Finding the Pattern: From Policing and Baseball to AI with Shawn Cunningham

Gina Hudel: [00:00:08] I'm Gina Hudel and welcome to Ready for Beyond. Ready for Beyond explores how we move forward in a world that's changing fast. From AI to global dynamics. It looks to how the lives we build lead us to shape our future. We'll examine growth and personal fulfillment with practical takeaways and candid conversations that open the door to possibility. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss any episode of this journey. Let's go beyond.

Gina Hudel: [00:00:50] What do military policing, homicide investigations, baseball pitching, and artificial intelligence have in common? More than you might think. Welcome to Ready for Beyond. I'm Gina Hudel. Today I'm joined by Shawn Cunningham. Sean has spent a career looking for patterns in investigations, in coaching and now through artificial intelligence. Shawn, welcome.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:01:18] Thanks, Gina.

Gina Hudel: [00:01:19] Shawn, you've had more than one unusual career path. Did it ever feel unusual while you were living it? Or did each next step simply make sense at the time?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:01:31] No, I never really thought out the steps of my career. I mean, I never even considered an occupation when I was in high school. I don't even think I considered post-secondary when I was in high school. So as I kind of fell into these things and got into each realm and learned what it was about, things just kind of naturally flowed to me to the next thing based on the information that I was taking in at the time.

Gina Hudel: [00:01:57] So that would take us back to the beginning then, where I think if we were looking for labels of career, maybe the first career that we might speak to would be policing.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:02:09] Well, kind of I joined the military first, but I joined the military as a military police officer. Yes. So when I graduated high school, I didn't go to grade 13 like all my friends. I didn't really enjoy high school very much. I found it to be boring. And as a result, I really didn't get very good grades because I wasn't interested at all. So I went and worked a bunch of labor jobs for about a year. Very hard labor jobs, you know, working in welding shops, roofing, installing flooring. And I have an appreciation for how hard those people work. And I knew that I did not want to work physically that hard for 40 years. So I decided to go back to school. And I wanted to be a fireman initially. And at the time it was very difficult for a person my age to get hired as a firefighter. So I decided I wouldn't mind being a police officer. I don't have any police officers in my family. Nobody. I didn't know any. So I went to college for police foundations for it. And when I graduated, I couldn't get hired at the local police department where I live, just based on my age and hiring practices at the time. And military was always a big thing in my family. My grandfather served in World War Two as an infantryman and was always well regarded. And I did like the discipline and the physicality of it. And I decided to join. So I joined and I was a military police officer for four years, most of it in Canada, with the exception of I did a tour in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2006 when the war was just starting, when it switched from peacekeeping to a NATO war mission. And I spent six months there. And then when I finished there, I came back home. And then the police department was very eager to hire me.

Gina Hudel: [00:04:06] Didn't necessarily see that coming from high school and grade school and all that, although having a little bit of military in the family, perhaps part of it, I think in the past, you and I have chatted a bit about the value of training and did you find that perhaps training was part of what attracted you after you didn't love your academic career necessarily in grade school and high school, as you've alluded, was there something about the training and the military that once you got in, you were like, oh, actually, I'm kind of excelling at this, or what kept you there for a period of time because you stayed for a period of time?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:04:43] Yeah, it was mostly, yeah. I am attracted to training and trying to get better, but what kind of struck me was I had not very good grades in high school, low 70s. 60s. Just because I didn't care to pay attention. Because I wasn't interested. Then when I went to college and I took something I was interested in, I was on the honor roll 90s and above. You know, not that that's uncommon just for me. It was because I was interested in it. And in the military, you spend a majority of your time training. You're training 90 to 95% of the time for the 5% of the time that you're going to use it, which for me was Afghanistan. And, you know, when I was back home, being a military police officer, we were operational on the basis. But the volume of crime is very low. And you know, when I switched to civilian policing, it was the direct opposite of that. We spent 5% of our time training and 95% of our time going to active calls.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:05:45] And the call volume is very, very heavy. Where I was a police officer. So the training did attract me because I can set goals every day, try to hit those goals, and then set a new goal at the end of the day to try to achieve the next day. So I like that. I still carry that and everything I do. So yeah, the training did attract me to stay. Also, the variety of things you could do in the military was very attractive, particularly the trade that I was in military police, you can do a lot of different things where some trades, like if you're an infantryman, artilleryman, or, you know, like a bosun in the Navy, you know, your job is kind of limited to what you do. But there was a lot. You could go to embassies, you could work in the detective service, you could work in an operational field unit. You know, I'm just naming a couple. There were many. I really loved my time there, but I was not really conducive to settling down and raising a family either.

Gina Hudel: [00:06:40] And that's it. We have many elements of our lives and the quality of life is part of it. And, and I know that we've also spoken of areas where you explore for personal development, possibly professional development? Can you chat a bit about it? I love that you once shared a story with me about how you were gifted a book on finance, and then it just led to much more awareness and understanding.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:07:06] Proper money management was not a topic ever discussed in my family growing up. In fact, my family struggled with finances almost their whole lives. Working class, you know, there were months where like we'd get the hydro turned off or my parents couldn't pay the bills because, you know, my dad was laid off from the factory or whatever. Have you, we had three kids at home and that was not a topic that was discussed. So when I met my now wife, 22, 23 years ago, that was a topic that was discussed at her house. And I remember her laughing at me. She still kind of makes fun of me for it, that I bought a computer on credit. And I was very proud of this computer. It was when I joined the Army. She first met me and I told her back then, I think it was an expensive computer. I think it was like 2000 bucks. We're talking like 20 years ago. And I put it on credit at the future shop, and she did not like that. And we were still dating at the time. And she gave me a book called The Wealthy Barber, a very popular book in Canada. I read it and I became extremely interested in it. At the time, we were living in Manitoba, and I was on the base there, and I read, I think, every book on on finance at the public library, which was probably about 50 different books. And then I applied to get my Canadian securities course just for fun. Actually, when I left the Army, I didn't want to be a cop. I wanted to be a personal finance advisor. But the police department came so quickly that that's kind of what I went with. But yeah, I still have a big interest in it. And I love discussing finances and money. I know it's kind of boring and you don't really want to discuss that at parties, but if somebody gives me the opening and they want to talk about it, I'm happy to do so.

Gina Hudel: [00:08:49] And why not? That's brilliant. If you've got something to share. But I love how you take the lead on that.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:08:55] You know what I learned through experience. You know, people don't really want you to give them financial advice if they haven't asked for it. So now I don't.

Gina Hudel: [00:09:04] Smart man, smart man. And thanks for being so candid and sharing the family background. It gives us that foundation. Another area of interest for you, which one wouldn't necessarily put together, didn't necessarily say this one is baseball.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:09:18] Played a lot of baseball growing up and baseball again, my family was not a baseball family. You know, my dad was a hockey guy. And he used to throw the football a lot with me. I was not an overly athletic kid, but, you know, just as good as anybody else, I suppose. And he would throw the football a lot. And I had this weird habit of throwing rocks quite a bit. And I'd go around with pockets full of rocks, just throwing them at poles. And, you know, it sounds funny, but I'll explain why that's kind of important in a few minutes. Anyways, my neighbor realized that I could throw really hard and he was a baseball guy, so he told me to try out for baseball, and I did. And then I could instantly throw much harder than all the other boys. And I had instant success, so I fell in love with it. You know, like anybody does when they're good at something right away. Yeah. I played baseball all the way up into my mid-twenties and shift work with the police kind of got in the way. And then I stepped back from that until I had my own family and my son. We put him in baseball and I became deeply entrenched in coaching, sort out everything that I could to get better at it. And took numerous certifications through various organizations in Canada and the US.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:10:31] And I stumbled upon an organization called the National Pitching Association, which is run by and run by a man named Tom House, who is the source for pitching. He's trained hundreds of Major League Baseball players. He himself played in the majors for 8 or 9 years. He was Nolan Ryan, pitching coach. Randy Johnson, he was Tom Brady's throwing coach. Drew Brees was throwing coach. And we go to the States several times a year to meet with Tom and my other National Pitching Association coaches. And it was actually through the National Pitching Association where I realized why I could throw harder than everybody. And it was because I did throw the football and I threw rocks when I was a kid at the football allowed me to throw much harder than everybody, and the rock throwing actually sped my arm up to the fact where I had a really good accelerator and my arm was extremely fast, and that's how I was able to throw harder than everybody when I was a kid. And, you know, that's kind of why I tell that story. And that's the story I tell to the, you know, thousands of pictures I've coached since. You know, there's all kinds of fancy gizmos to get better now. But you know, maybe throw a football and some rocks and you might be better than everybody else.

Gina Hudel: [00:11:45] I love that sort of diversity in the background, because we always talk about the value of diversity, the diversity of the experience. And I also love the fact that, you know, talking about some pretty cost effective, you don't need to have the fanciest tools to get better, but you call upon those experiences and try different experiences. Now, is this an area of you know, it was an area of interest. It's an area of expertise that you have. How do you utilize that in your life now? Is it a full time area? Is it an area of passion? Is it something that you have now that you might build on more later?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:12:24] About 3 or 4 years ago, I formed a corporation, an Ontario Corp., and then we started doing clinics all over the province, predominantly where I live. A lot of kids come from outside where I live to meet, to train, including the US. Get a lot of kids from New York that come up to train with me and I'll run clinics throughout the winter in locations that I rent. And during the summertime, I offer one on one pitching lessons or group pitching lessons. And many teams hire me to come in and work with their players and pitchers. And I love it. It's allowed me to dive deep into an area and in Canada particularly that there's not a lot of people with expertise in. There's a lot of kids that have played but they haven't received the training and I suppose a foundation to be able to teach other people. It's one thing to be able to do something, it's another thing to be able to teach it. I mean, look at Wayne Gretzky. He was a great hockey player. One of the greatest ever and maybe not such a good coach. Michael Jordan, same thing. Great basketball player. Not a great coach. So just because you're really good at a sport doesn't mean you can coach it. And I've learned that that is very true in my dealings with all many coaches that I've interacted with over the last few years.

Gina Hudel: [00:13:49] I'm going to ask you, then listeners have heard you talk about military investigations a little bit, finance, baseball, and in a moment we're going to talk about artificial intelligence. So on paper, those things don't necessarily belong together. But it seems that every time something captures your attention, you seem to do the same thing. You seem to learn everything you can. You train seriously, and then you put it into practice. And then seemingly eventually, another interesting problem appears and you seem to be solution focused. Solution oriented. Is that a pattern that you recognize in yourself? Or you're like, Gina, that's not how it works?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:14:30] No, I would say it is. I've got a lot to say, unique ability, but it's not real common that when I'm doing something, you know, I will do my best and train to learn the basics of it. And when I'm doing that, I see opportunities that other people may have overlooked to try to make things. Example would be I've been a police officer for over 20 years, about 24 years. If you include military police, the majority of my time has been spent in investigations. I spent a long time in the homicide unit taking part in running homicides as the lead investigator, you know, Criminal Investigations bureau, major drugs, all of these have their unique challenges, and there are nuances to each unit. I've done investigations by myself and I've run investigations where I've been in charge of 30 detectives. And in each one of those experiences, there's areas that could be improved upon. So I find that I can notice those situations and apply solutions to improve upon certain workflows to save time or maybe make a better product at the end of the day.

Gina Hudel: [00:15:43] Shawn, would you say that there's something that separates someone who follows the process from someone who's generally good at seeing what others miss based upon?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:15:53] Adhd. It's been, I don't want to say demonized, but many people think that if you have ADHD, that, you know, you have learning difficulties and maybe you might not be as bright as everybody else. That is completely the opposite in my view. Their brains just work faster than most people. So when somebody comes to me and says, you know, say I'm training a pitcher and their parent says, hey, you know, he has ADHD, and I'll give that kid a high five right away because I know that if he's driven and he has that, he is going to learn much faster than the kid that does not have that. Or detective, when I get new detectives, if I've got a guy who's got ADHD, he if he's driven to match that with that, he is going to be much better than his peers.

Gina Hudel: [00:16:42] Shawn, what you're kind of telling me then, ADHD can be a superpower.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:16:46] I believe so. In fact, when you know, we've got our new software company. We're happy to take candidates who have skill sets. But I can tell you that I'm paying quite a bit of attention to somebody. If they say, well, you know, you should know I have ADHD. I instantly think in my head that this person is going to be useful because they're going to be able to do things much faster than the other person is going to be able to do them. The only thing that I would say is you've kind of got to put checks and balances in place for those people and keep them inside the guardrails. But it's almost the difference between having a Honda Civic and a Ferrari. If the Ferrari is running the right way and it's staying on the road, it's going to beat the Honda Civic every time.

Gina Hudel: [00:17:26] Shawn I'm just sort of having a mini flashback here and, and it almost sounds like a plug. But if we have any listeners who are listening to this episode right now, I will say that we had another guest, and I'm hoping to introduce you if you haven't met each other yet. Wanda Deschamp, who actually has herself, was self, was diagnosed with ADHD as a grown adult. And she's actually opened up a company focusing on helping individuals as well as organizations making the workplace more user friendly for these superstars with these superpowers like you describe here. And I find it rewarding to, to, to hear that validated in this conversation, which certainly wasn't seated.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:18:12] Yeah. Let me know if she's got a list of hiring, a hiring board that she's picking from. I would say that this caveat with that, though, is they generally do not tend to do well with very regimented and inflexible managers, because you'll quickly realize that if that person is driven and they're realizing that there are opportunities and the manager wants to be able to stamp their name to that opportunity, that that'll create a clash. You know, I know it has for me. I have little tolerance for somebody that moves slow when the evidence is in front of them. It's been one of the tenets that I base my investigative style on, and I think it's why I've been successful when I do an investigation is, you know, if we smell blood in the water, we're going we're not going to sit there and, and wonder if we should make a move. We'll make the move if it's the right thing to do at the time. And if there's some fallout, we'll figure it out later.

Gina Hudel: [00:19:04] Shawn, you sort of gave a little heads up there and I spoke a little bit before. Let's talk about Strick's vision and AI and what problem in investigations were bothering you enough to say, hey, I have an idea. And I think that maybe this new technology, AI, might be able to help us.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:19:24] Absolutely. So, you know, I'm not a technically proficient person. At least I wasn't. I think I'm quite a bit more proficient now than most people. But that was, you know, by necessity. Last year, in the summer I was messing around with ChatGPT as everybody else was kind of trying to figure it out as well. And I kind of said, geez, I wonder if I could apply this to my job because this thing is so good at a lot of I love information and it just gets whatever information you want. It's such a huge lever. So I ran some fictitious investigations through it and found out that not only did it produce the information faster, way faster than I ever could, it produced a better quality product than I probably could. I'm a detective instructor. Like I go around the province and instruct new detectives. You know, I'm certified with the Ontario Police College, and even I could not do what this thing could do. So started messing around with it some more, figured out a workflow, particularly around investigative and police report writing. And some people thought it was very interesting. And I became involved with an accelerator center actually in Waterloo and hooked up with some mentors, business mentors. I was able to secure some investment and started Strix Vision Incorporated, and we've been driving that since last September. And at this point, we're seeing workflow time reductions of anywhere from 80 to over 90% of the time that it would have taken an investigator or detective to do.

Gina Hudel: [00:20:59] Very exciting. Now, of course, the other side of AI is one where if we don't ask the question, you know, it feels as if we're hyping the AI. Can I ask you, have you thought about where, with the work that you're doing, you're going to draw the line with AI and what should remain the human judgment?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:21:20] Absolutely. That's a core feature of our product. As everybody who's used AI knows that it doesn't always get everything right and it can make things up and it can be dangerous if you don't have a human in the loop reading the work. Now, the problem that I see with AI, you know, that I've experienced personally is it gets you the information so fast and there's so much volume that a lot of times you won't take the time to read it because it just spit out ten pages worth of things on the one question you asked. And you're like, well, I'm not reading all this, you know? So you basically just take it and go with it. Our product builds in a forced verification loop, so you cannot adopt any of the reports that we create. And so we have forced you to go through and verify it before you can end up adopting it. And we've got a variety of techniques built into the software to do that. So yeah, AI is fantastic, but it does need human oversight. You could look very silly.

Gina Hudel: [00:22:22] Glad to hear that that oversight is being thought about. It's certainly something that's in the news every day. Can I ask you if there's anything else about AI that you'd want to share with folks. It may or may not be applicable to the work that you're doing in the product that you're developing. But we know about yourself, Shawn, that when you see something, you think about other things and you put things together. Do you think that people would have any misunderstandings about the use of AI, or do you think pro and con that you'd say friends, I might keep my eye on this.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:22:59] Well, I've heard a lot of talk and I do follow it on a daily basis around, oh, you know, it's going to replace people's jobs. You know, I think it was. I don't know if it was the guy who owns Nvidia. I might be misquoting, but he said it's not the AI that's going to take your job. It's the guy who knows how to use AI that's going to take your job. And I believe that that's 100% true. I can use my program and I can do the work of six detectives right now. Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't use those detectives. I think we should keep all of them. What I think is they should just get more proficient at the part of the job that eats the most amount of time and produces maybe marginal benefit to the public. The public wants to see us out doing investigations, stopping speeders, arresting the people that break into their homes, solving their murders. It's tough to do that when you're chained to a computer for eight hours of your 12 hour shift. Now, if we can maybe keep you there for an hour and a half, two hours instead, and give you the other ten hours to actually go do your job that the public wants you to be doing, I think that that is a huge benefit to society. The flip side of that is if you don't want to get left behind by AI, you need to pay attention and learn. I know everybody wants to clock out at 5:00 when they're done work, but I don't believe that that's an option anymore if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

Gina Hudel: [00:24:17] Which speaks to the sort of unorthodox equation that you've gone about your career, right? So you didn't necessarily plan your career, but you have spent a remarkable amount of your life Preparing, training, learning, studying, practicing. And this loops back to AI, where you are learning and practicing and continue to study. You touched upon clocking out. Any words of counsel to those who are starting new careers who may or and or may need to do a pivot within their career or to an adjacent area?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:24:50] Absolutely. I think the best way to get better at anything is in small doses on a regular basis. If you think that you're going to spend two days on the weekend learning everything that you can about AI, I think you're sadly mistaken. I think the easiest way to maybe do it is instead of watching three hours of Netflix at night time, that maybe you only watch two and you spend an hour doing the multitude of free courses and training that is available on the internet right now by all of these major AI companies. You might find that you'll find workflows just like I found that would make your job easier, that you could also monetize and roll out to the world. Or maybe you don't have an interest in running a business because it's. I can tell you it's extremely hard being an entrepreneur. But maybe you just make your day easier, more productive, and you'll see the net benefit across various facets of your life. AI is not going anywhere. It's accelerating by the day. You know, these AI leaders can say that we should slow down and govern it all they want, but the market's going to push it. And you're going to see integration into pretty much everything that we do I think in the next five years. So why wouldn't you spend half an hour to an hour a day paying attention to it, even if you think it's boring? If you don't want to become redundant, then maybe that's something that you have to do as opposed to wanting to do.

Gina Hudel: [00:26:11] Sane and informed counsel. Thank you for sharing that. I really enjoyed the conversation, Shawn. I blink and 28 minutes have gone by here. I always finish with the same question. So for yourself, you've got the investigations, you've got strict vision, you've got baseball, you've got family. And we've established that when something catches your interest, you tend to go pretty deep. How is it that you unwind and what does switching off look like for you?

Shawn Cunningham: [00:26:38] Well, I might give you an unpopular answer. Unwinding for me is exactly all of the things that I just talked about. I will spend time learning more, I'll work out. I'm always trying to get a little bit better. And for me, sitting in front of a TV or going for a walk for me, that actually causes a little bit of stress because that makes me feel like I'm being unproductive. And me unwinding is actually me settling in and learning like maybe a new plugin for AI or going for a jog or reading about a new technique for, for baseball, that, that, that would help my players out. So there really is no, no, no stop button for me. And when I hit the stop button, like when we go away on vacation. I'm stressed out because we're not doing something. So my unwind is to actually keep doing what I'm doing.

Gina Hudel: [00:27:35] And Shawn, it makes sense if we think about, you know, people talk about relaxation and rejuvenation, you're relaxing comes from your rejuvenation then.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:27:43] Yeah, I think so.

Gina Hudel: [00:27:44] I got it, I got it, Shawn, thank you for this, what stays with me from the conversations is that your path doesn't need to be particularly planned. And for you, it wasn't particularly planned, but very little about it has been accidental. You know, you get interested, you learn, you train, you test what you've learned, and then sometimes the next thing appears.

Shawn Cunningham: [00:28:06] Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that won't stop and, and continue to learn and pivot as life goes on. And that's the variety of it. And, you know, hopefully when I reach the age of 90, if I get lucky to, to live that long, I will have experienced many different parts of life instead of just you know, maybe one particular group effort in 35, 40 years.

Gina Hudel: [00:28:32] Well, I hope we keep in touch and I hope we hear about the next one. I think that what we are learning here today is that we don't always need to know exactly where something is leading us while we're learning it. Thank you for joining me, Shawn. Thank you to our listeners for spending part of your day with us. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow Ready for Beyond on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you don't miss future episodes. And if someone comes to mind while you're listening, I'd love it if you'd share this episode with them. Until next time. Thanks for listening to Ready for Beyond.