How AI Is Transforming Work, Culture, and Leadership

Cole Abbott

[0:00:06]

Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology. That's Peter Thiel and one of the biggest sort of general technologies all of us are benefit have benefited from or experienced in last four three something years.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:23]

Just like 2022 is probably we're, we're going on three.

Cole Abbott

[0:00:26]

Going on three. AI.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:28]

Yeah. Right, yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:00:30]

So it's been a hot topic everywhere. Most small mid sized businesses, most founders leverage it regularly.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:39]

Yep.

Cole Abbott

[0:00:41]

So what are. I guess the interesting thing to start this off with would be how has it changed the companies that you've been coaching over the last five years? How have you seen that affect their performance, affect their teams, even affect your meetings with them?

Mark Abbott

[0:01:02]

Right, yeah, it's a great question. It's kind of made its way into your typical small and mid sized business relatively slowly. You know, I think the first if you. If chatgpt. Right, right. Was kind of became something that was introduced to the whole world in the early winter. Like December is I think November, December of whatever that is. 22. Right. And I would say for the first year it was for most people. For most companies it was just something you were aware of. Right. Maybe people would experiment with it, founders in particular. But it wasn't a part of most of my conversations. Whereas it's now becoming a part of the conversation. You know, we now have AI incorporated into our Rocks tool and the Rocks tool will help you Maz inside of helping you create a rock will ask you questions and eventually. Right. You'll get to the place where it will make the rock smart. It will have milestones, it will be, you know, I consistently see the rocks that are created by Maz much better than the rocks that were created by, you know, without, without the, the assistance even my own.

Cole Abbott

[0:02:59]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:59]

Because it forces you to sort of think about some things as opposed to all right, I gotta get this thing done, I gotta make it smart. And you know, the next thing you know is you've got a rock with, you know, three or four milestones that are kind of mushy. You haven't thought through things as much as you. You need to. And so, you know, that's a classic example right now of where I have a bunch of like this is amazing.

Cole Abbott

[0:03:27]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:03:28]

And they send me videos of them working on rocks with their teams and they're all geeked out about it. So you see it there. We're starting to see. And this is part of the next phase of the evolution of mass. We're starting to see a lot of my clients talk about leveraging AI to better develop their accountability charts. So that's the thing that we also have MAs working on. They're talking about leveraging AI to better help them come up with their KPIs and their targets, which is also a thing that MAZ team is rolling out at least at beta, if not ga, this year. And so they're starting to become more aware of and leveraging AI now consistently to do the things that, you know, it can do really, really well. You know, you help you think through things, help you write things. So that comfort with and familiarity with, for me, has only happened in the last six to nine months in terms of what I'm seeing from my own clients. And I think that's the same even inside of 90. Even everybody's aware that we've been working on AI since, you know, actually before GP, you know, before ChatGPT came came out. You know, now I'm talking, you know, having conversations with people like, yeah, yeah, you know, I was doing this. I was doing this. I leveraged AI for, to do this particular thing. And, you know, the choice I made. And I can be harsh on myself, and I will be harsh on myself when I say this. I was not comfortable doing a AI mandate on our whole company. My approach was because I struggled with the way it came across from a lot of other founders and CEOs. I kind of leaned into, I want to talk about it a lot, but I want it to be more organic. And I feel like that's happening really nicely in 90. It's more of an organic embracing of thinking about. We're asking questions. You're just saying, hey, have you thought about just popping that into ChatGPT and seeing what it thinks? And so we've sort of taken this kind of, you know, even though we're a company that is leveraging AI and AI is core to who we are, we kind of have taken an organic approach to the department, sort of embracing it and figuring out things. We're actually standing up an AI council now internally to help us just make sure we're all on the same page. But. But I think that, like, we're experiencing it. Most of my clients have sort of taken an organic approach to leveraging the technology, to finding the opportunities, where the tool is useful. And I think the consequence of this is that, yeah, maybe the larger organizations were much more, because if they have more capital to do this thing, you know, you're starting to see, you know, agents in, you know, being inside of the. Inside of the products and for the services, you know, of Larger organizations, whether it's Amazon or even, you know, as I shared with you a couple, what, a month ago, I was looking for tires for my motorcycle and, and Dunlap had this really cool AI, you know, bot that helped you figure out what tires you needed for your, for your, for your bike. And so that was really super cool. So you see, in the larger organizations, I think they're ahead of the smaller organizations and I think the smaller organizations are taking more of an organic approach. But I don't think that's a big issue. I think it's fine.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:56]

I feel like the bigger organizations obviously have the capital and you want to invest in. How can we do things better with AI? And I think with the small, the small midsize companies, the more of the, I guess you could say late majority kind of group here.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:10]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:11]

You're using it to solve individual pain points.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:14]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:14]

And you want to shine a light on those things. And culture is going to play a big role in that. So if you have a culture that's really, really focused on comfort, safety, those sorts of things, this can be alarming because it's. Oh, well, what's that? And then if your anxiety goes into. You're just playing defense against this thing, that feels like an inevitability.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:35]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:36]

Well, that's really concerning and worrying.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:38]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:38]

If you're taking it from that perspective. And I think we've done a good job at shining the light and how just. And not forcing anything.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:46]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:46]

As you said, organic. And how you can just make things easier for yourself in terms of consistency, in terms of. Right. I think from the founder's perspective, a business owner perspective, when I see these rocks and they're coming in good. Well, all of them look the same and they're all adhering to this format. And we've seen that, you know, you look at, in some of. It's laughable. Whereas you look at LinkedIn posts and they all look exactly the same now because it's just AI running it through. What's the optimal format for this thing in this.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:16]

Whatever. Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:17]

And it's. So it's doing that and in company. That's really good because you want everything to sort of be up to standard, be consistent. You don't need to worry about, you know, if you're reading a rock, I just want all the rocks to look the same so I don't have to change the language I'm reading it in every single time.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:33]

Yeah. And, and, and, and the discipline associated with really thinking about the milestones and the Discipline associated with making it smart. The discipline associated with making sure you've thought through the racy. The discipline associated with, hey, did you reach out and say to so and so, hey, I'm going to need you for 20 hours on this rock in the next quarter. Can you give that to me? So there's, you know, that's the thing that's really cool about AI is when it comes to disciplines that are obviously helpful, it can make sure that you're following those. I mean, that's an easy thing for it to do.

Cole Abbott

[0:10:18]

It's really good at elevating everybody the table stakes in that way.

Mark Abbott

[0:10:21]

Yeah, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:10:22]

And then there's a lot of other things that helps with, like research, which can be extremely time consuming. Understanding where, you know, like KPIs. I feel like most founders in these situations, like what makes sense, that makes sense. Let's just do that. Yeah, and now that's not really an excuse because you could just, I always put in ChatGPT, figure out we're supposed to do. And it's like, that is a good starting point.

Mark Abbott

[0:10:43]

Just ask 90. Just ask mass. Right. I think one, one of the comments, you know, I'm geeking out on this lately. So back to helping people embrace AI as you and I have talked about for years, I've been up and down what I'll call the rabbit hole associated with employee archetypes. And I started going down there five years ago. I really felt there was something we could do to help people have genuine conversations around, you know, who they are and what they want so that we can help, you know, people thrive. And to me, you know, it's not like every single individual is extraordinarily different when it comes to the employee archetype. And so, you know, I started doing a lot of research years ago and it wasn't front and center of everything I was working on. So that's why it's up and down the rabbit hole in this one. But recently, one of the Bain partners published a book called Archetype Effects, and he and his colleagues studied 48,000 employees across the globe and came up with six employee archetypes. And they resonated with me. And I've now been talking to a lot of people internally and externally about his archetypes. And the reason I think the archetype heuristic is really good is because even when it comes to AI, it informs how you should be caught talking with an employee. Six archetypes really swiftly are pioneers. And those are the sort of, you know, the the visionaries and very comfortable with risk and ambiguity and very long term oriented and highly driven. And then you have strivers, which is your typical, you know, professional who really wants to go up the corporate ladder. And, and interestingly, they're driven, they're actually less comfortable with ambiguity and risk because they want to know, if I do this, I'll get to the next step. Right. Makes up, makes it kind of obvious. So they tend to be a little bit more short term oriented, but longer term, but not like really long term oriented. And then you have the next, you have, in no particular order, you have operators who are people who just, you know, let me do my, let me do my job, teach me how to do it well, let me know when I'm doing well. But you know, I'm more of a nine to five person and I've got an outside life and I'm, you know, I'm not as hung up on str be. I'm not a striver, right. I don't need to become a manager. We've talked about this before. Over 50, 60% of people these days don't want to be leaders. They don't be managers, right? So you got those people. And then you have givers, which are people who very much are all about helping us work really, really well together, very relationship oriented. And then you have artisans, which are people who very much are into the art of what they're producing. And then we have explorers, which are people that love just trying a bunch of different things. And anyway, the point here is that when you talk about AI, if you know the person, have a sense for the person's archetype, like an artisan, you can help them understand how this could enable them to be more prolific and do more. A giver could help you understand people better and have better convers. Right? So AI actually, when presented properly to an archetype, becomes something that is interesting and leverageable as opposed to, if we just present AI to everybody the exact same way, it's going to fall on many people's, you know, deaf ears, if you will. So I think that's another thing back to AI right now is, you know, not everybody's the same, not everybody wants the same thing, but you know, meet them where they are and help them understand how AI can help them be a better version of the best version of themselves.

Cole Abbott

[0:14:56]

Well, you want to figure out the best way to appeal to them, the best way to serve them, and then also the best way to understand their shortcomings or their innate shortcomings. Where they're going to look things over and use it to help both shine the light on what those are and, you know, make up for them. And then obviously you want to get really technical from a leadership perspective. You want to just make it, just dial that back, dial that back, dial that back, increase your understanding of what they need, where their shortcomings are and their understanding of what those things are, and then dial back the reliance on AI to cover for those things.

Mark Abbott

[0:15:35]

Well, it's interesting to the shortcomings conversation, right. So, you know, I would submit to you that a truly enlightened leader, right. Would meet them where they are, but a less enlightened leader would view where they are as inherently a shortcoming. Right. Because they're not interested or they're not open. Right? So the whole shortcomings conversation is a fascinating one, right? Because a lot of people, way too many people in my opinion, are, have a point of view that, you know, there's a, this is a shortcoming when instead of it being a shortcoming, it's, it's kind of, you know, part of that. It's, it's, it's, it's part of their, their traits. Right? And so, you know, instead of saying that's a shortcoming, it's like, hey, you know, given this is who you are, this is what, you know, this, this, this is how I think, you know, you should be looking at it right now. And so frame it for them based upon who they are. Right. Their archetype and inherent within that is sort of what they want. Right. As I said earlier, the operators are not typically don't want to be a manager. Now, I've known a bunch of people over the years, many of the engineers in our organization. I've had conversations with several of them who always viewed themselves as, I just want to be an individual contributor. But they joined a team, they, Right. They joined a pod, they joined whatever. And all of a sudden they were like, hey, you know, I actually like this leadership stuff. Right? So, you know, there's, there's a, part of the, part of our roles as leaders is to help people explore, you know, not just, you know, just be comfortable with where they are, but give them opportunities to explore something that's even outside of what they think they're. They want or they're comfortable with. Because sometimes, you know, it's like, wow, I, I didn't know. I really enjoyed doing this, but now I do and to be a leader and now I'd like to take the next step and oh, by the way, now that I have this more elevated perspective, I'm now interested in things that didn't interest me a year or two ago.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:52]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:17:52]

I'm now more interested in culture, or I'm now more interested in, in, in organizational design, or I'm now more interested in feedback. And I'm now. Right. And so, you know, back to organic versus forced. You know, I think the, I think AI is going to enable us to have more organic growth. Better organic growth, less forced growth. And that's to me, very cool.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:25]

If you play it right.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:26]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:27]

It'll do that. Well.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:28]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:28]

If you don't, then basically you can scale understanding and exploration with AI in ways you couldn't do before.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:37]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:37]

Whereas I would take one very, very wise experience, whatever you want to say, person and interested person, to go through all of these things with a bunch of different people and well, how do you scale that? Whereas you can get AI to do that in that more professional role, not as a therapist.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:58]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:58]

But you can get AI to do that better. And it's for all intents purposes, infinitely scalable.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:03]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:04]

And that's a cool thing. And also you don't need to worry about. I think a lot of people struggle with talking to somebody about some of these things.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:12]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:13]

And you don't really need to worry about that with AI.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:15]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:16]

There's no sense of shame or.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:19]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:20]

Awkwardness or anything with it.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:22]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:22]

Which I think is really good and something that we need to lean more into. And I think there's a. On the leadership thing is a whole other topic. But yeah, there's a hesitancy with will to power and wanting to lead and grow and do these things. And there's just a taboo with it societally, which is a whole interesting thing these days. I think we're, it's getting, it's coming. We're coming out of it.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:49]

We're coming out of it.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:50]

But it's, it's been the last probably 10 years has. It's been a very, it's been at the forefront sort of. Right. Culturally of, oh, is that. I don't want to. You know, you look at stories recently versus more classic stories from before and it's always, you know, the good leader doesn't want to lead, doesn't want to do these things. And there's like, oh, there's a sort of righteousness and wanting to just do your part. And it's like, well, no, if you are able to help others and the best way for you to help others is by leading Them. It's like we shouldn't deprive you and the people that you could serve by withholding your leadership.

Mark Abbott

[0:20:29]

Yeah. I mean we can have a whole conversation around, around levels of self and others awareness and culture, you know, as you and I are, you know, we're, we're both students of, you know, ego development frameworks and you know, lovingers, which we've talked about a bunch before. And you know, and you know, and, and we've had lots of conversations around, you know, you get to level six, which is where, you know, you're, you, you want to help people, you know, all get along. But the inherent issue with level six is that there's an inherent assumption that everybody, you know, wants the same thing. Right. That you know, all cultures are great, that, you know, we shouldn't or that.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:22]

No culture is great or no culture is great. I think that's the bigger one.

Mark Abbott

[0:21:25]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:26]

Is you're like, well, in order for everyone to get along, just abandon culture.

Mark Abbott

[0:21:28]

Yeah. Anti, anti culturalism. Right. Which is, you know, we can talk about postmodernism and everything that got us here. But, but you know, I think we got, it's interesting, right? We got stuck at level six and then because of that we actually are, have experienced the negative of it all, which is that, you know, embracing and rewarding meritocracy.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:59]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:22:00]

Became a victim of it because. Okay, what, you know, no one should be special, right? We should all just get along. We should. All right. No one's, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's, Everybody's great. No, you know, 5% of the population are sociopaths and psychopaths and you know, you know, you have to, you know, if you build a system, assuming everybody's great, you're going to run into a lot of trouble and we can go on and on and on. Right. But I do think that, you know, we are coming through and this, you know, this, this moment of where, you know, whether it's anti capitalism or it's anti meritocracy or it's anticulturalism, you know, coming through the dark side of what I'll call level six thinking or the, the, the, the, the inherent.

Cole Abbott

[0:22:57]

What's, it's like level six leading, level three almost.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:00]

Yeah, yeah. There's a, there, there, there, you know, like everything, right, every, every tool, right. Can be used for good or it can be used for bad or it can, or could it, it can have some unintended consequences. And we're, you know, I, I believe we're coming through this, that people do appreciate the individual people do appreciate people who are, who, who, who are interested in taking on more and doing more and comfortable with people, you know, having, you know, people who work really hard, having appropriate rewards for doing such. So. Yeah. And I think that once again, this is where AI can help people better understand why the world is the way it is. And this gets back to why we've been taking our time on it, because we've been so focused on making sure that MAS has a first principle based perspective and really embraces the core principles that we think are time tested, like unalienable rights and being a good guide for people. When people are asking questions about themselves, about how, how to work best with others, about what they should be prioritizing, you know, how to break something complicated down into parts like a rock, etc, into pebbles. Into pebbles.

Cole Abbott

[0:24:36]

So on the topic of culture.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:38]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:24:40]

How have you seen, I know you like to look at things. So the archetypes, the cultural archetypes. How have you seen those different archetypes or different cultures that, you know, generally frameworks within a company or companies.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:55]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:24:57]

In terms of adopting AI, leveraging AI, being resistant to AI.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:02]

Yeah. So I guess.

Cole Abbott

[0:25:04]

Yeah. Start.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:05]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:25:06]

Break down like what. For this conversation. What are the key cultures, the main cultures we're going to talk about. Yeah. And then how do they all. Yeah. Face that challenge?

Mark Abbott

[0:25:15]

So. And we'll probably do a, a podcast or a series of podcasts on this. But I've been, I've gone down this rabbit hole on culture and in particular organizational cultures. You know, I started to go down it when I was researching work 9.0, doing the research to write work 9.0. And you know, to fast forward to today, now I have a book that's tentatively titled A Founder's Field Guide to Culture and Helping People Understand the Types of Cultures that are out there. And ultimately what I've come up with is a heuristic I call the cultural nine box. And it's a three by three and it's really more of a, it's more of a continuum than it is, you know, a real hard nine box. But basically the idea is that you have levels of intensity associated with any business culture and then you have levels of ambiguity associated with the opportunity those businesses are going after. And if you look at it from the level of intensity I talk about, you have sort of what I'll call lifestyle cultures. And then the next level up is balanced ambition. And then there's cranked. Right. And the cranks are you know, 60, 80 hours. It's the classic. What are they talking about nine these days? 996. Right. So you're working from nine to nine, six days a week. It's, it's that kind of a culture. And then on the ambiguity, you go from very well known, like let's just say you're an H vac company in a small market in a small town, right? So you know, you know what your, you're selling, right. You have a very specific, like your train or whatever you are in terms of the types of equipment that you sell. You're very straightforward market that you're advertising to, you know, you, trucks and training people. It's all, it's all relatively straightforward stuff. Right. There's thousands of these companies around, you know, the world, the US as an example. So you end up with this cultural nine box. And, and, and you know, if you go to the extreme, which is high ambiguity, cranked, that's, that's where you know, AI, you know, startups, AI is obviously it's, you know, it's deeply embedded into everything they're doing, right. You come all the way down to the, to the inside of that heuristic and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's basically a known industry, lifestyle, culture, right. People for, for the most part, show up at 9, go 5, right. The deal things they're dealing with are relatively straightforward and, and you're not going to see a lot of AI being Right. You're not going to see AI being an intense thing that they're all working on. That's where you're going to see. It's going to be, you know, very organic. Maybe they start using it for, you know, for communication. Maybe they start using it to help them with marketing efforts. But you know, you go from sort of, you know, flirting with it or not even really paying much attention to it to you know, over up and right where it's pretty much in everything. It's associated with everything you're doing.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:36]

We have to, in upper right, you have to leverage every single thing that you possibly can in order to get that advantage. Yeah, right. Bottom, bottom left. It's not really required. It's not life or death in that situation.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:49]

No, it's not. Yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:50]

Cause if you're working what, 12, like 70 hours a week? Ish.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:55]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:56]

And you can get back two of those hours because you can automate something. Well, you're gonna do that.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:00]

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and then you're still gonna work 70. But now you're gonna be doing other things.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:05]

Yeah. Right. How you want to do as much as possible. You can't work 200 hours a week.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:09]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:10]

Because it's literally you can't. Right, right. So yeah. You don't have that much time.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:14]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:14]

Doesn't exist.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:15]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:15]

So if you can do more, you can get more work done with your maximum allowocated amount of time that you can put in. You could dump your soul into.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:25]

Yes.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:25]

Well then you're going to do that.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:26]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:26]

And it's just right. Completely different mindset from the other way around. You're like, oh well, you know, it's like, okay, I don't want to send these emails so I could just automate them through this system. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:36]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:36]

Versus I don't need to go there.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:38]

But yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:39]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:40]

And then, you know, and so I think, I think, you know, the AI gets leveraged more as you go up in terms of from, you know, lifestyle to balance, to cranked, you know, you know, sort of the classic upper left is, you know, investment banking, private equity, venture capital, high end consulting. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:01]

Grind, but execute on the playbook.

Mark Abbott

[0:30:02]

Yeah, but, but the access to the information you need in order to, you know, to, you know, whether it's do research if you're, you know, an investment banker.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:15]

Same thing with, it's basically understanding the known territory versus trying to explore the unknown.

Mark Abbott

[0:30:19]

Yeah. And then leveraging up, up in those cranked cultures. Right. Leveraging AI for the things that you know, you know, you got to do. Right. Whether it's presentation, whether it's research, whether it's communication, whether it's figuring out, you know, how to position your, your, your, your, your pitch versus your known competitors, et cetera, et cetera. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:42]

I mean in that situation it helps with everything.

Mark Abbott

[0:30:45]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:45]

In the, with the regular business activities and research and some of those things. But in order to really, I mean, it's not going to help you at all with understanding the unknown. It's just not. It'll help you understand what you don't know. Yeah, but in terms of what the world doesn't know, which is what that is. Right. High ambiguity. It's like. Well, no, it'll just take care of all the known things for you and maybe position you well to explore the unknown.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:08]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:09]

That's about it.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:09]

Maybe. But that's just my sense for those, for that upper left.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:15]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:15]

Which is cranked, you know.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:17]

But no, it's like if you gave Steve Jobs AI.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:20]

Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:23]

How helpful is that really in his situation.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:25]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:26]

Is it really that helpful? Yeah, most of those things. Like I want to give him an idea and then he'll think about the idea and then some. Maybe it'll help him vet out like the really crappy ideas he had.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:34]

Right. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:36]

It's just a right to look at it through that lens. It's not like it's not going to make the iPhone just not going to do that. Why would it do that? Doesn't make any sense. Right. But in the IB world, it's like, oh, no, how do I pitch this thing? How do I research this thing? Whereas. And in terms of like market efficiencies, if you want to go there.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:55]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:56]

Well, it better get you up to that.

Mark Abbott

[0:31:58]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:58]

Because that's table stakes. And then how do you go beyond that is another thing. And then you can use AI to better leverage those things and find new synergies and whatnot. Right, right.

Mark Abbott

[0:32:10]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:10]

Word correlation, whatever. But help you run all that stuff. Much better.

Mark Abbott

[0:32:14]

Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think that, you know, the, the cultural nine box, you know, gives you back to your question. Right. It, it. I think, I think it helps you appreciate why there are different cultures and it helps you think about how that culture is going to face off against leveraging and understanding AI. It's my short answer.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:39]

What about the bottom right?

Mark Abbott

[0:32:41]

Bottom right. Well, the very few.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:43]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:32:44]

So, you know, that's so high ambiguity. But, you know, 40 hours a week kind of lifestyle, you know, the. Those could be like NGOs or some charity that's trying to do something that no one else has ever done. And so it's a small group of organizations. In my opinion, what could be really cool is with AI, more and more I've just literally, this is going through my brain right now, literally more and more of those coming to be to address issues that we've never really had to deal with. Right. But now because of AI, we, we, you know, it's like the. We can talk about, you know, cultures. You know, if you look at the US versus Europe versus China right now, culturally speaking, and the approach is those cultures are taking in terms of AI, Right. The US is pretty much letting the market do its thing. China is obviously pretty much letting the state take entire control of it. And then Europe is sitting in between and it's like, we got to figure out how to regulate this. Right. One is unregulated, one is totally owned, and in the middle you got Europe, which is like, ah, right. And we're going to lose control of our culture. We're going to. There's a lot of fear about AI in. In Europe right now. And so, you know, that's an area where, you know, you could see more and more people going in and starting to deal with some of these, you know, unknowns that are. That people are struggling with right now. Right. So we can go down a big rabbit hole on this whole one. Right. But my gut is you will see more groups kind of being over in that. Right. Bottom corner over time.

Cole Abbott

[0:35:02]

For what it's worth, it just makes it approachable.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:05]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:35:07]

It's going to the shadow side of AI. Right. How do you feel regarding just the ethical concerns, the dependencies on it, which we've seen, which gets weird, and then also the human side of things, and people being either replaced by AI or teams or departments getting leaned out by AI and then people being let go. Right. This is happening everywhere right now.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:37]

So each of these conversations could be a whole podcast. Right. And I have a whole chapter on the ethical stuff and the regulatory stuff in Work 9.0. In short, AI is a tool and period in the discussion, number one. Number two, it's a tool being manufactured by someone. We already have laws about people manufacturing things and selling things that do harm. Right. So if you knowingly create a product that you knowingly does harm. Right. Then you should be prosecuted. Right. And the company should be prosecuted and the leadership team should be prosecuted because they knew better. Right. But they chose to ignore the reality. So if you built something and you knew it was going to blow up and harm someone. Right. No, you can't just go do that and hide behind the veil of a corporation. And so first and foremost, we have laws that are out there to protect tool, the. The consumer from a company that creates tools or products or services that do harm. So that's the ethical side. Do you want to go further down that one or no?

Cole Abbott

[0:36:56]

I'm just thinking about all the rebuttals for that argument, but don't need to get into that, so carry on at the next piece.

Mark Abbott

[0:37:04]

All right, next one is, I is, you know, whenever you have a transforming technology, and there's no question this is a transforming technology, it will reshape the nature of the economy, of a economy. And there will be there. There will be companies and seats that just no longer make sense. They're no longer useful, they're no longer needed. And so. But what we've seen throughout history is when we do. And that's why Work 9.0 is Work 9.0. It talks about each of the stages, ages of work and what happened as we made the transition from one age to another. Right? And you will always find people and, or companies and, or guilds, right? Groups, associations, whatever, who will fight the transition. But the transition is inevitable, right? So you can either, you can either sort of, you know, be pretending to be whatever and putting your fingers in the dikes and trying to change, you know, stop that, that is happening from happening. It's not going to happen. So now understand what's happening. Figure out what the implications are for whether it's you as an individual, you as a company, right, you as an industry. And, and don't hide your head in the sand, don't yell and scream about it because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's inevitable that the technology is going to continue to evolve, have a sense for, for where it's going. The, the best thing to do is to say, okay, so you know, given who I am or what we do or where we're going, right? Have we, is there a way for us to transition healthily? Health. Healthfully.

Cole Abbott

[0:38:48]

Say healthfully.

Mark Abbott

[0:38:49]

Healthfully, right? Yeah, right. To have a healthy transition, right. And, and so, you know, so it's like, you know, back to self and self awareness and others awareness and societal awareness, right? You know, what is it, you know, you know, what is it you love doing? What are you interested in? Right? And start to think about, okay, so maybe I need to expand over here or expand over here or start thinking about doing these other things. You know, ultimately you'll, you will find another way of mattering, right? Whether it's company, whether it's, the individual company may go out of business and, and the people will go and join other organizations. But you know, this too, you know, this is ultimately going to be very, very good for society. And so, you know, there will be transitions. They will be harder for some than others. Hopefully AI can actually help people think through how to, you know, how to make the transition once again. This gets back to why I think if you lean into the archetypes, you can help people understand what's happening and what the implications are for them. And so, you know, so, you know, start to work on if you think your job is no longer, you know, going to be relevant in three years. Start to think about, you know, how else you could matter and developing those skills and interest. And the last category is a really interesting one, another category that's a really interesting one that I wrote about yesterday. Haven't published it yet. Right. Which is that there's all this information out there and so you can sit here all day long and like, absorb and absorb and absorb and absorb and become really super smart. But ultimately, you know, that's just. That's just knowledge without doing. Knowledge without utility. Right. Knowledge without creating something is. Is worthless.

Cole Abbott

[0:40:39]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:40:40]

And so I do think that people can go down rabbit holes and like, actually think they're using AI to become a better, you know, to better themselves. But if it's just you're getting smart but you're not doing anything with that knowledge, then so that's a rabbit hole people, I think, you know, can fall into.

Cole Abbott

[0:40:59]

All right, to wrap up.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:01]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:01]

More rapid fire questions.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:02]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:02]

And to go off of that one.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:04]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:04]

Do you have an AI habit or dependency that you are embarrassed to admit you rely on?

Mark Abbott

[0:41:12]

No.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:13]

No. Lt AI Pleasure.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:15]

No. I think that if you go back, what, a year and a half or two years ago, people gave inside our company, not to my face, but in other places, gave me grief for leveraging AI. For leveraging AI to think and to write and do things like that. And so some would say that I spent too much time really trying to understand AI, but my perspective was I knew AI since 2012 was going to be a core part of who we are. And so, you know, I. I've spent a lot of hours in AI leveraging AI, but no, there's nothing. I honestly, I don't have time to invest in guilty pleasures, I guess. I don't know. All right. But I don't have one.

Cole Abbott

[0:42:08]

Do you remember the first time the AI really surprised you or impressed you?

Mark Abbott

[0:42:16]

I. I very much do. I was sitting in an airport, it was probably in Aprilish of 2023. And. And I was asking it to help me think through something and structure something and then write something. And. And because I had already been spending two or three or four months with it and I'd given it a lot of my own material, it created.

Cole Abbott

[0:42:47]

A.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:48]

Blog for me very, very swiftly. And I just laughed. And the guy sitting next to me just looked at me.

Cole Abbott

[0:42:56]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:56]

And then I shared with him what I had just done. And he had just come from a conference where he gave a speech on AI and used AI during his presentation. So we got into this geeky conversation, and what I found out was that he actually was the guy who replaced Dr. Paul Zach when. After Paul Zach died. And as you know, trust factor has been a thing that I've loved as a book and as a concept, you know, for What? I don't know, seven, eight, nine years. And so it was really, like, wild moment where I was so impressed that I laughed out loud. And now I get to meet this guy who's now sitting in the chair of one of my heroes. So that was a really wild moment.

Cole Abbott

[0:43:45]

Is there a famous leadership book framework or something along those lines that you would like to see rewritten or refreshed by AI?

Mark Abbott

[0:43:56]

Well, we're working on those.

Cole Abbott

[0:43:59]

Oh, those aren't classics.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:01]

I mean, I'm literally. That's on my shelf of work to do. But, yeah, I.

Cole Abbott

[0:44:10]

Obviously, we have priorities in terms of strategic priorities with these things.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:14]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:44:15]

But is there one that, you know, all things aside, you don't have to worry about any of that stuff, any of the implications or campaigns or product releases, all that aside, if you could just pick one that you could rewrite or revisit, what would it be?

Mark Abbott

[0:44:29]

Well, it's interesting. You know, I have a list of the top 250 business books of all time. So it's on that list, number one. I don't know why I want to go here, but my instincts are that Peter Drucker's Effective Executive absolutely has stood the test of time. So part of me just wants to go through that, have all the stuff that we've written and we believe in, because AI can do this now. Compare everything that we believe and where things are, et cetera, and then take a look at the Effective Executive. Is there anything in there where he was just off base? My instincts are, no, but, you know, I've looked at it probably three or four times in my career. Every single time, I'm like, man, this stood the test of time. So I want to do that one for sure. But there's not, like, you know, a book that I think is going to just. Well, there are books I think are probably not going to stand the test of time, but I kind of don't care about them, too. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:34]

That's the interesting part of that question.

Mark Abbott

[0:45:35]

Right. Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:36]

It's like, well, if it's a really good book, what can be improved on it?

Mark Abbott

[0:45:40]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:40]

And if there's a lot of things to improve on and it's a classic, well, it's probably not that good of a book.

Mark Abbott

[0:45:45]

Right? Yeah. So, yeah, it'd be cool to go find the. Well, actually, I know what I want to do. Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:52]

All right. Any closing remarks?

Mark Abbott

[0:45:56]

I think these are extraordinary times. They're, you know, as I. Part of the reason I wrote work 9 Datto is to explain that when you go through transitions like this. It's not easy for a lot of people. Right. And we're feeling that right now. And so these are extraordinary times. I'm beyond grateful to be alive at this moment. I'm beyond grateful to be able to run a company like 90 at this moment. There's a huge. I feel the weight of the moment, and I know it's going to be. It's. It's going to challenge us, and it's going to, you know, scare slash a lot of people, and. And. And that, in the moment we're in, has the ingredients for creating a lot of chaos and discord or worse. So, you know, part of, you know, part of what I want to do is help us transition through this without too much destruction.

Cole Abbott

[0:47:16]

All right. Thank you. You're welcome.