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Hello and welcome to the Learning Experience Operations Show.
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My name is Jason Gorman.
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I am joined today by my good friend and partner, James Altman, ah for another wonderful
episode of this podcast.
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How you doing, James?
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Good, how are you?
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Happy 2026.
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Yeah, we are recording this on January 6th, so...
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ah
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Somehow we're already six days into the year.
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uh
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So we, you I had a good chance to get to, actually spend some real time together.
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live in different places, but we had a little road trip at the end of 2025.
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feel like you don't hear that a lot these days, right?
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I don't know.
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I'm sure families go on road trips, maybe just you don't hear two dudes that own a
business say, we had an epic road trip.
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But we did.
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It was fantastic.
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From upstate New York all the way to Evanston, past Chicago, we blew through Chicago like
it didn't even matter, and we ended up in Evanston, Illinois.
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It was awesome.
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right.
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Yeah, that's exactly right.
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And it was it was fantastic.
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It was great.
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Just well, one level just to hang out for all that time.
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And we also thought of and use that time as a as a time to think about this year that
we're in now 2026.
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Kind of revisit 2025.
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What worked what we want to keep doing what we want to stop doing what we want to tweak.
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and kind of set our plans out for this year.
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And uh I don't know, what did we land on?
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What are our plans for this year?
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Do you remember?
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Any idea?
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Yeah, I remember some of it.
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I know we still have some documentation to work through.
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But yeah, we want to continue to convene.
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I think that was one of the big words.
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The events that we put together, maybe from a little bit more of a reactive or adaptive
standpoint in 2025, where we were trying things out in the world as it changes around us,
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was events.
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going to events, holding events.
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And we did a whole bunch in a lot of different cities, in New York and Massachusetts and
New Orleans and Durham, North Carolina.
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And we were trying those out and I think we found a lot of great energy, excitement, also
a certain level of...
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need that people felt to get together and support each other as things felt like they're
changing under our feet and all around us.
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So let's do more.
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he said, let's do more.
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Let's get people together and provide maybe a little bit more structured opportunities for
people to learn, develop support within our industry.
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Yeah, and I think the reason that it's worthwhile to talk about this on this podcast about
what our plans are, because really, do people care about our plans?
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Probably not.
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But I do think that our plans really reflect what we have heard so many other people say.
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And I think they're really, uh they're probably pretty relevant to how a lot of other
people are feeling as well.
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So this plan of getting out there and getting in front of people, I would say is somewhat,
it's a...
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It's because it's important, it feels good, but right now in particular, it feels good.
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And I think something that we both experienced, I think, again and again, when we went to
more events is that people felt last year, think I heard a lot of people say like, yeah,
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I'm just trying to get out of my house more, trying to get out of the office and trying to
expand my connections, meet more people, expose myself to more ideas.
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And that's really what we're doing.
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It's kind of built it into our plans, but I don't think we're alone.
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And I think as people think about their resolutions, as we ask, as I ask folks about them
this year, we might hear a lot of that.
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Yeah, definitely.
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And I think when we were maybe one level deeper on myself, when I said I want to get out
and meet people that are doing what we're doing.
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Mm-hmm.
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So much of what I would do at my computer is different, right?
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One year later, and I think that kind of change, and I'll just make a call back to an
episode that's out on this very podcast that you had with Jen Briselli.
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Well, actually, maybe it wasn't from her podcast, but it was from something she said, and
I'll just give her credit.
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Change fatigue is real.
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And if you go from doing everything one way, I mean, we've been doing it, our work.
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more or less in the same tools for a decade, to using many different tools.
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um I think you need, uh your brain needs to process that and you can't just sit in front
of the computer longer and process it.
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You got to get out and talk to people about it, figure out what they're doing.
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And I think that was a real need, is a real need.
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I don't think that's going to go away ah this year.
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think it's going to, people are going to need it even more.
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as we kind of figure out and navigate the changes.
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Yeah, I it's, I part of it is maybe a feeling of overwhelm.
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Kind of heard that term a lot at the end of last year.
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you know, maybe it's a bit of a reactionary thing too, right?
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So we're sort of getting pushed into the arms of the machines and our response is to push
away and to seek out other humans, which is a kind of a wonderful.
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In this case, sometimes our knee-jerk reaction is, people's not so good.
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I think this is a pretty good reaction to that.
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Yeah.
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And by the way, just going all the way back to what you just said a little while ago about
whether people care about our plans there, you know, in the point of this podcast for us
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and for you to get out through this medium, it's technologically enabled, but it's human
to human.
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We're just having a conversation that's recorded for the benefit of our understanding and
for all the other people that you're talking to.
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leaders in our industry trying to figure out how to navigate what's happening is entirely
related, totally relevant.
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yes, know, what Jason and James and Jack Rabbit have planned for 2026 is probably not the
top Zeitgeist search.
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But what we're talking about is relevant to everybody and how we're doing it is relevant
to our industry for sure.
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And I think that's what we're just reflecting back is that we're
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That's what we hear and that's what we want to do too.
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We want to get out and see all of you.
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Right, exactly.
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The other thing that we kind of landed on when we were driving, which is, I would say,
really closely related to everything we just talked about, our, so again, focusing on us,
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our business, and I think a lot of people have this experience.
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If they've been doing the work in the same way for the last decade, and it's really
radically changed the last couple years,
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We were in a place for a little while where we could focus on optimization.
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Like, OK, we understand what we do now.
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uh Now we just need to incrementally make what we do better.
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We just have to make the experience smoother.
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And then into this fairly stable environment that we've been working in for a long time,
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we dump AI and AI just creates a kind of chaos.
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um
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and I would say puts us into this place where we maybe shouldn't be focusing on
optimization anymore, because you can't optimize unless you know you have the right thing
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in the first place.
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Fundamentals.
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So I think for us, the other thing we talked about was fundamentals, right?
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How do we, and we still have to optimize.
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We can't just be like experiment and go with it, because that's crazy.
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So what the balance between like,
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reworking the fundamentals or reacquainting, doubling down on the fundamentals, and then
making sure we are still being experimental with them and trying new things.
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So I would say we're in this kind of rapid cycle space between optimization and
experimentation.
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Yeah, yeah, you had a post relevant to this, right?
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think you're paraphrasing your own New Year's resolution right now in the way that we're
thinking about it.
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And my comment on your post was, it's very reminiscent to me of the technology hype cycle.
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Like last year, I mean, you and I spent a big chunk of time throughout the year back and
forth talking about
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how this was going to replace everything that we do and the learning experience and the
development process, the learning operations, right.
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Optimize redevelop and then you kind of get over the peak of that.
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you're like, okay, no, not now, right?
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Not today.
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There are a lot of things that have changed, right?
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We're using.
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To GPT Gemini, Claude notebook, LM in our workflow.
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but it has not replaced everything.
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Airtable's built in on me and we're definitely asking it a lot more questions as we were
talking about with the core team, but uh it has not replaced everything.
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So we're past the peak and now you kind of get to this, I wish I had the term on the tip
of my tongue, but kind of a more level-headed um sense of the way that these technologies
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can integrate, a more sensible kind of.
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um
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view of what these technologies can do and how they can be used.
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And I think we're there.
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that is on the graph, if I remember correctly, that's actually a relatively long plateau
um that I think we will be in for a while.
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No matter how fast these tools continue to um evolve, which they will themselves, they'll
hit some kind of plateau, I would imagine.
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But um yeah, absolutely.
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This is a great year to take stock.
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um and build and document a lot of our fundamentals, which is a big project for us
internally right now.
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Right, yeah, exactly.
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Really just documenting what we know and then also giving ourselves flexibility, figuring
out how do we design it in a flexibility that we can still, we're not locking ourselves
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into rigid processes, right?
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That not only is the AI gonna change and revise our processes, but we as humans, we're all
bringing individual value.
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And we have to make sure there's enough room for those things.
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In fact, we have a whole thing that we have.
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It's a written value of our company.
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The written value is, quote, create solutions using the tension between creativity,
evidence, and standards.
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We've had that value for seven years.
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I think it is as more true now than it has ever been before.
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think it's incredibly important.
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uh
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In the cycle that you're talking about, the hype cycle, right?
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I tried to pull it up here while you're talking about it.
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The Gartner hype cycle.
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Yeah, to the far left is the technology trigger, and then it just shoots up like a rocket.
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And then the second stage is the peak of inflated expectations.
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So we've all been there.
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We've sort of had, yeah.
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to think about previous peaks.
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Like, do you remember the blog peak of the hype cycle?
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Like blogs were going to change the world.
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And yeah, there's been a lot of blogs.
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And I remember before that, cause the other thing during that peak, you know, this is like
the hype cycle of early adopters.
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Like there's definitely a segment and everybody goes through it much like change cycles
are not the same thing, but I.
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being technologists and using a lot of these tools early on, I remember talking to
somebody and they were like, blogs are dumb, what's the point of blogs?
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But now it's like most of what we might read if it's not kind of official news is
generally in the form of some kind of blog.
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It's really funny.
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So it has changed a lot, but also like not that much in the end.
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Yeah, funny.
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So that's followed by the trough of disillusionment, which is kind of what you described
maybe we felt a little bit of at periods last year.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Yeah, there was, mean, think there's to say that it's because it goes way up and way down
to say that it's super linear is probably not all that true either you cycle back through
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like a lot of like a lot of processes.
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They're not quite fully linear, a little bit more iterative.
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So I can be disillusioned regularly.
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But definitely at some, you know, certain points, we were feeling that last year.
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um
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But I feel quite level-headed, but I can, just as what I was saying, I can also at these
gatherings that we've been having, these events and talking to other people, they're all
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at different phases and you can hear those elements quite a bit.
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Come.
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What is so sorry, so we go through that the peak of like, unrealistic expectation, the
trough of disillusionment and then
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there's the slope of enlightenment and the plateau of productivity.
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Slope of enlightenment, perhaps, is where we are.
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And we are striving for the plateau of productivity.
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It feels like a strong word.
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Enlightenment feels strong, but yeah.
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That is very funny.
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So that's kind of what we're up to.
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And yeah, I think a lot of people are in the same thing, kind of experiencing the same
thing.
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And some of the topics that we brought in today are kind of really reflect.
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These exact themes there are a couple things that I there's something that I read and then
something that I listened to Recently that I'm really keen to talk about That really
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relates strongly to these themes and And then there are some things that I think you you
wanted to talk a little bit about also the conversation That I had with Ben Zugay on this
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podcast that is out.
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You can go find it listen to it Ben is
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Very funny, very, very fun to listen to and extremely smart ah and clear.
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Appreciate his clarity.
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Yeah, he's great.
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Yeah, he's great.
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So where do we tuck in?
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How do we, uh where do we start?
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You're the host.
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All right, fine.
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em So, here's, there's this other kind of bigger picture em thing that I engaged with on
these other two things.
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So one was written by Jen Briselli, who is another guest.
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think that episode will have just come out recently.
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Please go check it out.
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Jen is amazing.
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em She talks a lot in that conversation about complexity science.
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um Really uh You're gonna get a lot more from her comments in that conversation than
anything I'm gonna say here, but I Wanted to just highlight that she wrote this really
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terrific article about hockey and Talking about the lessons of complexity science and how
we apply um ideas about complexity um
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using hockey as a great metaphor and you know hockey as a as a kind of lived experience
not something that you are planning every play and then just executing the the play and
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she draws some really great parallels to work.
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That's first thing.
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And then the other thing was this great podcast called the Two Bobs podcast.
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It's David C Baker and Blair Enns It's a business podcast.
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But it's kind of a similar topic.
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They talk about complex systems, and they talk about this idea of mechanistic thinking,
that we think systems are like dumb machines when, in fact, they're more like living
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organisms.
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It's very much the same kind of ideas that Jen's playing with in my conversation with her
and in that article.
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uh But there are a couple of things I wanted to highlight from some of those and some
other thoughts that I had around those uh as well.
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I, you know, we're gonna link to these.
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You should definitely check them out.
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um The thing, here's the tie-in to everything that we've been talking about.
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We do think about machines like AI as you tell it to do a thing, it does the thing, and
you get a repeatable result.
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We don't think of our close friends being this way, right?
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So if you have a friendship, you don't think, I think if you have a healthy friendship,
say it this way, you don't think about, well, if I have an interaction with my friend,
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it's going to be exactly a perfectly repeatable outcome from that conversation.
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We understand that people grow and change, and that's true for two people, but as you have
relationships that grow, like inside an organization, you've got a lot of people.
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Each of those people as an individual, they're growing and changing and learning all the
time.
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So the whole organization is an organism, right?
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It grows not in a predictable way.
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It grows in a complex way.
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And this is, uh as I understand it, a very basic understanding of complexity science.
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This is essentially the idea.
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The system itself grows constantly.
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It's always in motion.
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And it learns, right?
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It adapts.
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However...
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Sometimes what Blair Enns says in his To Bob's podcast is that we think about a complex
system as a machine, like a, you, I don't know, what's, like a vending machine.
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You put in the money, you press the buttons, you're gonna get the item right on the other
end.
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It's extremely predictable, it's very linear.
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And what he says, and I'll quote him here, he says, your business, we can insert any other
any type of organization here, your business is not a machine, it's a complex system.
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There's a subset of complex systems known as complex adaptive systems.
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It's a complex adaptive system.
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And the adaptive part means that it learns and then he goes on to say, later in the
podcast, that innovation and efficiency are mutually opposable goals.
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You cannot increase one
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without decreasing the other.
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Many people just reject that idea because they have a mechanistic view of their business.
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They think you can just tweak some things to optimize for efficiency without some
unintended consequences.
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And as the point of that principle states, he says, one of the consequences of increased
efficiency is decreased innovation.
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And so this really just struck me hard because as we are thinking about
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what we do, how we've done it, and where AI fits.
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I think it's especially complicated for a couple complex, to be more precise, for a couple
reasons.
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One, we are all teams of humans, right?
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Organizations filled with humans.
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But the reality is that AI, of course, isn't human, but it is unpredictable in the way
machines are not, right?
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Other machines are not.
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It does things in some, in more human-like ways.
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And so I think what we have to be thinking about now going forward is not just can we make
the perfect process and then just double, triple down on it, make it perfect.
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How do we make the thing that is gonna work a lot of the time?
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And then how do we account for all of the stuff that just emerges, just happens totally
unpredictably when you run that process, when you do that thing, right?
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when you get a bunch of people together, when you mix AI um in.
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This just, I don't know, it struck me really, really hard.
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Feels like it's somehow, I don't know, for me, I just got lucky and was exposed to these
ideas as we were thinking through our goals, but this is a big one for me.
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um
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huge.
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The efficiency dial as it relates to the innovation dial.
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ah And then the fact even just in the complexity science.
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that you're kind of talking about all these things, all the other bands that are connected
to all these other dials that you don't even realize you're turning when you turn one of
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them.
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The efficiency one is, I think we've talked a good amount about in 2025 because we read
things like your brain on chat GPT, right?
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With kind of the...
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I don't know if it talks about it this way, but I've started to think about it this way.
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When you have a strong relationship with someone, often in couples, you're the one that
does X and they're the one that does Y.
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you know, I've read a little bit about that in some of the just anthropology and stuff
like the way that um humans have developed to work together is like, if you knew that
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someone in your tribe knew where all the berries were, then you're like, cool, that
knowledge is stored.
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I'm going to be the one that knows how to make the knives really well.
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And that's actually a really functional way for us to work.
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And I began in 2025 to think, oh, Chat GPT is the one that's going to come up with great
ideas.
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And that was like terrible.
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That was like dangerous and awful because I would use it as a reflex and not do what I can
do as a human.
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I'd be like, I don't have to worry about coming up with 25 ways to
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Whether it was 25 ways to cook in Turkey or 25 ways to solve a learning design problem,
sometimes you need to think, right?
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Go for a run and think or walk and think.
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so when you talk about increasing efficiency and reducing innovation, I immediately go
there, which is, oh, well, it'll be really quick.
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I'll get 25 ideas in 10 seconds.
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But are they good?
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Are they the right idea?
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Am I actually feeding my own ability to innovate within the situation?
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um And I know now through practice, it doesn't come up with the outliers.
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um And maybe there will be models and maybe there'll be methods for doing those types of
things.
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But m I feel like I felt that exact.
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00:24:06,294
I feel like um that connection, that band between those two dials of efficiency and
innovation were very clear in my own realizations throughout.
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00:24:09,714
throughout the year and trying to adopt these tools and figuring out how they would work.
287
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So I love the complexity stuff that Jen gets into.
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00:24:23,414
I mean, not only is she one of the smartest people we know, she's also just hilarious and
her rough deep cuts and references.
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00:24:33,765
man, like, you know, I wouldn't love anything more than reading her article about
comparing things like this to playing hockey.
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00:24:45,747
So we'll definitely go watch that episode if you haven't with Jen Briselli but also just
really appreciate the insights there and trying to unravel a lot of these things in terms
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of adopting these new tools and thinking about where they will really benefit us and where
they don't and how to play those dials.
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00:25:01,856
And also that, yeah, that's an, I haven't listened to that, the Blair Enns podcast, but
I'll go listen to that.
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Cause I think that's really relevant to what.
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We're all experiencing right now.
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00:25:12,732
Yeah, and I think for me, when I think about, well, what does this mean?
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Like in our practice, it doesn't mean that we don't use AI, that we don't use it for
ideas.
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00:25:26,228
What it does mean, I think, is that we have to be really, really attuned to the living
organism.
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that is our relationships, right?
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The complex organism that is our relationships, that is an organization, that is...
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00:25:40,263
So when something happens, when we run a process, that process won't be the same because
the people aren't the same, the situation isn't this.
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00:25:48,919
We are never going to have exactly the same situation twice, even if the activity seems
similar.
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So if you've written a learning objective, it's a great example.
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There's a formula for writing learning objectives.
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But you cannot write a good learning objective if you do not understand the context of the
learner.
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00:26:06,654
You cannot write a good learning objective if you do not understand the context of their
performance.
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And this is about understanding those things, applying your judgment about what the world
needs right now, right?
307
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Not just some mechanistic, like, what's the formula?
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We're going to fill this in like a mad lib.
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No, it's we are going to sense what is needed.
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and we're gonna use our ability as humans to make sense of what the world needs now and to
use that to write a great objective.
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00:26:44,441
For instance, a very simple example, but I think that's true across all the things that we
do in terms of making stuff, but also running our organization.
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And this is a, I think we have been seeing a lot of things.
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It's been a tail wagging the dog a little bit, AI first, the.
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00:27:06,125
idea of AI first to me now seems I've always been a little weirded out by that term
without quite being able to articulate it a why but I think we are articulating why right
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00:27:13,942
if AI happens first then you are not applying your judgment about what the world is really
like as a human.
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00:27:22,062
Yeah, now, I don't think we've ever used that for us, but we've definitely heard it a
bunch.
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I mean, I even in one of the gatherings that we had in 2025 was a group of people in New
York that I had to got together for dinner.
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00:27:41,622
And one of them was talking about how a metric showed up on their performance evaluation
that they, and this was bizarre, but worth noting, said,
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00:27:47,057
people were expected within the organization to use AI 75 % of the time.
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Hmm.
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00:27:56,893
man, in terms of measuring something and see it go up is like, for what and when and why.
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right.
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00:28:01,553
Like, I think it was actually even more generic than 75 % of the time.
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think it said AI utilization is at 75%.
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00:28:07,533
And it's like, how is this being defined?
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00:28:09,593
And what's the, what's the story?
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00:28:16,235
And I think you see metrics come from things like an AI first push within an organization.
328
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00:28:20,745
without understanding the complexity of everything you just said.
329
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00:28:25,903
I mean, you talk about the way that people change, and I was just kind of in my head
listing all of the other factors, right?
330
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00:28:40,224
And it's like, if it was really cold in the room of the person that you're talking to, you
might get a very different answers, because they might not be so long-winded, right?
331
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00:28:46,129
Not to mention the fight they might have had with their roommate before they got on the
call.
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It's amazing.
333
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00:28:50,962
And it's hard to manage all of those things.
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00:28:55,725
It's hard to even think about all of them when you're like, I just want to develop a
process and get to the end.
335
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00:29:05,749
But if you don't take some time, especially right now, I think that's your point,
especially in this environment when we're trying to reinvent so many things and kind of
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00:29:09,031
need to reinvent, it's good and OK.
337
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00:29:15,465
But how do you account for the percentage of things that
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00:29:26,300
are going to bounce outside of bounds and whether it's based on the technology or the
people and how to account for them and be appropriately adaptable to them?
339
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00:29:28,313
A flexible process?
340
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00:29:31,948
A flexible, repeatable process?
341
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00:29:37,970
A flexible, repeatable, clear process that's future ready.
342
00:29:37,970 -->
00:29:44,577
This is kind of our, it's our motto, this is where we, it's kind of our focus now, right?
343
00:29:44,577 -->
00:29:49,410
Better learning with a clear, repeatable process that's future ready, that's how we've
written it down, yeah.
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00:29:53,702
clear and repeatable doesn't mean that it's not flexible.
345
00:29:53,702 -->
00:29:57,477
That was kind of the point I was making by throwing that one in there.
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00:29:59,532
Flexible, repeatable process.
347
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00:30:01,083
But yeah.
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00:30:02,097
Yeah.
349
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00:30:04,242
Well, I know that you listen to the Ben podcast.
350
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00:30:07,319
I'm curious to get your thoughts on that.
351
00:30:07,319 -->
00:30:08,840
Yeah, Ben, just great.
352
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00:30:14,462
There's another conversation I had um that I think is probably worth connecting it to as
well.
353
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00:30:18,293
But, you know, we're entrepreneurs, right?
354
00:30:18,293 -->
00:30:25,366
So I think there was a lot about what he was speaking to that speaks to what we do.
355
00:30:25,366 -->
00:30:31,829
So just as maybe as a little bit of background, Ben, I won't get it all right, because I
didn't interview him.
356
00:30:31,829 -->
00:30:37,051
But Ben teaches um and teaches a lot about um
357
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00:30:43,011
entrepreneurialism and starting businesses and running businesses and the entrepreneurial
mindset.
358
00:30:43,011 -->
00:30:49,562
He references the entrepreneurial mindset a couple of times, but then also kind of caveats
like that could mean a lot of different things to lot of different people.
359
00:30:49,562 -->
00:30:56,644
And I've been on my own journey about what does that mean to us at Jackrabbit and what
does it mean to people at large?
360
00:30:56,644 -->
00:31:07,007
And um I spent a little time just as a side note unraveling it because I did a lot of
informal interviewing a couple of years ago, three years ago, maybe.
361
00:31:07,081 -->
00:31:17,339
And there was a lot of reaction, especially kind of like in higher ed and nonprofit that
had a negative reaction to it around.
362
00:31:17,339 -->
00:31:21,202
um It sounds greedy, actually, is what.
363
00:31:21,363 -->
00:31:23,765
I was I thought that was fascinating.
364
00:31:23,765 -->
00:31:36,375
um Being an entrepreneur who I think embodies and promotes an entrepreneurial mindset and
is kind of thoroughly opposed to greediness in general, the greediness that would lead to
365
00:31:36,387 -->
00:31:50,056
um you know, a single person soaking up most of the resources within an organization, for
example, um or collecting more than maybe is kind of humanly reasonable.
366
00:31:50,056 -->
00:31:59,683
ah So that's my own opinion, but um I think the entrepreneurial mindset has lots to do
with things we just talked about, which is understanding complexity, understanding
367
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00:32:05,953
processes, understanding how people, you're always going to have people in the process and
understanding
368
00:32:05,953 -->
00:32:13,909
in a pretty deep and empathetic way what those people are as people um and what they might
need as people rather.
369
00:32:13,909 -->
00:32:18,321
So, you he talked a bit about that and I just think it's fascinating.
370
00:32:18,321 -->
00:32:28,238
You you and I have spent a lot of time working on what we call GPS um for a way for
learning organizations to think about how to run their organization and how to build
371
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00:32:35,531
strength in the areas that matter um and how much that still matters even within the
changing environment.
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00:32:35,531 -->
00:32:38,292
of AI and he touched on many of those things.
373
00:32:38,413 -->
00:32:47,519
And I think it's just kind of fascinating because when we talk about GPS, you've had this
very similar experience when you talk about GPS and kind of go through the categories,
374
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00:32:55,405
things like the technology that you need to use, the people and roles that they, the roles
that people need to be in and how those roles might interact within a responsibility
375
00:32:55,405 -->
00:32:56,405
matrix.
376
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00:33:05,119
And, and the data, the insights that you might need to get out of these processes and how
you should use that leading
377
00:33:05,119 -->
00:33:07,991
metrics in order to kind of make sure that things are working well.
378
00:33:07,991 -->
00:33:12,886
Whenever we've talked about it, people are like, well, that doesn't just apply to learning
operations, right?
379
00:33:12,886 -->
00:33:15,968
That's kind of just applies to the way you run an organization.
380
00:33:16,549 -->
00:33:22,354
Yeah, we've, but we think about it more specifically because of the work that we do.
381
00:33:22,354 -->
00:33:32,242
And he was kind of expounding on that and riffing on various elements within those areas
and very kind of intuitively around the people.
382
00:33:32,242 -->
00:33:33,923
And one of the particular
383
00:33:34,349 -->
00:33:41,505
themes that you guys discussed on that podcast that he had a great way of just talking
about was formative assessment, right?
384
00:33:41,505 -->
00:33:53,475
Which we talk about all the time in our work and we employ formative assessment in all the
projects that we um develop for our clients and partners.
385
00:33:53,475 -->
00:34:02,872
And he was kind of talking about it within the classroom, but also a bit within an
organization, the way that people form through formative assessment, their understanding
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00:34:02,872 -->
00:34:04,403
of topics and-
387
00:34:04,899 -->
00:34:17,068
concepts and processes um and how he likes to start and run classes in a very workshop
minded way, where from the beginning, as opposed to saying, Hey, we're going to talk about
388
00:34:17,068 -->
00:34:20,958
um data and insights today.
389
00:34:20,958 -->
00:34:25,114
He says, what are, what are data and insights?
390
00:34:25,114 -->
00:34:26,875
Like right from the beginning, right?
391
00:34:26,875 -->
00:34:27,804
Like, what do we know?
392
00:34:27,804 -->
00:34:33,223
What's this room know about data and insights and why do they matter?
393
00:34:33,223 -->
00:34:46,538
Um, and I loved him kind of just, um, acting out a little bit of the ways that he teach he
teaches and thinking about how useful that is in management and facilitation of, of
394
00:34:46,538 -->
00:34:47,763
internal teams.
395
00:34:47,763 -->
00:34:55,452
kind of made me start to think about how this year, how we're already introducing a
pattern of hack internal hackathons.
396
00:34:55,572 -->
00:35:02,893
And when I say that, you know, we, we don't code kind of hardcore coding the way that a
hackathon might generally be presented.
397
00:35:02,893 -->
00:35:06,045
but in the creation of our own institutional knowledge.
398
00:35:06,045 -->
00:35:14,269
And we're now doing that every four weeks um as our own kind of New Year's resolution
within Jackrabbit and how it is very similar, right?
399
00:35:14,269 -->
00:35:17,431
Our team is coming together and saying, what do we know?
400
00:35:17,431 -->
00:35:18,852
How do we understand it?
401
00:35:18,852 -->
00:35:22,954
How do we understand it together as a complex group, complex system ourselves?
402
00:35:22,954 -->
00:35:30,419
And then how do we put it down in a way that's gonna make it usable and flexible as
technologies around it adapt?
403
00:35:30,419 -->
00:35:30,779
So...
404
00:35:30,779 -->
00:35:31,319
um
405
00:35:31,319 -->
00:35:32,970
Yeah, I really enjoyed that episode.
406
00:35:32,970 -->
00:35:34,522
Yeah, he's fun and funny.
407
00:35:34,522 -->
00:35:41,988
And uh as he said, the second most attractive person on the podcast was uh funny.
408
00:35:43,349 -->
00:35:45,951
Yeah, it was a great, great episode.
409
00:35:46,855 -->
00:35:47,596
great episode.
410
00:35:47,596 -->
00:35:52,743
um Is there anything else that you brought in today?
411
00:35:52,743 -->
00:35:52,983
did.
412
00:35:52,983 -->
00:35:54,825
Yeah, I did want to make a connection.
413
00:35:54,825 -->
00:35:58,038
So this is not an episode, but a conversation that I had.
414
00:35:58,038 -->
00:36:05,213
And I don't think uh Mike will mind me mentioning, but I Mike, the founder of a company
called B E Camp.
415
00:36:05,213 -->
00:36:18,183
um And um it's basically the reason that's relevant is he's going right now in person in
the Northeast to colleges and universities, top colleges and universities.
416
00:36:18,204 -->
00:36:22,337
And he's specifically going to liberal arts students.
417
00:36:22,599 -->
00:36:23,700
and teaching business.
418
00:36:23,700 -->
00:36:34,367
um Basically, he's teaching the short boot camps on business practices, entrepreneurial
mindset, and really functional stuff, P &L type stuff.
419
00:36:34,367 -->
00:36:38,230
And, you know, it's fitting quite a need.
420
00:36:38,230 -->
00:36:42,233
He's seeing, as we would say, of a strong product market fit, right?
421
00:36:42,233 -->
00:36:50,498
That these students really do understand that even though they might be getting actually
even a degree in finance, right, might be actually a liberal arts.
422
00:36:50,498 -->
00:36:51,789
um
423
00:36:51,789 -->
00:36:57,651
finance degree, they actually don't really understand how a business operates, right?
424
00:36:57,651 -->
00:37:01,202
Cause it's very different or economics for that matter.
425
00:37:01,202 -->
00:37:11,134
So he's teaching this and um I think there was, was going to, after I saw the episode with
Ben make an introduction, cause I think there's a lot of really interesting overlaps in
426
00:37:11,134 -->
00:37:12,064
the way that they think.
427
00:37:12,064 -->
00:37:20,247
um And it's also really interesting to hear about how these opportunities within
education, right?
428
00:37:20,247 -->
00:37:21,955
Within our industry.
429
00:37:21,955 -->
00:37:24,675
are still evolving.
430
00:37:24,795 -->
00:37:29,615
That seems like, couldn't that have happened a long time ago?
431
00:37:29,615 -->
00:37:32,115
I got a liberal arts education.
432
00:37:32,115 -->
00:37:33,715
Now I'm a businessman.
433
00:37:33,735 -->
00:37:35,615
We're running a small business.
434
00:37:35,615 -->
00:37:41,995
And I had to learn what a P &L is on the job at 45 years old.
435
00:37:42,895 -->
00:37:47,855
Maybe that would have been something for me to learn before then.
436
00:37:48,375 -->
00:37:50,188
And I think it's great.
437
00:37:50,188 -->
00:37:58,737
to hear the excitement of these schools saying, yes, we hear our students, our learners,
they already understand that that will be more important.
438
00:37:58,737 -->
00:38:00,958
Whether or not they start their own business, right?
439
00:38:00,958 -->
00:38:03,811
Because they will be part of a functioning business.
440
00:38:03,912 -->
00:38:11,009
And it's interesting how many of us work in businesses and don't actually understand the
function of the business.
441
00:38:11,313 -->
00:38:13,064
Well, I mean, I'm right with you.
442
00:38:13,064 -->
00:38:18,106
didn't either until ah until I really started doing this.
443
00:38:18,347 -->
00:38:19,187
I a little bit.
444
00:38:19,187 -->
00:38:29,953
mean, I had been exposed to some business stuff in former roles, um but didn't understand
the length of full landscape.
445
00:38:30,033 -->
00:38:37,737
And I don't know about you, but for me, um just to kind of tie it back to what we're
talking about before, I think the way that I had thought about business when I was much
446
00:38:37,737 -->
00:38:41,233
younger was that business is very rule based.
447
00:38:41,233 -->
00:38:46,096
kind of boring, stuffy, like pretty mechanistic.
448
00:38:46,096 -->
00:38:47,847
I think I had that idea.
449
00:38:48,548 -->
00:38:53,371
But my experience of what we do is almost purely creative.
450
00:38:54,132 -->
00:39:05,890
There are ways to do things, and there are definitely ways that we wanna go about our work
that are better than other ways, but there's no perfect way, and certainly nobody has a
451
00:39:05,890 -->
00:39:08,862
formula that is gonna work perfectly for what we do.
452
00:39:09,423 -->
00:39:10,443
And...
453
00:39:10,451 -->
00:39:16,348
I have, I would say the thing I have enjoyed the most about running the business is the
creative aspect of it.
454
00:39:16,348 -->
00:39:25,288
And nobody ever, nobody ever suggested to me that running a business is a creative
activity ever.
455
00:39:25,288 -->
00:39:27,430
And it never occurred to me that it was.
456
00:39:27,771 -->
00:39:32,015
And it's been a weird and unexpected discovery.
457
00:39:32,545 -->
00:39:42,319
Yeah, I mean, it's funny because they, I feel like I did understand that you would solve
problems a lot, right?
458
00:39:42,360 -->
00:39:45,721
But the framing of that as a creative exercise, right?
459
00:39:45,721 -->
00:39:53,605
Sometimes the problem that I think we're solving as business owners is not even defined.
460
00:39:53,605 -->
00:39:56,226
You don't know what the problem is.
461
00:39:56,226 -->
00:39:58,711
And if that's not a creative exercise, I don't know.
462
00:39:58,711 -->
00:39:59,311
what is, right?
463
00:39:59,311 -->
00:40:01,573
It's like the definition of a blank canvas.
464
00:40:01,573 -->
00:40:05,556
Like you're like, what am I trying to solve?
465
00:40:05,556 -->
00:40:11,130
And by trying to figure that out, you have to bring kind uh of a plethora of ideas.
466
00:40:11,130 -->
00:40:12,771
You have to bring possibilities.
467
00:40:12,771 -->
00:40:15,373
You have to bring the complexity that we talked about already.
468
00:40:15,373 -->
00:40:17,565
So yeah, I love that.
469
00:40:17,665 -->
00:40:25,361
It's also really interesting for me to think back about these interviews that I talked
about with people around the entrepreneurial mindset and for them to say it's greedy
470
00:40:25,361 -->
00:40:26,121
because
471
00:40:26,175 -->
00:40:36,143
entrepreneurism, I did not have this kind of connotation around greed that I elicited from
people or heard from people or collected.
472
00:40:36,424 -->
00:40:39,526
But I did around business in general, right?
473
00:40:39,526 -->
00:40:43,489
It was like, well, you start a business so you can crush everyone and squeeze profits,
right?
474
00:40:43,489 -->
00:40:47,052
That's kind of like, that's why you would do it.
475
00:40:47,213 -->
00:40:51,376
And that like growing up, that's kind of what I would have thought.
476
00:40:51,776 -->
00:40:55,203
And man, it so does not have to be that and is almost
477
00:40:55,203 -->
00:41:00,423
And it's almost never that except for the examples that we hear about probably most often
in the news, right?
478
00:41:00,423 -->
00:41:05,263
Like, I don't know how accurate this is today, but I have heard, right?
479
00:41:05,263 -->
00:41:10,183
Small businesses are actually the majority of people are employed by small businesses.
480
00:41:10,183 -->
00:41:14,283
In almost all those cases, it is not that exercise.
481
00:41:14,363 -->
00:41:21,203
They operate very much as caring for the people that work there and understand them as
people.
482
00:41:21,303 -->
00:41:24,535
so it's, I don't know.
483
00:41:24,535 -->
00:41:35,866
It's an interesting connection and it's wonderful to hear about people like Ben and Mike
that are out teaching this in a way that might have people that are in their 50s like us
484
00:41:35,866 -->
00:41:44,325
now that didn't have the same experience that might be able to say, no, actually, you
know, my undergrad or outside of that understood this from a different perspective, which
485
00:41:44,325 -->
00:41:45,255
is awesome.
486
00:41:45,275 -->
00:41:47,196
Yeah, definitely.
487
00:41:47,196 -->
00:41:54,499
And just to kind of tie it back to what we talking about before, it is not a like you fit,
said it and forget it, you don't figure it out.
488
00:41:54,499 -->
00:41:57,230
And then it's like you figure it out.
489
00:41:57,230 -->
00:42:00,061
And then six months later, you're like, I figured it out.
490
00:42:00,061 -->
00:42:03,022
But now that answer no longer is the answer, right?
491
00:42:03,022 -->
00:42:04,683
It's something else.
492
00:42:04,683 -->
00:42:06,689
There's a I'm gonna read one more.
493
00:42:06,689 -->
00:42:10,125
I'm going to read a quote from Jen's article, because I don't think I quoted that article
yet.
494
00:42:10,125 -->
00:42:13,587
But she she she says,
495
00:42:14,739 -->
00:42:23,886
um The implication for leadership is less about developing one's ability to tolerate
uncertainty or read a system holistically.
496
00:42:24,227 -->
00:42:35,306
It's about creating environments where people have the necessary tools, information and
permission to experiment a space to sense and adjust collaboratively and the time to learn
497
00:42:35,306 -->
00:42:40,020
from what emerges, not just executing what's prescribed.
498
00:42:40,020 -->
00:42:40,320
Right.
499
00:42:40,320 -->
00:42:43,262
And this, as we've just been talking about it, is
500
00:42:44,955 -->
00:42:48,606
this like, it's a perpetual thing that happens, right?
501
00:42:48,606 -->
00:42:58,119
We are ultimately formulating some kind of prescription, because you don't want to have a
blank, you cannot work from a blank space every time.
502
00:42:58,119 -->
00:42:59,919
You can't make it up as you go along.
503
00:42:59,919 -->
00:43:01,279
You can't recreate it every time.
504
00:43:01,279 -->
00:43:02,900
That would be insane.
505
00:43:03,151 -->
00:43:11,563
On the other hand, you can't just run the same thing over and over again, as though the
world is not changing constantly.
506
00:43:11,563 -->
00:43:13,343
Yeah, fluidly, right?
507
00:43:13,343 -->
00:43:15,114
She uses the word fluid quite a bit.
508
00:43:15,114 -->
00:43:22,388
um And watching hockey makes a lot of sense, makes a very clear comparison to like running
a play and football stop and start, right?
509
00:43:22,388 -->
00:43:28,960
And the playbooks, the many, many plays, and I'm not, I don't know almost anything about
playbook, but not about football.
510
00:43:28,960 -->
00:43:32,062
I do understand that there's a stack of plays, right?
511
00:43:32,062 -->
00:43:39,405
And you announce what that play is going to be and you run that play um for within that
context.
512
00:43:39,405 -->
00:43:40,457
And there are,
513
00:43:40,457 -->
00:43:44,998
some ideas and concepts within hockey, but it's a way more fluid.
514
00:43:44,998 -->
00:43:55,441
um And you almost, she talks at one point kind of about how not only do you have to be in
that moment that you're in, which is an end of itself changing.
515
00:43:55,441 -->
00:44:06,084
And of course using some of the fun cliches about skating to where the puck will be, not
where it's been, but then you also, while you're playing have to see from above.
516
00:44:06,164 -->
00:44:09,465
Like, because if you don't, you don't have an understanding.
517
00:44:09,465 -->
00:44:10,369
um
518
00:44:10,369 -->
00:44:22,504
true for lots of different sports, I love that fluid dynamics aspect of it, which is like,
have to be predicting, predictive and understanding what those things, where things will
519
00:44:22,504 -->
00:44:25,666
be happening in the very soon future.
520
00:44:25,666 -->
00:44:29,597
It's great analogy, fun article.
521
00:44:29,933 -->
00:44:33,272
and the like, I don't know, for me, it feels like there's this.
522
00:44:33,523 -->
00:44:38,673
emotional thing that has to be mastered for anybody who's doing the work that we do.
523
00:44:38,673 -->
00:44:49,187
Like if you're a learning professional, I would say that all of us now, we have this,
because of the rate of change is just increasing and increasing every day.
524
00:44:49,868 -->
00:44:54,449
We kind of have to embrace the feeling of discomfort.
525
00:44:55,069 -->
00:45:00,851
I think that finding a way to handle
526
00:45:01,011 -->
00:45:11,415
The fact that we have to now track in a different way, in a more agile way, in a faster
way, more factors, things that are emerging and changing in the moment.
527
00:45:11,415 -->
00:45:31,133
um I think that part of our skillset is going to be just staying in the moment, being able
to handle this stuff as it flies at us and as we're sort of seeing it and have to adjust.
528
00:45:31,603 -->
00:45:33,434
you know, in the middle of what we're doing.
529
00:45:33,472 -->
00:45:35,373
Yeah, you use discomfort.
530
00:45:35,373 -->
00:45:43,276
I just offer a possible different word that we were assessed on actually as part of our
graduate degree.
531
00:45:43,276 -->
00:45:53,391
um And I learned that it is a metric that you can develop, which is comfort with ambiguity
as opposed to discomfort.
532
00:45:53,391 -->
00:45:57,522
So being comfortable in a place where the answer is not clear.
533
00:45:57,522 -->
00:45:59,143
um
534
00:45:59,415 -->
00:46:00,696
and how to navigate that.
535
00:46:00,696 -->
00:46:09,623
And there's probably some people that might come to that with a relatively high tolerance,
but it's actually something that you can develop.
536
00:46:09,623 -->
00:46:12,785
It's actually a part of kind of mindfulness, right?
537
00:46:12,785 -->
00:46:21,391
Which is like there's a lot of things that might make things feel concrete and all of
that's really an illusion, right?
538
00:46:21,391 -->
00:46:26,635
Like, because nothing is permanent, even though things can feel permanent.
539
00:46:27,051 -->
00:46:41,255
So the comfort with ambiguity, think right now is, I mean, that is for sure a version of
what jobs will hire for, right?
540
00:46:41,255 -->
00:46:47,467
Yes, you do need to understand the vocabulary of the industry you're working in.
541
00:46:47,467 -->
00:46:55,043
You need to have kind of these basic fundamentals, but then you need to be able to adapt
and you're...
542
00:46:55,043 -->
00:47:04,698
to do that, I'd argue you need to have a high level of comfort with ambiguity because it's
not the same tool that you're using and it's not the same process.
543
00:47:04,698 -->
00:47:06,281
So yeah, I agree.
544
00:47:06,281 -->
00:47:10,637
I think that's probably a theme for the next couple of years.
545
00:47:11,103 -->
00:47:12,163
next couple of years.
546
00:47:12,163 -->
00:47:20,343
All we're already mapping well into 2027 here on January 6th of 2026.
547
00:47:22,143 -->
00:47:23,223
It is great talking.
548
00:47:23,223 -->
00:47:24,143
I'm glad we're doing this.
549
00:47:24,143 -->
00:47:26,503
We're gonna do a ton of these this year.
550
00:47:26,754 -->
00:47:28,754
And happy new year.
551
00:47:28,754 -->
00:47:31,594
Glad we're continuing this.
552
00:47:31,594 -->
00:47:36,255
Glad this is only our second of these conversations we're gonna do these at least once a
month, I think.
553
00:47:36,255 -->
00:47:37,036
Super fun.
554
00:47:37,036 -->
00:47:40,978
And it's really great to be forced to formalize some of the thoughts and put them out
there.
555
00:47:40,978 -->
00:47:45,821
And I'm just going to, I'm just going to invite everyone um that's watching.
556
00:47:45,821 -->
00:47:57,117
If you're watching, um join the conversation, send us a note, um ping us and um come on
the podcast, talk about what you're doing.
557
00:47:57,117 -->
00:48:01,989
And also come to the convenings, come to our events and,
558
00:48:02,572 -->
00:48:10,640
meet up with the people that we're meeting up with em because I have a feeling you're
thinking about and working on a lot of similar stuff.
559
00:48:10,891 -->
00:48:12,380
That is the perfect way to end it.
560
00:48:12,380 -->
00:48:14,046
Thank you for all that.
561
00:48:15,035 -->
00:48:17,120
Yeah, thanks for having me.
562
00:48:20,734 -->
00:48:22,659
I'll invite myself back soon.
563
00:48:22,910 -->
00:48:25,714
All right, all right, bye
