Catalytic Dominoes, What Your Real Challenge is - Gen AI, Zeptoseconds, Metaphysics and Matryoshka Dolls

This is the initial reframing of a book I am writing. It's a bit long as an article. It will be a short book.

Some people throw catalytic dominoes.

These are smart thoughts, comments, and posts that knock over a series of dominoes in your head. Anna Catalano is that kind of person. (thanks Anna)

Her post today on a Forbes article (Paolo Cecchi-Dimeglio) triggered some of this while I was in the gym at the Hyatt, thanks to Gibsons (Chicago) last night serving slices of cake the size of your head.

The Forbes article talked about a needed foundational change for leadership given the growing unpredictability of today's world. It talks about two types of challenges. First, technical challenges where the problems are easily identifiable and rely on past experience. Second, adaptive challenges: "issues are elusive", unknown solutions, and require a learning journey. "Leaders must employ specific strategies ... to navigate uncertain times'". I'm not sure 'specific strategies' makes total sense versus what, non-specific strategies?...not a thing.

That all works well when we have change at the margins.

As we enter the 4th Industrial Revolution and the 12 other massive change waves landing now, that will not work well. These are technological but also geopolitical, sociological, scientific, demographic, and climatological. For added headaches, they are intertwined for various flywheel effects.

If you want to be in the top 5% and win, you have to think differently in the new, high-change, distant future...you know, like 2024.

Leadership Bifuractes

There is no shame in not making the big bet in times of change and just being the team that hangs on and weathers the storm. You may not have a choice. A champion basketball team has little chance of winning the Stanley Cup. Changing that team is gut-wrenchingly hard and often requires a vantage point not available to the board.

Oddly, only 5% of firms can be in the top 5%.

The risk, though, is that in times of great change, when we are in a cycle of creative destruction, lots of firms that were trying to survive end up on the destruction side of that. In 1912, in America, the automotive world was a hotbed of innovation, great design, and creativity. There were 400 firms, and 38% of the cars on the road were electric...yep, electric. Fifteen years later, 360 of those were dead, and of the remaining 40, 37 were scrambling over 20% of the market.

The short version is there isn't a completely safe bet in historic times of change....you know, like now. Staying the course and not changing is definitely a bad choice.

Word Salad Babble

The leaders you need in this new world have to be broad and deep. T-shaped leaders as a type has been knocked around a lot, but going forward, you need those plus a few other things. They must also get metaphysics and embrace humility. They also need to be pragmatic. Innovation married to pragmatism at speed is the overarching need, but it will require the above.

That sounds like word salad babble. It is, but it is also true.

Think differently is about thinking in different ways, using different constructs not thinking about different stuff.

Word Salad Babble Explained - "Context is worth 80 IQ points" (Alan Kay)

Matryoshka Dolls - thinking differently.

The world we are moving into has a cascading context that needs to be thought through at each level...like a matroyoshka doll.

Let's take Gen AI.

There are a lot of boards having conversations about what they are going to do given this massive development, specifically Gen AI/ChatGPT stuff. How do we apply it, leverage it, control it, and communicate about it. I saw a demo of a bunch of logistcis robots yesterday and they jumped through verbal hoops to make sure to communicate that this 'allows humans to move on to more valued tasks'...sure, I agree, but you will only need 30% of those humans. Comms matter, also for Gen AI.

So that conversation at the board has to be in parallel with the right, more difficult, matryoshka doll conversation. The one the board should have if it can (re-context) cascades like this:

·       What are the changes/change waves heading our way and how responsive/effective are we at managing change?

·       How does our strategy change given that?

·       If the strategy changes what is the new mission(s)

·       What are the task and talent maps to be successful in the new mission? What changes from the existing state are needed? Are we structured for the new mission? i.e. org shape/design, incentives/disincentives, culture trajectory, talent maps etc. Many companies miss this and wonder why their previously successful basketball team fails on the hockey rink. History is full of defeated armies that were designed for the last war. Humility matters here more than you think. The right talent for the next war matters...including getting some catalytic domino throwers.

·       Inside of all that, you then look at your IT as a whole serving the business, the new mission, and helping them see LOWP. The Land Of What is Possible. Inside of that AI an inside of that Gen AI. Then a discussion of how you grow the fuel base for Gen AI over time. The fuel is data, the best fuel isn't a random swath of teh internet.

Looking at Gen AI alone is useful but the above complex Matryoshoka Doll is the real ask. There will be future competitors building from scratch using that model. The odds of success in the near future without deep understanding and excellence in IT are very low.

That is hard. Most firms/boards are ill-prepared for this.

This mental construct, thinking differently about the real nature/shape of the challenge, is metaphysics. Yes, metaphysics matters.

More Matryoshka Doll Metaphysics

Product Management

Whatever it is you sell, this little thought experiment may help. Imagine a year ago, you closed a big deal with a a great logo. Their exec, Maria Ines, whom you did the deal with, is today in her boss's office telling how great a decision that was and how you delivered, and the real impact was x,y,z etc. She deserves and expects a medal from her boss. The content of that conversation is the outer matryoshka doll of your product management 'problem' or thinking. If your product people can't verbalize what the x,y,z are you have a real problem. Probably in the sales dept also. Taking that outer layer and then cascading down into the hard work of product management is thinking differently and is better.

In these times, another one of the layers (dolls) is about answering the question of how we deliver new waves of value/features faster and cheaper than the enemy. That is about architecture and Tech Lego. In the heat of the battle, that layer is often overlooked. 95% of all tech/cyber shortfalls that I have seen stem from this layer.

Supply Chain Metaphysics

The missing matryoshka doll in these volatile times for supply chain is the outer layer. Your ability to see risk and problems first and respond faster is essential to brand and, more importantly, revenue. Executing on brand and revenue goals is about agile, see-over-the-horizon, smarter supply networks. Spending time thinking through that layer will have architectural and tactical impacts. Look at Everstream Analytics for a great example of innovation that meets pragmatism in this exact space.

Agility Metaphysics

In the planning world, things haven't happened yet.

No plan survives its first contact with the battlefield. That was from Field Marshall Von Moltke, who, in the 1860s rethought the model of a standing army and ran roughshod over Europe. He leveraged two new technologies: train networks and the telegraph. He had a lower cost structure and, more importantly, was far more agile than his enemies. That's a really good combo. He also was a strategic genius.

In the volatile real world, which happens in real-time, agility starts at the edge. It starts with the ability to sense, respond, and act inside the cycle time of your competitor. Emerging thinking around Event Driven Architecture will become increasingly important. Behind the curtain, it is a complex combo of AI, smart data integration/normalization, smart low code/no code platforms, edge computing, and process design. Another innovation meets pragmatism example is VANTIQ in this space. Agility will be as much about the speed and architecture of the information domains you leverage...that's pretty metaphysical. You can't see or touch an information domain.

Change Metaphysics

There are four broad models of change management. One is statistically the best and succeeds twice as much as the next best. Thinking about change models and how change works is metaphysics. Purposefully picking one and driving it matters.

Culture Metaphysics

Culture is a complex thing in a community, nation, etc. In business, it really isn't. If done well, what you reward people for and punish people for, if communicated well and emphasized, drives behaviors. In a company, the sum of your behaviors is your culture. Changing the culture of, say, Parisiennes is a complex, nearly impossible, generational effort. The culture in Paris has 50 areas from history to cuisine to dance to art. Radically changing a corporate culture can be done in 4 - 6 quarters. Thinking about what this really is, is metaphysics.

High Context and Humility

In times of high volatility and massive change, you need leaders with deep context to drive better, engaged, collaborative, cumulative IQ decisions. If you don't have the deep context, you may get to the answer eventually but not fast enough to matter. Situational awareness will really matter. There is no situational awareness without deep context. The biggest challenge for leaders who really are T-shaped and can go deep in various areas is that they usually suffer from big egos born from being smart and usually right. They are also usually bad at metaphysics. You don't ponder the first derivative, the pattern, the underlying architecture if you are certain you know the answer.

In times of great change, things that you were virtually certain of turn out to have changed, or be flat wrong. Understanding how knowledge and truth are formed and that they are malleable is important. That is metaphysical. Being aware that what you are certain of might be wrong at some future point and, or not the best answer is about humility.

Double proof point - Here's an example and an indicator of accelerating change and the need to be intellectually humble. In times of technological leaps forward our tools get better, and the 'discoveries' that we had something all wrong become more frequent and usually bigger.

There are magic numbers in physics that indicate an atomic structure will be stable, 8 and 20 are magic. Using a particle accelerator, scientists have created an elusive variant of oxygen for the first time. The isotope, oxygen-28, was predicted to be extraordinarily stable due to its eight protons and 20 neutrons — “magic” numbers associated with stability in atomic nuclei. But observations of oxygen-28, reported in the Aug. 31 Nature, reveal that it is more ephemeral than enduring: It crumbles after about a zeptosecond. Yes, a zeptosecond ( I had to look that up). That really means they missed this one by a parsec (way bigger than a mile). Basically means this thing could be more unstable.

Napoleon once said give me enough ribbons and medals, and I will win any campaign you want. Having the right frameworks, cascading context, and, yes, metaphysics as we head into these massive change waves, will drive how you approach competition, where you give out the medals that drive behaviors and results.

#4ir #genAI #change #innovation

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