way to interpret what
the next few years are going tolook like.
And that is the most importantthing for people to understand
at a conceptual level, becausethen they'll realize that the
whole world is going to change.
It's not just oh, next yearwill be just slightly different
than this past year, which iswhat it's been for most people
(41:22):
their whole careers.
If they understand that, then Ithink people will get on board
with saying, yeah, I really needto learn this stuff.
But a lot of people bypass thatbecause they have this mindset
that, oh well, that's kind ofmore of a strategic conversation
.
I'll only share that with myexecs and then for the 10x
number of people I have that arenot part of the exec team, I
won't share that with them.
I'm just going to give them thetactical tooling where I'm
(41:44):
going to teach them just onetool at a time and tell them to
go do it To me.
That's where you're missing anopportunity.
I think everyone in theorganization has the capacity to
understand that and needs tounderstand what's happening in
the world.
So to me, it's awareness is theeasy number one checkbox you've
got to check and there's a lotof ways to do that and then from
there dive right into okay, nowwe're going to take action.
(42:06):
This is what's happening in theworld around us, like it, don't
like it, hate it, love it,whatever you, wherever you are
in the spectrum of your personalbelief about AI okay, great,
now you understand that.
But this is what's happening inthe world and in order for us
as an association, as anonprofit, as any organization,
to be effective in achieving ourmission and effective as a
(42:28):
viable, sustainable business, wehave to be able to do these
things differently, andtherefore this is what we have
to go learn right, so, but Ithink you get, and therefore
this is what we have to go learnright, but I think you get to
the.
This is what you have to golearn.
This is how you have to go.
Mallory (42:42):
Change your processes once people understand the why,
and I've got to double down onthat.
I think sometimes people feellike the why might be obvious,
or maybe they just say the whyone time Okay, we're mandating
AI education, here's why, goforth.
But you, amit, have saidleadership is repetition or
something along those lines, andso saying that, why reiterating
it, posting it up on the wallif you have a brick and mortar
(43:03):
office?
I think all those things areessential.
Amith (43:06):
Yeah, I agree, I can't remember where I heard this the
first time, but I've heard thiswhere times from different
people that you're the chiefrepetition officer and you know
that's the reality of what youneed to do.
It's partly it's not thatpeople forget what you said,
sometimes that's true, but a lotof it's just reinforcement,
where you're saying, look, thisis what it is, this is what it
is, this is what it is.
We have to go do this thing andwe're all in it together.
(43:27):
Right, that's the other.
I think is also super powerful.
So, you know, it's people ingeneral.
It's kind of strange actually,because associations oftentimes
their primary function isprofessional learning,
professional education.
Yet most people don't want tolearn anything after they
(43:51):
graduate college or finish theirformal schooling.
They just kind of are resistantto it, and part of it is it's
not that the capacity isnecessarily lessened so much,
it's that people aren't used toit anymore.
You know, going back to schoolif you haven't been in school,
like full time, I think would bereally hard.
I've never done it, but Iimagine it'd be extremely
difficult to go back to schoolfull time if you haven't been in
school for a while and I think,if you're not accustomed to
(44:12):
doing any form of professionallearning.
If you never read books, if younever listen to podcasts, if you
never take online courses ornever do experiments right, it's
really hard to do any of thosethings.
But that's just like any otherform of habit building process.
You have to get startedsomewhere.
And that's again going back toleadership imperatives and why
we're using this intentionally,you know, kind of aggressive
(44:34):
phrase of leadership malpracticeis that now's the time to stand
up and get going.
There's lots of ways toapproach this, but you can't do
nothing.
Mallory (44:42):
Amit, if you were leading a small association
right now that had no budget forAI education, what would you do
?
How could you kind of getaround that with free resources?
Amith (44:52):
There's so many great free resources out there.
I mean, we ourselves at Sidecarhave tons of free resources.
This podcast, our book, isavailable as a free download.
We have lots and lots and lotsof content.
We're constantly publishingblogs and in addition to that,
obviously, sidecar tries to makeAI contextually relevant for
the association community.
(45:13):
So what we do is take AIprinciples and then tailor them
to use cases, ideas and theculture of this market to make
them as easily adaptable oreasily understandable as
possible in this space.
But there's tons of generalizedAI resources out there.
Every major company out therehas free AI training.
Nvidia has free AI training,microsoft, google, aws everyone
(45:34):
has free AI training out there.
There's tons and tons of placesto learn.
It's not an issue of money.
There are resources out therefor free.
There's also tools you can playwith for free, right.
There's free versions ofChatGPT and Cloud and Notebook
LM and all these other tools.
Of course, there's paidversions as well, but there's a
lot you can do for free from aperspective.
So it's definitely not a moneyissue.
(45:55):
You know, obviously, if you'rewilling to invest a little bit
of money, then you can get apaid course like what we offer.
You can go to other providersand get kind of their premium
offerings and it may not be acrazy amount of money relative
to your budget, but you canstart off with zero dollars.
And when we say, like we atSidecar want to go educate the
entire world on the importanceand the capabilities of AI for
(46:16):
associations, we expect that 95plus percent of those people who
we help educate will never payus a dime.
You know, our intention is toprovide the vast majority of our
content for free to the wholeworld of associations.
That's our mission at Sidecar,which obviously supports the
broader Blue Cypress vision andmission.
Of course we do have a premiumoffering and that's great, but
that's not the whole point ofwhat we're talking about.
(46:37):
The point is you can go outthere and do this so many
different ways.
In fact, that may be thechallenge.
Right, if there was like twooptions, you could go, look at
the two of them and make achoice.
Here I would say you know wehave a great blog We'll link to
it in the show notes that talksabout training resources
available for associations andAI.
We published that blog severalmonths ago.
It's still relevant.
Obviously, our own stuff is oneof the resources listed there,
(47:00):
but there's a bunch of otherthings in there that are totally
free.
So free is the place to getstarted.
Mallory (47:05):
Maybe you all pick a pod episode it doesn't have to
be ours Listen to that one anddo like a lunch and learn
internally.
Or maybe you all commit toattending a webinar at the same
time.
I think there's a lot you cando out there, with free
resources for sure.
Well, amit, it's been afantastic episode talking all
about leadership.
Everybody, thank you for tuningin today.
Go out there, learn AI.
(47:27):
You're already on the righttrack by listening to this pod
and help your teams learn AI.
We will see you next week andhelp your teams learn AI.
Amith (47:35):
We will see you next week .
Thanks for tuning in to SidecarSync this week.
Looking to dive deeper?
Download your free copy of ournew book Ascend Unlocking the
Power of AI for Associations atascendbookorg.
It's packed with insights topower your association's journey
with AI.
And remember Sidecar is herewith more resources, from
(47:55):
webinars to bootcamps, to helpyou stay ahead in the
association world.
We'll catch you in the nextepisode.
Until then, keep learning, keepgrowing and keep disrupting.
As a leader, you have to do unpopular things at times.
You communicate why you'redoing it and then you do it.
That's what a leader is.
Welcome to Sidecar Sync, yourweekly dose of innovation.
If you're looking for thelatest news, insights and
developments in the associationworld, especially those driven
by artificial intelligence,you're in the right place.
(00:21):
We cut through the noise tobring you the most relevant
updates, with a keen focus onhow AI and other emerging
technologies are shaping thefuture.
No fluff, just facts andinformed discussions.
I'm Amit Nagarajan, chairman ofBlue Cypress, and I'm your host
.
Hey, everybody, and welcomeback to the Sidecar Sync, your
(00:42):
home for content all about AIand associations.
My name is Amit Nagarajan.
Mallory (00:47):
And my name is Mallory Mejiaz.
Amith (00:50):
And we are your hosts and we've got something really
interesting for you guys.
Today we are going to betalking about AI because, well,
we really can't help ourselves,but we are going to be talking
about something a little bit offthe AI topic proper in the
context of leadership, and Ican't wait to get into that.
But before we get into ourexciting topic for today on
leadership, let's take a momentto hear a word from our sponsor.
Mallory (01:14):
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(01:34):
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their AAIP certification andsecure your professional future
by heading to learnsidecarai.
Amit, how are you doing today?
Amith (02:07):
I'm doing great here in New Orleans.
We're about to go into a deepfreeze which has everyone in New
Orleans freaking out.
I think a couple weeks ago,when we were recording I think,
you were getting snow in Atlantaand we're about to get.
I think four or five inches ofsnow is the forecast for here in
New Orleans and I think that'sgoing to be interesting.
Mallory (02:24):
I knew it was going to be cold in New Orleans.
I didn't realize there wasactually forecasted snow.
Amith (02:29):
Yeah, my kids' schools are shut down tomorrow.
They're out today for theholiday, of course, because
we're recording this on MLK Day,on Monday, january 20th, but
they're out for today and thentomorrow they're already
canceled school.
So the worst thing about snowin New Orleans is I've only been
here one other time whenthere's been snow is like right
after I moved here and it was alittle bit of snow.
(02:49):
But the worst part about it is,you know, our roads here in New
Orleans are not exactly thebest, as you know from living
here for a long time, and whenthere's snow it kind of covers
up the potholes.
Mallory (02:58):
You can't really see where the potholes are are, so
that's a little bit of a problem.
Yeah, if there was enough snow,maybe it would pack up the
potholes and then you couldactually drive.
Amith (03:08):
We would have smooth roads but I guess four to five
inches, not too much.
But New Orleans, like probablymost Southern cities, is not
prepared for snow, so they won'tbe.
They won't have like salt onthe roads or any of the things
that Northern cities ormountainous cities are used to,
and so it's really treacherousfor people to be out there
driving around, or even walkingaround on the sidewalks, because
it'll be icy and slick.
(03:29):
So hopefully people heed thenotice from the local
authorities, who have stronglyrecommended that people do not
go out on Tuesday when the snowis flying.
So we'll see what happens.
Hopefully everyone stays safeand warm.
Mallory (03:43):
For sure.
Amith (03:44):
How are you doing out in Atlanta?
Mallory (03:46):
It's really cold today, right now 25 degrees, and I
think this morning it was like17.
That's pretty cold.
For me, I will say, beingLouisiana born and raised,
that's pretty cold.
We thought we might get snowagain this week I was actually
just checking, but it doesn'tlook like we are shockingly
enough.
But yeah, I will say I'm kindof over the cold a little bit.
It was fun because it was novel, and now I would like to just,
(04:09):
you know, be able to go outsidewithout bundling up.
But things are well, things aregood.
Amith (04:14):
That's good to hear.
I totally agree with that.
Like, if I'm going to be incold weather, I want to be able
to use it, and for me that meansgoing skiing.
So if I'm in somewhere,somewhere where there's no
mountains and there's snow, Ijust it's cool, but it's uh,
it's not nearly as interestingas if you have a mountain to go
ski down.
Uh, it was interesting lastweek.
Um, I was in Florida, um in thepanhandle, so not in South
Florida, but in kind of theNorth, uh West part of Florida,
(04:37):
and we were having a hackathon,uh, across blue Cyprus.
We had 13 people come togetherfrom all over the place.
In fact, someone came in fromCanada but unfortunately he
brought the cold weather withhim, so we had someone coming in
from Winnipeg and then we hadpeople coming in from California
and from all over the place,all over the country, and we had
a great week.
Our hackathon format is prettyinteresting.
(04:59):
We spend five or six days in arow basically writing code for
18 hours a day or so, and thatsounds to some people like
misery, but it's really reallygood fun, and so we get a lot
done.
But it was interesting becausewe always get a nice house
somewhere kind of beach-like, sothat you're on the water and
it's cool, but not a lot of timespent outside, because it was
(05:22):
pretty cold down there too 18hours a day sounds like a long
time to be working, amit, butyou because it was.
Mallory (05:25):
it was pretty cold down there too.
18 hours a day sounds like along time to be working a meet,
but, but you say it was fun.
Amith (05:30):
I enjoyed it.
I think everyone else did.
Mallory (05:32):
Did everyone else enjoy it?
Amith (05:34):
I think so yeah, everyone seemed to be learning a lot and
doing a lot of cool stuff.
So I think the thing is it'sinteresting is, if you're with
that many people working on lotsof interesting projects and
sharing ideas, you end uplearning a you end up doing a
lot more than you thought youwould, and so in five days you
get a month of work done, soit's pretty exciting.
Mallory (05:52):
I think getting everyone in the same room
working together toward a commongoal or even separate goals,
and kind of having that likecollective human capacity all
together, I think is reallyexciting.
Amit, I know we actuallyhaven't mentioned this on the
pod yet, but we've had somereally exciting changes on the
Sidecar front.
I think we've talked about alot on the pod how we've been
(06:13):
building momentum and growingand expanding at Sidecar, and if
you all follow us on LinkedIn,you've probably seen all the
commotion around Sidecar as oflate.
But we actually just brought onErica Salmrench as our chief
marketing officer, which we'reso, so excited about.
Amit, I'll let you talk alittle bit about Erica's
background.
She worked at Rasaio prior andwe are so happy to have her on
(06:36):
the Sidecar team.
Amith (06:37):
Yeah, I'm really excited about Erica's role as CMO.
I think she's going to bringobviously a ton of experience in
AI, in marketing and in theassociation market to Sidecar.
Previously she was COO over atRasa and did that for a number
of years.
She's been with Rasa previouslyfor over seven years and so
(06:58):
she's one of the original teammembers there, and I asked her
to come over to Sidecar becauseof the growth trajectory of
Sidecar and we have some reallyexciting things happening at
Rasa as well.
But on the Sidecar front, wejust have an unbelievable
opportunity ahead of us to goand educate the entire world on
AI, and that's our goal is to goeducate every single person in
the association sector onartificial intelligence in the
(07:19):
next handful of years.
So having Erica as part of theteam is really a remarkable
acceleration for us and we'realready seeing that start to
happen.
You know she's only been onboard since the beginning
officially, but we've alreadyseen some really great things
happen.
Mallory (07:34):
For sure Everybody join us in welcoming Erica to the
team if you see her, or join usin welcoming her on LinkedIn.
But that's not the only newnews we have at Sidecar.
If you visited any of our linksin the past few weeks, you may
have noticed we have a namechange.
Well, not really.
We're still Sidecar, but ourdomain is now Sidecarai instead
(07:54):
of SidecarGlobalcom, which I'mpersonally a big fan of.
Amit, I know you've been tryingto get that domain for a while
now.
How long.
Amith (08:03):
We first started exploring that domain about two
years ago and we finally got it.
So it was a process, butexcited to have Sidecarai.
It really is a good fit for whowe are and where we're heading.
It's obviously a much shorterdomain, which does matter a lot,
and so it's just succinct andhits home in terms of what we're
about.
So I'm really pumped about it.
(08:24):
I think it's a great move forus to have that domain live, and
sidecarglobalcom will stillwork, but everything we do will
be off of the sidecarai domaingoing forward.
Mallory (08:35):
Yep, I think it really fits us in this new year, 2025.
Well, today we have a reallynice conversation lined up for
you all, a bit different fromwhat we normally do.
We are talking about leadership, as Amit mentioned, which has
kind of been a focus for us inthe month of January as the new
year began.
So recently we've been thinkingabout what makes an effective
(08:57):
leader, particularly as AIreshapes, how we work and, of
course, while conversationsoften center on metrics and KPIs
, we believe there's a morefundamental measure of
leadership success that oftengets overlooked, and that is the
growth of your people.
So today we are diving into whydeveloping your team isn't just
a nice to have, but that it's acore responsibility of
(09:19):
leadership.
Leadership and, amit, you havespent decades building teams and
organizations and you offer aunique perspective on what it
means to truly grow people in anera of rapid technological
change.
So I thought we could use thispod to kind of explore that
topic of leadership, of growingyour people, and then also to
ask you and me some questionsabout kind of your own past with
(09:41):
leadership.
I know many of our listenersoften come to me and talk about
how has Amit done this, and I'mso curious how he approaches XYZ
, so I thought this episodewould be a really neat way to
just ask you some of thosequestions and see what you think
.
So, first question being whendid you first realize that
growing people was moreimportant than hitting business
(10:03):
metrics?
Amith (10:05):
Well, it's actually not so much that one is more
important than hitting businessmetrics.
Well, it's actually not so muchthat one is more important than
the other, it's just that Ithink the business metrics are
the result of growing people.
So to me, I started to realizethat, I'd say, fairly early on.
So my journey as anentrepreneur started in the
early 90s, that's when I startedmy first software company and I
wouldn't say it was immediatelyobvious to me that growing
(10:26):
people was the core function ofa leader, which I firmly believe
to be true now and have feltthat way for probably a couple
of decades.
But I had some intuition aroundit, because what I found even
early on was that if I couldtake someone in who had the
aptitude and the attitude, Icould train them to do just
about anything.
So they have to be obviouslycapable in terms of their raw
(10:49):
intellect.
They had to be willing to dojust about anything, to learn
and to grow.
And that's what I always foundvery successful is kind of
finding the raw materials andthen molding and shaping so that
the business's needs were met,of course.
But what ends up happening iswhen you take people who are
both obviously smart andobviously have a hardcore work
(11:11):
ethic they've got to be intenseto work in any of these
companies and then you mix thatwith a lot of different kinds of
experiences, including somesignificant challenges, and,
most notably, put people inpositions where they can succeed
, but they're challenged to dothings that they themselves
probably didn't think they coulddo.
That, to me, is where magicstarts to happen, because people
(11:34):
grow in these amazing ways whenthey realize they can do a lot
more than they thought theycould.
That, to me, is what coaches do.
That, to me, is the fundamentalfunction of a leader is to see
more in your people than theysee in themselves at times and
then to help them achieve those,those bigger things.
So I started figuring that outfairly early because I had those
(11:56):
experiences.
I kind of stumbled into thoseexperiences and I'm like, oh,
this is interesting.
If we can do this at scale, ifwe can hire lots of people, give
them these paths, they're goingto really love it.
I mean, some people will, somepeople hate it.
Right, in our culture it'spretty polarizing in the sense
that you're either going toreally love it here across our
companies or you're going toreally dislike it really quickly
(12:17):
.
And we try really hard on thefront end, when we're
interviewing people, to find theright fit, which I think is
important for any culture, toget the people that align with
your values and the valuesinclude kind of this type of
thinking right.
Are you about learning?
Are you about adaptation?
Are you about intensity?
Do you want to have growth as aperson, or are you more on
(12:38):
autopilot?
And there's cultures that arecool with the latter.
That's not our thing, obviously.
We're always in startup mode,right, it's always day zero in
our environment.
So for us, we had to have toalways find people that are
interested in learning andinterested in continually
adapting, because that's justthe name of the game for what we
do.
Again, not every culture islike that.
(12:59):
I think most cultures couldbenefit from a bit of that, a
bit more of that perhaps, butfor me that's always been.
You know, entrepreneurs tend tobe like that.
I think you know I've got a lotof entrepreneur friends and I
pretty much see this as athrough line with all of us is
that you know we're alwaystrying to drive change, because
you know you don't start a newbusiness typically to do
literally the exact same thingother people have already done.
(13:20):
It's very difficult to do thatand be successful.
You're typically looking todrive some kind of disruption.
Mallory (13:25):
It's easy to talk the talk, amit, but I wanna share
with all of our listeners andour audience that you really do
walk the walk here, becauseabout three years ago at this
point you interviewed me in acoffee shop on Magazine Street
in New Orleans in person and youtalked to me about growing
people and how that wassomething that you were
passionate about and I rememberat the time wanting to believe
(13:45):
you right.
But I didn't really know you atthe time and I didn't know the
family of companies, so Ithought that sounds nice on
paper, but we'll see how itactually plays out and I can
100% attest to everything thatyou just said, that you follow
through on that, that you dobelieve that and that you find
ways to pull things out ofpeople that maybe they didn't
know were within them.
But you said you felt this wayfor a few decades.
(14:06):
I'm curious if there's everbeen a story in your career
maybe earlier in your careerwhere you didn't quite get that
right, or maybe you kind of feltlike you made a mistake as a
leader that you'd want to sharewith the audience.
Amith (14:19):
Well, I've made tons of mistakes.
I've made mistakes hiringpeople.
I've made mistakes, you know,in putting people in the wrong
positions at times.
I've made all sorts of mistakesas a leader.
So, you know, if we havemultiple episodes of a pod, if
people are interested in hearingkind of an encyclopedia of that
I, of an encyclopedia of that Ican.
That's how you learn, right.
I mean, it's just been a verylong journey of making lots of
mistakes and I'm going to makelots more mistakes and I'm fine
(14:41):
with that.
I think that the whole point ofit is like for me as a leader
and for me as an individual tokeep growing myself.
I have to keep pushing myself.
So if I just kind of hit theplay button on something I had
already recorded, so to speak,it's not too interesting.
I get bored really quickly andI want to move on, but also I'm
just I'm not doing anythingparticularly useful.
So I would tell you that someof the mistakes I've made in the
(15:04):
past are being too aggressiveand trying to put people into
roles where they weren't a goodfit.
But I just thought I saw inthem something that made me
believe that they would be goodat X, y or Z, and so the
classical mistake and I've madethis mistake myself more than
once is you take your bestperforming salesperson and you
put them into a leadership roleto manage a sales team and you
(15:24):
think, well, that makes sense,because they're a great
salesperson, therefore they'llmake a great sales manager.
And oftentimes that's not thecase.
In fact, more frequently thannot at least in my experience
individual contributors in salestend to not be great sales
managers.
That's obviously not alwaystrue.
There are people who can takeon that different role, but if
you think about it, managing ateam of salespeople is totally
(15:45):
different than what anindividual salesperson does.
So I think you have to be verythoughtful about the personality
styles that fit best in certainareas.
You have to think about it fromthe viewpoint of team versus
individual, where people'spriorities lie, their personal
values and how they align withroles.
You know we talk about corporatevalues or business values at
the organizational level, andthose are things that ultimately
(16:08):
are non-negotiable and they'recritical parts of like people
either being part of the companyor not.
But then there's subtletieswithin that or there's
additional elements right, wheresome people are fit for the
overall values, but theirpersonal values may make them a
better fit for some roles versusothers.
Obviously there's skills andthen there's this thing called
preferences.
(16:28):
So people obviously have lotsof those and so sometimes you
know a leader says, oh, thisperson's gonna be great at this
and this and this, and maybethey could be, but they just
really dislike it even aftergiving it a try.
So a good example of that is inmy old company.
We used to hire more MBAs out ofTulane University down here in
(16:49):
New Orleans than any otheremployer and we did that for
years and years and years.
We hired a whole crop of MBAsout of Tulane every single year
and it was great.
And these MBAs would come outand they would have, you know,
freshly minted MBAs.
So they had finance backgroundsand they had, you know,
marketing skills.
They had all these things theylearned in business school for
two years of intensity at a very, you know, very high quality
(17:09):
business school.
And what I would do is I'd say,okay, I need you guys to all do
sales, and they'd go.
I didn't go to business schoolto be a salesperson.
It's kind of like looking downthe nose, kind of like, oh, I
don't want to do that.
And I said, well, listen whatdo you want to do in your career
?
Why'd you go to business school?
Almost all of them would say,oh, I want to run a company, I
(17:33):
want to run a division, I wantto not be what you end up doing
full-time every day.
But if you're going to run acompany, you have to know how to
sell.
And so we'd put MBAs through asales process.
They'd have to learn how to dosales, and not all of them liked
it.
Some of them left and that wasfine, and some of the people
that did stick around some ofthem actually went into sales
full-time, some didn't.
(17:54):
Some went into other roles, butthe sales experience for a
number of months was really animportant thing for their
development.
So I don't know, I think themistakes sometimes you make
mistakes based on kind ofmisinterpreting how people react
to things, and sometimes it'salso based on how open people
are with you in terms of howthey really feel about something
(18:15):
.
A lot of people will tell me oh, that's great, yeah, I'm cool
with this, and then you find outlike a month later that they
hated it and then they left orwhatever.
So you know that's going tovary by individual.
Obviously, you get better atthat over time, but you're
always going to.
You're always going to makemistakes if you're trying to
push things.
Mallory (18:33):
I had a realization at the Blue Cypress Leadership
Summit, which we've talked about.
It's an internal leadershipgathering that we host every the
fall of every year in Septemberin Utah, and it's incredible.
But I had the realization of mesitting with you at this last
leadership summit that you havepretty much, I believe, only
(18:53):
worked for yourself like yourwhole career, and I think I
asked you a question about howmany job interviews had you done
and you mentioned one in highschool or something, and so I'm
curious for you.
I know you have spent decadescultivating your leadership,
reading books, learning frommentors, but do you ever wonder
if not having had thatexperience of having worked
(19:16):
under someone has impacted yourleadership?
Amith (19:19):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean.
I think that, first of all,every path has its pros and cons
.
You know, with me, when I wasin high school, I kept getting
fired from jobs.
You know, I worked as a shoesalesman, got fired from that.
I worked at a bank, I got firedfrom that and so and I also was
entrepreneurial, since I waslike really young, you know,
throwing newspapers and doingcar wash businesses and just
(19:39):
anything I could think of tomake money.
So I always had anentrepreneurial element, but I
just figured you know what, andI didn't get fired because I
didn't show up.
I didn't get fired because,like you know, I was late or
anything like that.
I got fired from all these jobsbecause I kept doing things a
little bit differently.
You know, I kept wanting toapproach, like interacting with
my customers a little bitdifferently.
You know, I kept wanting toapproach, like interacting with
my customers a little bitdifferently.
Not that I had any idea what Iwas doing back then.
(20:00):
I was slightly less cluelessback then in my early teens than
I was, than I am now.
But the point is is that I justrealized, ok, well, maybe I
need to figure out something onmy own, like from the beginning,
as opposed to like go worksomewhere.
I do think if you go work atanother company, even if you
have entrepreneurial ambitions,going to work somewhere for a
period of time is a really goodthing if you get experiences in
(20:22):
the right places, right.
So a lot of people say, oh, I'mgoing to go work for this big
corporation because I want tolearn all about big business and
the brand attracts them to gowork for a Google or a PwC or
someone like that, and that canbe a wonderful experience.
But the challenge with thatkind of experience tends to be
that you end up in a veryspecific role where you do the
same thing repetitively and youdon't really see the breadth,
(20:43):
you see kind of the depth of onespecific thing typically, and
so it can take a long, long timeto really get the exposure
across a business to understandit.
If you're starting off in lifeat a very large company, for
some people that's perfect,though I think starting like if
you're going to go worksomewhere, working in a smaller
(21:03):
entrepreneurial company whereyou're given lots of different
chances to try lots of differentthings, probably would be good.
So if I had that opportunitywhen I was younger.
I think that might have beengreat for me, you know.
But you know, you never know.
It's one of these things that'san interesting thing to think
about sometimes.
But the path that I've been on,it was helpful in a way to not
have that experience because Ididn't know what I wasn't
supposed to be able to do.
And that's actually one of thebest things about hiring people
(21:25):
right out of school is that theyhaven't yet been conditioned by
other companies to not believethey can do something right.
Like I hire these young peopleout of a computer science
program and I give them adeadline that a lot of senior
engineers would say there's noway I'm going to get that done,
and they turn around and getdone because no one had told
them they can't do it.
So obviously they have to beintelligent, obviously they have
(21:45):
to work hard, but there's a lotpeople can do if they don't
have this preconditioning.
So anyway, I don't know if I'veexactly answered your question,
but I think it's been aninteresting path.
Mallory (21:56):
Let's say For sure, I think to that point of limiting
yourself.
I think of when we launched thebrand new sidecar website early
last year and how we met withan agency and they told us well
now, if you're launching a newwebsite, right, that's going to
take two to three months, maybe,is what they told us, and I had
never done that before.
And you and me said, well, no,I wouldn't necessarily listen to
(22:17):
them, let's just see how fastwe can do it.
I think we turned that thingout and in two to three weeks, a
new website, which, mind you,not saying it was like the most
perfect website ever, but kindof.
Once you start to getconditioned that things take a
certain amount of time or thatyou shouldn't be able to do
certain things, I do agree thatthat's limiting in a way that
(22:37):
that's limiting in a way?
Amith (22:38):
Yeah, for sure, I mean it's.
There's always frameworks forthinking things through that
people have come up with overtime and sometimes they can be
very helpful.
But you know, if you, if youbreak it all the way down to, is
there any fundamental, like youknow, reason why this can't be
done differently, better orfaster?
A lot of times you find thatit's just, you know, kind of the
doctrine of the thing.
Right, it's like how peoplebelieve and what's what's become
the standard way to do it.
(22:58):
And the website thing is agreat example.
It's like, you know, that'sjust how people think about
these projects.
But there's nothing fundamental.
If you're willing to move fast,if you're willing to take a few
risks along the way, I mean,perhaps there's less quality
assurance than some people wouldlike, but you know, I'm I'm a
little bit less worried aboutthat.
For brand new sites that have,you know, traffic coming to them
initially, you can very quicklypivot.
So, yeah, there's definitely adifferent perspective there.
(23:20):
But you know, for me a lot ofit is if you're, if you have
people, if you are a growthoriented culture and you have
people on your team that don'twant growth, you will fail.
You can't take people who repellearning and repel growth and
somehow inspire them to want tobe, like growth oriented
(23:41):
individuals.
There's some people who justdon't want that, and that's fine
, you know, it's just for usthey're not a fit right and
there's, and sometimes you don'trealize that until people start
working for you.
What I've gotten really reallyintentional about across our
hiring process you alluded to ita moment ago about your own
experience here a few years backis we get really like kind of
upfront about like look, this iswhat this place is about, like
(24:03):
this is what we stand for.
Our goals are ambitious, weexpect a lot out of people and
like you really shouldn't comehere if you don't believe in
these things, because this iswhat your experience is going to
be like.
And some people would say you'rekind of like scaring people off
and the way you are, but it'snot so much that you're.
For people who are interestedin the type of thing we do and
how we do it, it actuallybecomes kind of like a magnet
(24:25):
right.
We end up having much higherlikelihood of getting those
people to say yes, they want tocome here.
And for those that aren't a fit, we make fewer mistakes,
because when we have a failure,when there's someone who's come
on board and we've said allthese things but yet they've
made it through and they'rereally not that, they're really
not someone who likes to go andlearn new things and move fast
they're going to be gone withinprobably 30 to 60 days because
(24:47):
we're going to realize it almostimmediately and we're going to
give them a shot at correctingcourse.
But we're going to say bye veryquickly because I don't believe
in keeping people on board forany length of time if they're a
poor fundamental fit.
That isn't to say that ifsomeone has a bad day or
whatever, that you're lettingthem go right away.
That's not at all what I'msaying.
There has to be a lot ofempathy for people's lives and
integration of life and work,but the idea is, if someone's a
(25:10):
fundamentally poor fit, you'redoing them a horrendous
disservice in their career, notto mention your company and all
of your other team members.
By keeping them on board,you're just going to destroy
your culture and drag down thewhole ship.
Mallory (25:22):
Full stop.
I want to get to this criticalgap that we've talked about when
it comes to leadership,especially on the podcast, where
the acceleration of AI hascreated kind of an interesting
dilemma for leaders.
So many leaders that we talk torecognize AI's importance, but
there's a big gap right nowbetween acknowledging it and
then actually preparing teamsfor it.
(25:43):
So we know AI training I thinkwe can all agree will allow you
to remain competitive as abusiness, but we also see this
as a fundamental duty as leadersto provide that training to
your teams.
You've taken a stronger stanceon this, Amit, referring to the
lack of providing AI trainingfor your team as leadership
malpractice.
We've talked about it quicklyon the pod, but I'm curious what
(26:05):
experiences have led you tokind of frame it in this way.
Amith (26:09):
Yeah, so I know it's a little bit of a strong way to
describe something, but I reallybelieve this to be true.
This is not intended to be,like you know, emotional
clickbait for people.
The whole point about goingaggressive with this this year
and you're going to hear us talkabout this a lot upset some
(26:34):
people, and you know that isn'tthe goal.
We don't want to upset anybody.
But the point is is that if youare not preparing your people
for the future at all times, inall situations, across all
economic cycles and all changesin terms of technological
disruption, you're failing as aleader.
You have to expect a lot fromyour people, but you have to
give them the resources to besuccessful, and there is no
greater measure of a leader thanwhat happens after the leader
(26:55):
is gone.
Once the leader has left, youknow what happens because is the
organization thriving,successful?
Are there people there thathave grown enough to take over
All that kind of stuff right, ordoes the thing fall apart?
That, to me, is the number onemeasure of a true leader.
But while you're there, you canalso measure what's happening
based on the growth of your team.
Are you promoting people intobigger and bigger roles because
(27:16):
they deserve it, not becausethey've been there a long time,
not because they failed at theirindividual contributor jobs.
So, therefore, you move theminto a management job so they
can stop damaging the thing theywere doing individually, which
sounds like a joke but actuallyhappens on a regular basis in
lots of organizations for profitand not for profit.
But you can measure thatsuccess based on the true growth
of your people, and so what Ibelieve is that you have to
(27:39):
prepare your people by givingthem resources.
You have to go out there andsay listen, we're going to not
only give you these resources,but part of it is to demand that
they learn new things, and theworld is changing so rapidly
that if you don't require yourpeople to get on board with
learning AI now, they're likelygoing to be unemployable in the
(28:01):
near future.
There is no task that will notbe touched in some way by AI,
and so if you want your memberservices team or your event
management team or your financeteam or any other team member to
be successful in the future andI hope that you deeply care
about that as a leader you needto get them up to speed, period.
If you don't do that, I feelthat you are failing your team
(28:25):
and that's all there is to it.
You know, in the world that welive in today, it is abundantly
clear, as we enter 2025, that AIis reshaping most aspects of
life and business, and so youhave to prepare for this, and
there's two ways I think youneed to illustrate this.
First is make those resourcesavailable and make them
mandatory.
Don't just say, hey, we've gotthis training resource for AI.
(28:46):
We'd love for you to do it, butwe're not making it required.
That is not leadership to me.
I don't believe that that isthe way that you lead to the
future.
You have to demand that yourpeople do certain things, and
when there is a fundamentalshift happening of this type of
significance, you've got to telleveryone this is your job.
We appreciate everythingeveryone else, everyone does
(29:07):
here.
You need to get trained, youneed to achieve X in terms of
learning, and you have to do itby this deadline and give them a
firm deadline, probably fairlysoon.
Here at Blue Cypress, across allof our organizations, even
though all of our people arefairly involved with AI, we're
demanding that every one of ouremployees across the enterprise
becomes AAIP certified, which is, of course, our own designation
(29:28):
at Sidecar Association of AIProfessional Certification by
the end of this quarter andwe're not directly saying this,
but the bottom line is realsimple is that people who aren't
certified by March 31st willneed to work somewhere else by
April 1st, full stop.
And we're saying that not to bejerks, not to be mean, not to
be aggressive, but because weneed these people prepared,
(29:50):
especially in the role thatwe're in, obviously, as leaders
in this technology, and most ofour folks are so deep in AI that
getting a certification forthem is just a matter of going
through the process.
But a lot of them aren't, youknow, a lot of them aren't in AI
first kind of roles.
So we believe it's critical forour own team and I'd love to
see more and more associationsdo something similar.
Obviously, we'd love it ifeveryone did our certification,
(30:11):
but that's self-serving.
The point about this isn't aboutsidecar.
It's about there are hundredsof different resources for
learning artificial intelligence.
Pick one and demand it, requireit.
And the last thing I'd sayabout it is you, as the leader,
need to do it yourself.
So you shouldn't go out thereand say, hey, all of you guys,
you need to learn this stuff andit's real important, and I am
(30:33):
going to sit back and knownothing about this and I'll know
how to spell AI, but that'sabout it.
That is not acceptable.
So that's also a form ofleadership malpractice, because
people expect you, as the leader, to be competent.
You don't have to know everysingle detail of every single AI
model, you don't have to followall the developments, but you
have to be competent at thebasics of what AI is about and
(30:56):
how it's going to reshape theexpectations of your member
community and, therefore, howyou behave as an organization.
You have to know enough aboutit to be able to work
competently with your teams andto be able to help them think
about the world and think aboutbusiness and processes and
service in the age of AI.
So you know, I don't think thatthere's any other way to put it
(31:17):
, and so, yeah, I'm personallygetting out there and being
pretty aggressive about it, andpart of it is is that I, on the
one hand, 2024 was an amazingyear, certainly for across the
Blue Cypress family.
We all the companies across thedozen, plus businesses within
the family experienced recordgrowth.
Sidecar in particular had aphenomenal year.
It's wonderful.
(31:39):
But I'm actually also reallydisappointed in 2024 because I
was hoping that a lot moreassociations would get really,
really active with thistechnology, and I didn't see it.
I think that there's still avery small minority of
associations that are reallydoing stuff, so we need to get
everyone going right now thisyear, because this stuff is
moving really quickly.
It's not about the technology.
The technology is interestingto some of us.
It doesn't need to beinteresting to everyone, but if
(32:02):
you aren't getting your peopleready for an AI-first future,
you are essentially guaranteeingthat they are going to be
irrelevant and that they will beunemployed within a matter of
possibly months, but definitelyyears, and by the end of this
decade, people who don't knowhow to use AI fluidly are going
to be at an enormousdisadvantage.
Mallory (32:23):
We at Sidecar have an interesting mix of associations
who mandate the AI Learning Hubfor their teams and then those
that don't.
You can kind of never tell.
I feel like talking todifferent associations who will
mandate versus who won't.
But I imagine we have somelisteners here, because I've
heard this multiple times fromuh contacts at associations that
say we cannot mandate anythingelse to our team.
(32:45):
They're overwhelmed.
The more mandates we we mandate, they don't do them.
They don't see the value.
We'd rather encourage ailearning.
Encourage AI education withoutforcing it.
It makes me think of somethingthat you've talked about, amit,
before, which is leading in atime of war versus leading in a
time of peace.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat?
Amith (33:06):
Yeah, so when I've talked about that before, I referred
to this really interesting andfun book called the Hard Thing
About Hard Things by BenHorowitz, who's one of the
founders of the A16Z venturecapital firm and he has a long
entrepreneurial historypreceding that and just super
interesting book doesn't pullany punches, it's very much in
your face and what he's talkingabout is the difference between
(33:28):
a wartime CEO and a peacetimeCEO, and the way you're able to
behave as a peacetime CEO is alot more collaborative,
(33:53):
no-transcript, that mode.
Sometimes the best peacetimeCEOs are horrendous wartime CEOs
and the flip side is is thatsomeone who is an adaptive as a
CEO and by the way, I say CEOit's any leader but someone
who's a great wartime CEO whoreally thrives and is great at
rapid decision making anddoesn't mind ruffling feathers
and all that can make for anawful peacetime CEO?
(34:16):
So what I would suggest toeveryone here is that we are not
in a time of peace when itcomes to business.
We are absolutely in a time ofwar from a business perspective,
and that metaphor kind of onlygoes so far.
But the point about war versuspeacetime in business is
essentially the rate of externalchange exceeding the rate of
internal change, right.
So whenever the pace ofexternal change exceeds the pace
(34:39):
of internal change, you are onthe path to obsolescence.
And that's true for anindividual, it's true for a
business, and so the faster therate of external change relative
to internal change, the morelikely you are to be in big air
quotes war, and so that's whatHorowitz talks about in his book
, and I really believe that'strue.
And I think that mostassociations are built for
(34:59):
peacetime.
They've been around a long time, they're super comfortable,
they're sitting on a lot ofreserves.
Their culture is fairlystagnant, if, to use like a very
direct word, some would saythat their culture is
foundational and their cultureis, you know, based on tradition
, and some of that's great Like.
I don't mean to like disparagetradition, but sometimes you
have to really step back and say, okay, that's cool, but you
(35:22):
know, are we going to be aroundin two years or five years,
right?
Are we going to be relevant?
Are we going to be able toserve our audience?
Independent of what you thinkof your association, the world
around you is shifting reallyquickly, and if the expectations
of your audience for yourcontent, for your services, are
radically different than whatyou're capable of delivering,
you have a big problem.
I mean, a good, simple exampleof this is member services.
(35:44):
I've talked to a lot of peoplewho say, hey, our goal for our
member services department is tobe able to answer inquiries
within 24 business hours of whenwe receive something.
And, generally speaking, peopledon't do that.
In most of the largerorganizations it takes a little
bit longer than that on average,but their goal usually is one
business day, which soundspretty reasonable.
It sounds pretty reasonable asof maybe, say, two, three years
(36:06):
ago and perhaps reasonable tosome people today.
That will not feel reasonablevery soon because people are
expecting essentially real-time,high-quality customer service
coming from what's obviouslygoing to be an AI-powered future
when it comes to the bulk ofthose kinds of inquiries.
And if you're not figuring outhow to do that, you're going to
have a problem because peoplewill go to the lowest friction
(36:29):
solution, not necessarily thehighest quality, not necessarily
the lowest cost, but the lowestfriction, that which fits into
their work stream with the leastamount of pain for them, and if
you're a high pain experience,you've got a problem.
My point about all this iscoming back to people and
culture and leadership and, youknow, tolerance for pain.
Essentially, you kind of haveto look at it and say it's time
(36:52):
for us to, you know, acknowledgewhere we've been, but agree
that we're going to drive changeand not do this through going
through, like, a formal boardapproval that results in, like
you know, the whole membershipvoting on a bylaws change.
I mean that's going to takelonger than you have time for,
but that's where this, you know,there's a lot of discretion in
all positions, including, ofcourse, the CEO role, but others
(37:13):
as well.
You could be a departmentleader and you can stand up and
say, listen, I'm requiring thisfor our team and you can have.
You can go to the team and sayI really believe this is
critical.
I need everyone here to do thisin the next three months and
I'm only asking you to do likein the case of the sidecar stuff
that we talk about.
It's like less than 10 hours ofcoursework.
That's a totally achievablething over the course of three
(37:33):
months.
It's not unreasonable to mandatethat You're not saying, hey, I
want you to go get an MBA or goget a PhD in the next three
months.
We just want you to have somebasic competence and that, to me
, is totally reasonable.
So, going back to the wartimeversus peacetime thing, to wrap
up this whole commentary atwartime, which we are in, you
have to be willing to makedecisions that are unpopular and
(37:55):
are aggressive or feelaggressive at times, and I think
the people who are taking themore passive approach, saying
that it's, it's, we'd like to doit, and just using a carrot,
you know, you see, maybe see howthat works for a couple of
months, but then switch to thestick if you need to, because
sometimes you have to have both.
You're going to have a certainpercentage of your employee
population that's motivated.
They'll say, hey, this isawesome.
Out of my 100 staff at XYZAssociation, 15 of them got the
(38:20):
AI training Awesome.
But what about the 85 whodidn't?
That's where I say you, as aleader, have to mandate that for
the benefit of the organizationand for the benefit of those
individuals.
Mallory (38:31):
And if I were the motivated employee or one of
them on your team and I feltlike I was a part of an
organization that was committingleadership malpractice maybe
some of you listening to thispod I would probably want to get
out of there.
You know, I feel like there'sonly so much you can do at that
point.
Amith (38:47):
Yeah, and I think a lot of people will try to drive
change.
You'll hear some peoplestarting to, like you know,
raise their hand a little bit tothe extent that their
personality style would enablethat where they'll say, hey, I
really think we should be doingmore.
But a lot of times, you know,then the kind of the party line
will be well, you know, we can'tmandate it, like we can't X, y,
z, and I say, why can't you dothat?
(39:16):
Right, is there a law ofphysics that prevents you from
mandating that?
Of course not, you know.
Is there what it is?
It's tradition, it's culture,it's a lack of willingness to
ruffle feathers right and upsetpeople sometimes.
But I think part of it is isthat for the people that you
don't upset like there's somepeople who just don't want to go
do anything, and okay, they'rebusy, I get it, we're all busy,
but they're going to be a lotless busy pretty soon when
they're unemployed.
So don't wait till then.
Help them now so that they endup with a good future.
And so the point I would makereally boils down to this as a
(39:38):
leader, you have to do unpopularthings at times.
You communicate why you'redoing it and then you do it.
That's what a leader is.
Mallory (39:45):
Well, hopefully, at this point in the podcast
episode, you all are at least alittle bit on board with the
idea of understanding that AIpreparation matters and is
important as a leader.
Now making it happen right,that's another thing, and we
understand that.
So, amit, what is the firstthing you tell leaders who come
up to you at conferences, atmeetings and say, amit, I want
(40:05):
to start doing this.
I listened to the podcastepisode, I'm ready.
What do I do?
Amith (40:10):
The number one thing is awareness.
People have to understand thewhy.
People will get behind things.
That if they trust theirleadership, if they believe that
the leaders have their bestinterests in mind and the
organization's best interests inmind, and they understand the
why, even if they don't agreewith it, people understand
fairly deeply what's happeningin the world around them, what's
likely to happen and thereforewhy we need them to adapt as
(40:42):
individuals and why we need toadapt as an organization.
A lot of people say, oh well,like, for example, we do this
thing called the AI executivebriefing and we provide that to
organizations and it's kind oflike this landscape view of AI.
It's not about a particulartechnology like a chat, gpt or
perplexity or whatever.
It's more about the exponentialdynamics, what's happening
(41:02):
around us and why that's drivingchange at such a rapid rate,
and therefore, like what's areasonable way to interpret what
the next few years are going tolook like.
And that is the most importantthing for people to understand
at a conceptual level, becausethen they'll realize that the
whole world is going to change.
It's not just oh, next yearwill be just slightly different
than this past year, which iswhat it's been for most people
(41:22):
their whole careers.
If they understand that, then Ithink people will get on board
with saying, yeah, I really needto learn this stuff.
But a lot of people bypass thatbecause they have this mindset
that, oh well, that's kind ofmore of a strategic conversation
.
I'll only share that with myexecs and then for the 10x
number of people I have that arenot part of the exec team, I
won't share that with them.
I'm just going to give them thetactical tooling where I'm
(41:44):
going to teach them just onetool at a time and tell them to
go do it To me.
That's where you're missing anopportunity.
I think everyone in theorganization has the capacity to
understand that and needs tounderstand what's happening in
the world.
So to me, it's awareness is theeasy number one checkbox you've
got to check and there's a lotof ways to do that and then from
there dive right into okay, nowwe're going to take action.
(42:06):
This is what's happening in theworld around us, like it, don't
like it, hate it, love it,whatever you, wherever you are
in the spectrum of your personalbelief about AI okay, great,
now you understand that.
But this is what's happening inthe world and in order for us
as an association, as anonprofit, as any organization,
to be effective in achieving ourmission and effective as a
(42:28):
viable, sustainable business, wehave to be able to do these
things differently, andtherefore this is what we have
to go learn right, so, but Ithink you get, and therefore
this is what we have to go learnright, but I think you get to
the.
This is what you have to golearn.
This is how you have to go.
Mallory (42:42):
Change your processes once people understand the why,
and I've got to double down onthat.
I think sometimes people feellike the why might be obvious,
or maybe they just say the whyone time Okay, we're mandating
AI education, here's why, goforth.
But you, amit, have saidleadership is repetition or
something along those lines, andso saying that, why reiterating
it, posting it up on the wallif you have a brick and mortar
(43:03):
office?
I think all those things areessential.
Amith (43:06):
Yeah, I agree, I can't remember where I heard this the
first time, but I've heard thiswhere times from different
people that you're the chiefrepetition officer and you know
that's the reality of what youneed to do.
It's partly it's not thatpeople forget what you said,
sometimes that's true, but a lotof it's just reinforcement,
where you're saying, look, thisis what it is, this is what it
is, this is what it is.
We have to go do this thing andwe're all in it together.
(43:27):
Right, that's the other.
I think is also super powerful.
So, you know, it's people ingeneral.
It's kind of strange actually,because associations oftentimes
their primary function isprofessional learning,
professional education.
Yet most people don't want tolearn anything after they
(43:51):
graduate college or finish theirformal schooling.
They just kind of are resistantto it, and part of it is it's
not that the capacity isnecessarily lessened so much,
it's that people aren't used toit anymore.
You know, going back to schoolif you haven't been in school,
like full time, I think would bereally hard.
I've never done it, but Iimagine it'd be extremely
difficult to go back to schoolfull time if you haven't been in
school for a while and I think,if you're not accustomed to
(44:12):
doing any form of professionallearning.
If you never read books, if younever listen to podcasts, if you
never take online courses ornever do experiments right, it's
really hard to do any of thosethings.
But that's just like any otherform of habit building process.
You have to get startedsomewhere.
And that's again going back toleadership imperatives and why
we're using this intentionally,you know, kind of aggressive
(44:34):
phrase of leadership malpracticeis that now's the time to stand
up and get going.
There's lots of ways toapproach this, but you can't do
nothing.
Mallory (44:42):
Amit, if you were leading a small association
right now that had no budget forAI education, what would you do
?
How could you kind of getaround that with free resources?
Amith (44:52):
There's so many great free resources out there.
I mean, we ourselves at Sidecarhave tons of free resources.
This podcast, our book, isavailable as a free download.
We have lots and lots and lotsof content.
We're constantly publishingblogs and in addition to that,
obviously, sidecar tries to makeAI contextually relevant for
the association community.
(45:13):
So what we do is take AIprinciples and then tailor them
to use cases, ideas and theculture of this market to make
them as easily adaptable oreasily understandable as
possible in this space.
But there's tons of generalizedAI resources out there.
Every major company out therehas free AI training.
Nvidia has free AI training,microsoft, google, aws everyone
(45:34):
has free AI training out there.
There's tons and tons of placesto learn.
It's not an issue of money.
There are resources out therefor free.
There's also tools you can playwith for free, right.
There's free versions ofChatGPT and Cloud and Notebook
LM and all these other tools.
Of course, there's paidversions as well, but there's a
lot you can do for free from aperspective.
So it's definitely not a moneyissue.
(45:55):
You know, obviously, if you'rewilling to invest a little bit
of money, then you can get apaid course like what we offer.
You can go to other providersand get kind of their premium
offerings and it may not be acrazy amount of money relative
to your budget, but you canstart off with zero dollars.
And when we say, like we atSidecar want to go educate the
entire world on the importanceand the capabilities of AI for
(46:16):
associations, we expect that 95plus percent of those people who
we help educate will never payus a dime.
You know, our intention is toprovide the vast majority of our
content for free to the wholeworld of associations.
That's our mission at Sidecar,which obviously supports the
broader Blue Cypress vision andmission.
Of course we do have a premiumoffering and that's great, but
that's not the whole point ofwhat we're talking about.
(46:37):
The point is you can go outthere and do this so many
different ways.
In fact, that may be thechallenge.
Right, if there was like twooptions, you could go, look at
the two of them and make achoice.
Here I would say you know wehave a great blog We'll link to
it in the show notes that talksabout training resources
available for associations andAI.
We published that blog severalmonths ago.
It's still relevant.
Obviously, our own stuff is oneof the resources listed there,
(47:00):
but there's a bunch of otherthings in there that are totally
free.
So free is the place to getstarted.
Mallory (47:05):
Maybe you all pick a pod episode it doesn't have to
be ours Listen to that one anddo like a lunch and learn
internally.
Or maybe you all commit toattending a webinar at the same
time.
I think there's a lot you cando out there, with free
resources for sure.
Well, amit, it's been afantastic episode talking all
about leadership.
Everybody, thank you for tuningin today.
Go out there, learn AI.
(47:27):
You're already on the righttrack by listening to this pod
and help your teams learn AI.
We will see you next week andhelp your teams learn AI.
Amith (47:35):
We will see you next week .
Thanks for tuning in to SidecarSync this week.
Looking to dive deeper?
Download your free copy of ournew book Ascend Unlocking the
Power of AI for Associations atascendbookorg.
It's packed with insights topower your association's journey
with AI.
And remember Sidecar is herewith more resources, from
(47:55):
webinars to bootcamps, to helpyou stay ahead in the
association world.
We'll catch you in the nextepisode.
Until then, keep learning, keepgrowing and keep disrupting.
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