The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:12 - 00:00:30:08
Kevin Eikenberry
The implications of AI and intelligent machines seems large. But do you know what they are? Like, what if we had a skilled and wise person that could tell us about those implications, what those implications are for us as individuals, for our work, for our businesses and for our society. And what if the future could be both scary and exciting?

00:00:30:10 - 00:00:51:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Today we're talking with that expert, and I promise you new insights, ideas, and a new perspective on the future gained in part by looking to the past. Welcome to today's episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger difference for their teams, organizations and the world.

00:00:51:12 - 00:01:17:02
Kevin Eikenberry
If you are listening to this podcast, you could join us in the future for live episodes on your favorite social media platform to find out when they're taking place and how you can join us. You can join our Facebook group or our LinkedIn group, although we're also on other platforms at live, you can go to either Remarkable Podcast Academy Facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in to do that.

00:01:17:04 - 00:01:40:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Today's episode is brought to you by my upcoming book, upcoming book Flexible Leadership Navigating Uncertainty and Leading with Confidence. This book gives you a new perspective and skill set to lead in the challenging times we face in a more effective, flexible, and confident way. Pre-ordering your book today guarantees you the best possible price, and that you'll be an early adopter of the groundbreaking ideas that I'm going to share.

00:01:40:21 - 00:02:12:15
Kevin Eikenberry
You can learn more and preorder your copy now by going to Remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And on that note, it's time to bring in my guest. Let me do that now. I push the magic button and with us is my guest, Matt Beane. Let me introduce him to you. Doctor Matt Beane does field research on work involving robots and AI to uncover systematic, positive exceptions that we can use across the broader world of work.

00:02:12:16 - 00:02:41:17
Kevin Eikenberry
His award winning research has been published in Top management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly in the Harvard Business Review, and he has spoken on the TEDx stage. He's also taken a two year hiatus from his PhD to help fund founder and fund who medics a full stack Internet of Things startup. In 2012, he was selected as a human robot interaction pioneer, and in 2021 was named to the thinker's 50 radar list.

00:02:41:19 - 00:03:09:02
Kevin Eikenberry
He is an associate. Excuse me, assistant professor in the Technology Management Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is a digital fellow with Stanford's Digital Economy Lab and MIT initiative on the Digital Economy. And he's here today not because of all those things, necessarily, but because he's written this wonderful new book called The Skill Code How to Save Humans, How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines.

00:03:09:04 - 00:03:15:21
Kevin Eikenberry
It's a long title. It's got a big promise. And Matt is our guest. Matt, thank you for being here. It's a pleasure.

00:03:16:00 - 00:03:19:23
Matt Beane
Kevin. Kevin, I am delighted to be here. Really?

00:03:20:01 - 00:03:39:01
Kevin Eikenberry
So, the question I often start with, I'm going to start with again today is like, tell us about your journey now, because I know a little bit from reading the very beginning of the book, I know a little bit about how you might answer this, but like, you didn't wake up when you were seven and say, I'm going to become an expert in intelligent machines and AI and robots.

00:03:39:04 - 00:03:50:13
Kevin Eikenberry
I mean, maybe you did, but I'm guessing not. Like, how did you end up here? Like, how do you end up doing this work in really short form? Like sort of what? What's the Seminole path here?

00:03:50:15 - 00:04:13:02
Matt Beane
well, so I think the fair thing to say is, if you reran this universe 1 million times, there's probably be seven of them that I'd end up doing what I'm doing right now. So, it's not I'm not a straight arrow kind of guy. My career, my work, in many ways, is just sort of typical checkerboard career kind of thing.

00:04:13:04 - 00:04:31:05
Matt Beane
and so the honest answer there is, I'm one of those lucky bombers that came back from the bombing where I'm with a bunch of holes in the wings, and that you get to study to figure out, how to do stuff. so luck fair part of the answer. But but, there's a sort of initial vectors.

00:04:31:06 - 00:04:52:17
Matt Beane
Part of the story. like I'm constituted to pay attention to the stuff I'm paying attention to. Story. I can tell that briefly. That is actually, I've been the, in the first chapter of the book. And then there's this sort of, once I started my doctoral research, you know, how did I hone in on this specific question of skill and so on?

00:04:52:17 - 00:04:58:06
Matt Beane
Story. That one. Sounds better. Look. Yeah. Let's go. That appropriate?

00:04:58:08 - 00:05:19:22
Kevin Eikenberry
That actually relates to the next question I was going to ask you, which is, so you're a robotics guy, you're an AI guy. And we all sort of know, like there's learning in there, but like, I could take this book and say there's like two books here. Like, you could read the first half of this book and care nothing about AI, intelligent machines, the future of work.

00:05:20:01 - 00:05:39:05
Kevin Eikenberry
You could read the first half of this book. Everybody, and not care about the rest of that and get great value, because where you start and we'll go there in a bit is super important. But I just want you to like, help us all see why the big focus of this book is really about skills and learning, when it's supposedly about AI.

00:05:39:07 - 00:06:01:08
Matt Beane
Yeah. well, it's a slave serving two masters. Really sold. But to fast forward, let me take you to the operating room, because this is the moment watching, surgical procedure where I, and before sort of seeing the robot. Surgical robot that made me realize, boy, there's an important question here, and I'm going to go after it.

00:06:01:10 - 00:06:20:10
Matt Beane
So I in the middle of a previous study at a hospital, one of the nurses who got to know me a little bit said, hey, you know, this is like 314 in the morning. I was on the nightshift there and we, we had quote unquote, nothing to do. I'm gathering data all the time, by the way. I just taken notes, but, she's like, let me go show you this new thing we got.

00:06:20:12 - 00:06:40:04
Matt Beane
So I walk with her a couple hundred yards through a few double doors. She said, put on this mask. We walk in, the lights are off, she turns on the lights, and they're 15ft away. Was a 1,500 pound forearms something. Look, I knew it was a robot. Right away. She was saying the word robot probably two dozen times, walking down the hall.

00:06:40:06 - 00:07:00:21
Matt Beane
And then she said, and and I, you know, I look left and she said, that's the control console over there for that thing over there. And the control console probably also weighed about 1,000 pounds. And you obviously put your face in a 3D viewing console with two lenses. You got these two hand controllers, this foot controllers on it.

00:07:00:23 - 00:07:21:18
Matt Beane
and so right away I thought, oh, this is what I'm going to study for my dissertation. I hadn't even gotten there yet. I was like a year into being into my doctoral studies, maybe two. and I knew right away the main reason which this doesn't always happen, but I looked at that, I went, I bet how you learn how to do that thing is real different from how you learn.

00:07:21:18 - 00:07:30:23
Matt Beane
How to do the old fashioned method of doing surgery. I don't worry, folks, I'm not going to get graphic, big incision scalpels, retractors kind of stuff.

00:07:31:04 - 00:07:34:10
Kevin Eikenberry
If you've watched Mash, you got all you need for this.

00:07:34:12 - 00:07:52:15
Matt Beane
yeah, I've watched a lot more than Mash and got a boy, I gotta say, I've watched I don't know how many hundreds of procedures in the operating room with a laptop on a table, tapping as fast as I could about. What the heck's going on here, you know, and trying to mix, open and and traditional surgery and robotic surgery.

00:07:52:15 - 00:08:20:16
Matt Beane
But bottom line, that hypothesis turned out to be correct. I started that study, and within two weeks. Well, honestly, five minutes. But two weeks, I had enough data across five of the best teaching hospitals that, money could create in the United States. And, and saw right away that nobody seemed to be learning much of anything, the residents who were there to be learning how to, you know, who were there to learn how to do surgery, were not getting up to bat.

00:08:20:18 - 00:08:22:20
Matt Beane
They would show up in the operating room, and.

00:08:22:20 - 00:08:30:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Everyone figured they're the young people. They're going to be the experts. It's like the expectation when they leave is they're going to be they're going to be golden.

00:08:30:05 - 00:08:48:01
Matt Beane
Yeah. So this is when I. Yes. Well, in fact, legally they are golden. They are declared to be fully competent by the end of their surgical residency. And they go off to a hospital and they get patients and a robot to work with, and they're supposed to get ROI for that robot. And so they're going to start to book patients on that robot.

00:08:48:01 - 00:09:15:03
Matt Beane
And what I knew for certain, with rich data was, that was not happening. They weren't even getting a chance. So, the robot itself, in many ways, I've since discovered, is very typical for intelligent technologies in that it allows a single expert to do more, better, or faster by themselves, or with much less help from someone who's trying to become that professional or that expert.

00:09:15:05 - 00:09:36:23
Matt Beane
that's the expert. Love that. Surgeons love this tool because they could control and do the whole thing faster and better themselves. Trainees are slower and make more mistakes. If I don't have to involve that person, I'm going to get better results from this patient. In the short run. The patient love that the hospital loves that because that's more productivity per unit time, right?

00:09:37:01 - 00:09:47:05
Matt Beane
So it's better ROI. Bottom line. nobody really sticks up for the trainee, the trainees just trying to do their best to learn this new thing.

00:09:47:07 - 00:09:53:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And some of the unintended consequences, right? Like, nobody planned to not let that intern be good.

00:09:54:00 - 00:10:16:23
Matt Beane
In fact, they do. you can see in the original paper I published, almost every single surgeon knew damn well what was going on. They wanted to give that trainee control of that robot to get practice. always the choice was, okay, when is the right time for this? For me to introduce more delay and mistakes into this procedure.

00:10:17:01 - 00:10:18:17
Matt Beane
And it's optional. I'm going to.

00:10:18:18 - 00:10:40:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Hide right here for all of you listening. Who, you know, you might not even know why you are here. the point that Matt just made is, is just as true for the for the age old challenge of delegation. Like, when do I like. It's never the right decision in the short term.

00:10:40:20 - 00:10:41:02
Matt Beane
yeah.

00:10:41:04 - 00:10:43:19
Kevin Eikenberry
It's always the right decision in the long term. Right. Well, and.

00:10:43:19 - 00:11:06:00
Matt Beane
Here's the here's actually, there's a structural change. It's not a bad decision. So let me rewind you to or sort of side by side, 50ft away in another operating room, the same procedure, a, nephrectomy, which is removing a cancerous kidney that's going on 100ft away in another O.R.. Old fashioned method, scalpels, incisions, and so on.

00:11:06:02 - 00:11:26:19
Matt Beane
It's not a decision that that leader or that manager or that expert can make to not rely on that apprentice. It takes four hands to do the job. So it's mandated by the structure of the work. It's not even something that expert would contemplate. They don't have a choice. And so what that means is participation and learning by doing is mandatory.

00:11:26:19 - 00:11:45:22
Matt Beane
It's built into the way the work is designed and the tools that are available. And so always an expert, if they can trust me, the right decision is let me just dial back this kid a little bit because they're flailing, you know, like on whatever the problem is. and, and I'll find a way to help them get involved.

00:11:46:00 - 00:12:14:10
Matt Beane
But if it's up to that person, their willpower, their being aware of it, they're having being willing to take a personal or professional risk in favor of involvement. You can predict they're going to default towards productivity over learning. It's just that the way humans have designed work up until recently mostly favored this very interdependent collaborative interaction. So the leader gets some choice, the expert gets some choice, but not a ton.

00:12:14:12 - 00:12:32:23
Matt Beane
And that's how we all got ahead. You get this involvement. You got to help around help out around the edges. You get it. You get a shot to prove your worth and then earn more and more and more and so on. that was just busted in robotic surgery. So there that's the answer to the like, how in the heck did I get interested in this?

00:12:33:04 - 00:12:55:09
Matt Beane
That blew my hair back because I realized what is going to happen in the surgical profession. What if somebody comes in here in eight years and is counting a life saving results from a surgeon who's trained it this way? I didn't want to know the answer to that question. And so, that's ignited everything I've done more or less since.

00:12:55:11 - 00:13:15:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And I promised in the open that we would go back to go forward. And you've hinted that already, but you want to say more about sort of the way we've learned for the last, I think you say 160,000 years, like talk a little bit more about the the novice expert model and then and then let's move that forward.

00:13:15:16 - 00:13:29:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Like that's what you're telling us is now missing, or is being short circuited by what the example you just shared. So talk a little bit more about that. And then I want to get to the three C's. So I want to do before we get to the three C's.

00:13:29:10 - 00:14:04:21
Matt Beane
You got it. And I'll just say I had to leave so much interesting stuff on the cutting room floor on this one in the book. So I spent a month looking at the archeology of apprenticeship. That's a field, and there are people who go out and try to gather primary data, like pottery shards or old tools or remnants of workshop designs and so on, say in ancient Greece is a common target to not just study society back then, but like literally how craft production back then, everything from textiles to pottery to sculpting and so on.

00:14:04:23 - 00:14:30:02
Matt Beane
How did it get done? And also how did it spread? Part of it, the way that it spread is people wanted more of it. Well, you can't do that until you grow more potters or sculptors. How do you do that? Then there's a subfield of folks right? following my nose there led me back literally 160,000 years to the production of the first stored energy weapon in our history, which is the bow.

00:14:30:04 - 00:14:52:09
Matt Beane
And there's archeological evidence around the production and that the the bow is, is a, an ephemeral object that's all going to decay. Right? So there's no bow that's cast in stone, but we have evidence of all of the tools that were required to produce all the components for a bow. There are dozens of actions, components, refinements of raw materials.

00:14:52:11 - 00:15:17:11
Matt Beane
You can look at a branch diagram of all of the things and how they get blended into a single object that can reliably shoot an arrow at high velocity, etc. that involves many kinds of expertise, and it involves people fetching stuff for that expert to synthesize into a final component that one expert. We have definitive evidence there. Their job is to make that string or to fletch the arrow.

00:15:17:11 - 00:15:42:23
Matt Beane
They're doing the fine tuned, really skilled work at the core of the most difficult part of producing that thing. They had to have helpers, humans organized collectively. And what you have evidence there of like folks going to get stone tools and leaving them in piles or flint, you know, sort of, sharp rocks that were used to whittle down wood in piles for that person then to do their next job.

00:15:43:01 - 00:16:09:10
Matt Beane
And so, what we know, though, is that, that expert, if you only have one of them and they pass away, then you can't keep building bows. You've got to build more of them. all of that sums up to not immediate direct observational evidence, but real strong evidence that before, right around when humans invented language, we invented this system of getting more done than one person could do alone by collaborating across expertise levels.

00:16:09:12 - 00:16:10:11
Kevin Eikenberry
That's the key part.

00:16:10:13 - 00:16:33:11
Matt Beane
And the person who is a novice helps out a little bit around the edges, gets to know more, gets, a shot at doing more. That's closer to the hardest part of the work, so to speak. And they can move in towards the middle, and eventually they've got somebody looking over their shoulder. there's it's hard to argue that that's not the source of humans competitive advantage in the environment.

00:16:33:13 - 00:16:36:15
Matt Beane
This novice expert engine.

00:16:36:17 - 00:16:56:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So stay that to order for us to create learning. and this model is certainly a big part of that is that there are three keys that we have to take into account. And, and they form, a significant part of the book and really the foundation for the rest, the three CS. So tell us about the three CS real quick.

00:16:56:21 - 00:17:30:05
Matt Beane
The three CS are the skill code. So you see skill code on the cover. That's the three CS. and it's challenge complexity and connection. And you can think of these as like the letters in DNA for life. These are the DNA letters for skill development. And so this is looking across my own research, but more than, 13 scientific disciplines that study how humans build capability, everything from kinesiology to psychology tests, cultural anthropology, you name it.

00:17:30:07 - 00:17:57:22
Matt Beane
and so the to quickly summarize challenge is work near the edge of your capability. Complexity is engage with the broader picture, not just the focal thing you're trying to get good at. And the third thing is connection, which is bonds of trust and respect. those are all for all the research that I am familiar with. And trust me, I have the last two and a half, three years.

00:17:57:22 - 00:18:26:00
Matt Beane
I'm my professional job was to make sure that I looked at, turned over every research stone, are all singing off the same sheet of music, the sequence of how those things get added up to skill, the specific process through which you build your skill can vary, but the base ingredients challenge complexity and connection are uniform. we need healthy challenge complexity and connection to be optimal in how we build our skill.

00:18:26:02 - 00:18:28:15
Matt Beane
That's what I learned by watching so much of work.

00:18:28:17 - 00:18:43:22
Kevin Eikenberry
So, we're going to take that to sort of where does that take us with AI and robots and all that stuff in a second. But as I was reading that, as a person who has written three books that have the phrase long distance in them, right, it's a long distance leader that long distance teammates, a long distance team.

00:18:44:00 - 00:19:11:05
Kevin Eikenberry
But it got me thinking, especially about both, about both complexity and connection, about how, when we're now doing our work at distance, how how those two things can be challenged. I mean, I think there are some solutions, but I'm curious, from your perspective, because you've served all sorts of work, not just surgeries, like what is your thought or take about how those two are impacted by remote or work at a distance.

00:19:11:07 - 00:19:38:10
Matt Beane
Right. So the first thing to say, and especially, given your work, that we should readily acknowledge, is there is always a reasonable and healthy way to make things better than they were before given technological change. So remote work is not, by default and necessarily antithetical to the skill code. I know organizations that were born digital have never had a headquarters.

00:19:38:12 - 00:19:59:11
Matt Beane
Yeah, sure. They get together for retreats. You can watch them very carefully to figure out, okay, if you don't actually show up to work every day and never will, what do you need to do to keep these three things healthy? That's an interesting question. And they're doing it right. So anyway, that being said, generally speaking, the research is pretty clear.

00:19:59:11 - 00:20:18:18
Matt Beane
And we've gotten a lot of it, because of Covid, because of the pandemic. We had all these questions about, all right, everybody's working remote now what? So what? And there aren't too many folks who are focused on skills specifically, but they focus on things like career advancement or you're getting your next opportunity at work. Right?

00:20:18:18 - 00:20:20:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Which is more than skill, by the way, and.

00:20:21:00 - 00:20:21:15
Matt Beane
Definitely.

00:20:21:16 - 00:20:23:06
Kevin Eikenberry
More conversation about that.

00:20:23:08 - 00:20:42:19
Matt Beane
Exactly. Right. so, however, it, I, I can't tell you the volume of inbound email and Twitter traffic I get from folks saying, you know, I just read some of your stuff and, you know, I have a 24 year old kid at work. there are mentors walking around the hall, but they can't get one to save their life.

00:20:42:19 - 00:21:14:06
Matt Beane
They're all everybody's working from home, not available, focused on their own thing. And, that my my son or daughter is just struggling to get ahead and build skill right. So, if you without thought, implement these technologies and go for the immediate and hit of getting that productivity, you can get by going remote, everybody can, you know, work in their PJs without thinking about the health of challenge, complexity and connection.

00:21:14:07 - 00:21:20:10
Matt Beane
Right? Then you're just, you're sacrificing learning on the altar of productivity.

00:21:20:12 - 00:21:47:12
Kevin Eikenberry
So, I'll just say that the most recent research I read this week said, you know, and for those of you that are listening this later in the middle of June 2024, is that only 31% of organizations in the US, are fully back in the office, which means 70%, 69% of people are doing some form of remote, either fully remote, but way more some version of hybrid.

00:21:47:12 - 00:22:07:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So the one comment that I would make is and I've been saying this for a long time, but it applies to skill, not just collaboration. It applies to connection and complexity. Not just a collaboration is the days that we're together have to be different than the days when we're not. Like when people would say, well, like, why do we have to come in the office and doing exactly the same thing?

00:22:07:03 - 00:22:27:10
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm like, if that's really true, you don't get it wrong. But we have to do is figure out how to get these pieces back in to where we're headed. But, but but, Matt, we can't sort of. I mean, you and I could have the whole conversation on any one of these three CS, I think, and it would be very useful, interesting and valuable.

00:22:27:10 - 00:23:10:14
Kevin Eikenberry
But I look at the clock and I and I know that we need I want to get us to some of the stuff that, you know, I opened up by saying you're like the expert on robotics stuff, like, we got to go there and I promised it in the open. Like knowing these three C's and knowing from your opening example that these new capabilities, these new technologies that we have available to us can interrupt 160,000 years of of learning process, like, what should we do about like we can have a whole conversation about the threats of this, but we like to say like, okay, but what can we do?

00:23:10:18 - 00:23:11:12
Matt Beane
Like what to do?

00:23:11:15 - 00:23:15:21
Kevin Eikenberry
I say, do we have the do you have here? I'd like you to talk about that.

00:23:15:21 - 00:23:44:08
Matt Beane
A little bit. Sure, and I will. I'm going to even strengthen your opening salvo there, which is to say, we it's not that they can threaten that 160,000 year old school. It's happening. You should expect it. That is the predictable thing going on status quo right now. The exceptions are extremely rare. I've studied, now primary data on more than 30 kinds of work, different parts of the economy, different technologies, and so on.

00:23:44:10 - 00:24:10:04
Matt Beane
This, many of them, I'm holding up one finger. I found where accidentally skill development improved because the we introduced an intelligent technology into that kind of work. In all other cases, all of the other data shows we're taking that productivity deal at the expense of novice involvement. So it's not a meh. This is what is happening on the ground around you right now.

00:24:10:05 - 00:24:34:08
Matt Beane
Whether you're noticing it or not. It might not be. In which case, boy oh boy, you're in an interesting situation. So let's put that to the side. Okay? Okay. Talk about what to do. so number one this is going to sound I'm just going to say it's ridiculously self-serving. Read this book because what it gives you is the orientation on what a healthy solution looks like in the abstract in the first place.

00:24:34:10 - 00:25:00:09
Matt Beane
That's the job I've been on about for four years, which is to say, okay, okay, fine. I go about trying to study positive exceptions to this trend. My job is to find those positive needles in a haystack with, scientifically, you know, not accidental, not sort of journalistically, but like, okay, a practice that seems to be working in very many different conditions with people who are not talking to each other.

00:25:00:11 - 00:25:23:15
Matt Beane
That's interesting. That's a finding. So what I have found through all those studies is this skill code. I found practices that work locally in one profession, another in one industry, one kind of work, one technology, but they're all fighting for the same three things. And these are the core of your solution locally. Take those three C's, look at your situation and say, where are they in healthy supply?

00:25:23:15 - 00:25:42:02
Matt Beane
I give you a ten point checklist for each of them in the book. And you are and and I have a whole chapter on how to do this examination and what to do about how to put it to work. It's called reworking the skill code. Bottom line, you are now empowered with a new set of lenses to go look at your remote.

00:25:42:02 - 00:26:02:18
Matt Beane
Let's just pick remote work since we were talking about it. Sure, fine. Everybody's gone remote to some way in some degree, and everybody intuitively recognizes that being in person is valuable. And we all took it for granted before. What can we what about it is valuable? How can we do it differently now? You can take those three C's, look at what you're doing and say, where are we?

00:26:02:18 - 00:26:21:18
Matt Beane
Do we have healthy challenge? Where do we have healthy complexity? Where do we have healthy connection? And how can we scale that? So it's sort of grow from what's working orientation. The other is where are they unhealthy and what can we do about that. so you can go either way. But to that's the first basic I don't want to skip by it.

00:26:21:18 - 00:26:46:13
Matt Beane
That's the main gambit. Now, there's some other stuff we can do to be much more. We can be craftier. And then this there's there's a few levers we can pull that will have disproportionate effect. The first I'm just going to go straight to leadership. leaders have a wildly disproportionate role to play here because they are in the position to make resource allocation decisions and set tone and culture in organizations.

00:26:46:15 - 00:27:15:03
Matt Beane
And the minute that a leader decides that it is not necessary for us to sacrifice skill development on the altar of productivity, we might have to sometimes, let's be real and honest about it. Maybe there are trades to be made, but if you assume it's not necessary, then you can tell everyone that in your organization and say, hey, look, we might have to take this deal some of the time, but we are by default taking it way too much.

00:27:15:03 - 00:27:33:20
Matt Beane
And I'm on the hunt for ways that we can have our productivity and skill at the same time, and in fact, have both be better than they could have been otherwise. Because we're pursuing both. Wouldn't that be interesting, folks? Folks are going to look at you like you have two heads, but they always do that to leaders anyway you're doing.

00:27:33:20 - 00:27:53:17
Matt Beane
So you're trying to create a new future that folks haven't quite seen before. and get them enrolled and doing something that's different than the status quo. This is just a different version of that. And you can so you can turn to a vendor and tell them, you know, hey, you're about to we're about to buy 20,000 copilot licenses from you.

00:27:53:19 - 00:28:13:21
Matt Beane
how can we implement that in a way that improves our productivity as a firm and that for each individual user? By the end of the day, they're left with more skill, career, and firm enhancing skill than they have at the beginning of the day. And Microsoft, I don't know what their reaction would be, but I wouldn't be surprised if they went, right.

00:28:13:23 - 00:28:25:00
Matt Beane
it doesn't seem like they're selling that right now. but they could. And maybe as a leader, you can nudge them that way and say, well, here's take a take an extra week, work it into your proposal, see what you can do for us.

00:28:25:02 - 00:28:40:21
Kevin Eikenberry
So let me just make a comment here about that because I love this part of the conversation, Matt. And the comment that I want to make is, many of you, who are listening are not leaders in the C-suite. And I don't want you to be saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what this that's what our CEO needs to be doing.

00:28:41:02 - 00:29:07:06
Kevin Eikenberry
That's what our CTO needs to be doing. I'm suggesting you can make some of those calls on your team, like there's a macro culture and there's a micro culture of your team. And some of those decisions are probably somewhat out of your hands or or your range of your, your degrees of freedom are fewer. But making the choice between productivity and skill building and in part does fall to you.

00:29:07:12 - 00:29:10:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Don't ignore it.

00:29:10:08 - 00:29:30:13
Matt Beane
Amen. And this runs from. Let's forget leaders for a moment. Let's just say you're an individual contributor. and I don't mean just there. That's the engine for what makes an organization work. I have a post I wrote for my Substack, in October of last week, last year called, don't let I Dumb You Down.

00:29:30:15 - 00:29:56:08
Matt Beane
And that's a organized that's oriented towards you, individual or leader of a small team, which is just and it basically shows through data if you use this stuff, out of the box without modification or thought, you were going to steadily and slowly lose skill over time and you won't notice it. Be careful. And yet there are ways that you can personally just yourself.

00:29:56:08 - 00:30:18:14
Matt Beane
Now I'm just talking about you, individual writer or or HR rep or, you know, line worker, you can go into the settings on these systems and tweak them so that they treat you differently. And for instance, the during and I've done and I show you exactly how I do this for myself so that I've learned more stuff just by using these systems than I would have otherwise.

00:30:18:16 - 00:30:35:18
Matt Beane
You can go in and tweak them so that at the end of each session it'll say, by the way, you seem interested in this. are there any other human beings within arm's reach that you might reach out to and connect with who are also interested in that thing? Or are there any, you know, I'm interested in rocket launches here.

00:30:35:20 - 00:30:55:13
Matt Beane
in Santa Barbara, we've got Vandenberg Air Force Base nearby. That's where the, SpaceX launches some of its missiles. I love watching that stuff. It's so super cool. And I wanted to predict when they would land their boosters back on the ground, because that stunning to watch. My wife and I go and drive up there and watch them sometimes, but it's hard to predict.

00:30:55:13 - 00:31:11:17
Matt Beane
So I was trying to write some software to do that. I'm not a software guy, by the way, but now I am also. But now that I've configured the system this way, at the end of a session where I'm asking for a little code, it would say, is there an enthusiast group locally that you might connect with rather than just me?

00:31:11:19 - 00:31:34:11
Matt Beane
Right. because you can get into an isolated bubble with these technologies and not build your capability and connections with other human beings. So anyway, a local manager, of even just one team can make that into a collective exercise. Let's together look at this thing, figure out where it's useful, where it's not. And it doesn't have to be AI.

00:31:34:11 - 00:31:44:21
Matt Beane
It can be any other intelligent technology. And then let's together build our best practices locally so that we're getting our productivity and our skill.

00:31:44:22 - 00:32:03:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I love it, there is a ton of stuff that I would love to chat with you about that we don't have time to do. But I'll ask this sort of open ended question before we go in to the final part of our conversation. Is there something I didn't ask that you wish I would have, or thought I would have?

00:32:03:03 - 00:32:11:07
Matt Beane
No, neither one of those. I'm having a great time. Okay, I can think of plenty of things to talk about. Don't, don't. Yeah. That's different. That's different than your question. No, no.

00:32:11:07 - 00:32:24:09
Kevin Eikenberry
No fair enough, fair enough. Okay. So we are going to shift gears then. And I'm going to ask you this. what do you do for fun besides watch rocket launches and landings?

00:32:24:10 - 00:32:47:05
Matt Beane
I watched one last night, I gotta say. So, seriously, this is one of the things I do for fun. They're happening about once a week now. Once every week and a half. last night it was about 830, 8:20 p.m., and the moon had just risen and the sun had just gone down. And so the light was reflecting through the vapor and the exhaust plume of the rocket as it went up in rainbow colors, if you can believe it.

00:32:47:11 - 00:33:10:23
Matt Beane
And I got to watch that booster turn around in the sky and nose itself back down near the Baja Peninsula to land on it. I mean, to me that I just, anything to do with technology, science, science fiction. So another thing for fun, I am always constantly reading for fun, and I don't read anything but science fiction for fun at all.

00:33:11:01 - 00:33:16:20
Kevin Eikenberry
So what is something that you're recently read that people might want to know about?

00:33:16:22 - 00:33:39:11
Matt Beane
okay. So on that front, I'm currently reading a book called Accelerated Dough by a guy named Charles Stross. It's the third book in a trilogy. and so I can't mention that book. And, you know, I'm not going to say anything bad or good about it. I'll say it's perfectly good. It's about a world where, in fact, we did invent runaway AGI.

00:33:39:11 - 00:33:56:08
Matt Beane
It became the singularity occurred, and it just basically took off and said, don't follow me. Leave me alone, kids, have fun. Don't go trying to invent anything like me ever again. And if you do, big time bad things are going to happen to you. and then it just disappeared, and humans are left going, wait a minute.

00:33:56:08 - 00:34:17:15
Matt Beane
What? And that you have a sort of society that's conditioned that way. It's interesting to think about. but another one I can I cannot let the conversation go by without recommending. It's like in the last, I'd say ten years. that book that is. It's not. I don't get ready thinking you're going to go find an AI book here, but it's a science fiction book that will.

00:34:17:17 - 00:34:41:23
Matt Beane
I value this stuff because it really twists my brain around. It gets me to imagine things that human beings have never imagined before. And this book is called there is No anti memetics Division, and it's by an author, an anonymous author, Q and TMR is their name. You can even read this book free online. it will you if you don't hate it.

00:34:42:01 - 00:35:04:20
Matt Beane
Boy oh boy are you going to you're going to it's going to twist your brain into pretzels. Getting through that book. It's fantastic. So there's that. yeah, I of course, I produce words and read words about research and so social social science about and technical stuff about AI and robotics constantly. So I've open tabs, on that front.

00:35:04:22 - 00:35:26:07
Matt Beane
what am I reading right now to window juggle? an article on the BBC called I Took Their Jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound human. It's about, a writers room. at a journalistic outlet online. And what it's like now that AI has been implemented with detailed data. Really interesting.

00:35:26:09 - 00:35:40:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Matt. Now, the question that you most wanted me to ask, probably from the very beginning, which is how can people learn more about you? Where do you want to point people? Obviously, I'm going to hold the book up for those that are watching. Sure. where can they get the book? Any of those things?

00:35:40:05 - 00:35:53:19
Matt Beane
Right. first thing to say is that book that you're seeing right there, folks, the first chapter of that is available for free to you right now at Remarkable Podcast. Dot Matt, being.com right there, remarkable.

00:35:53:21 - 00:36:00:18
Kevin Eikenberry
If not Matt Beane.com. We'll put that of course all the other links on the show notes for those of you later. But go ahead.

00:36:00:20 - 00:36:15:14
Matt Beane
And I mentioned a Substack that I've got, which I've taken a little hiatus on just because I'm publishing lots of articles about the book now, but I'll be heading back to it shortly. That is also available at Matt B and.com. So if you go to Matt being.com, you will see not only the book you know you can order.

00:36:15:14 - 00:36:47:19
Matt Beane
From there you can learn more. But the Substack, is there anything and everything to do with this book will be there. so that's this clearinghouse, basically the spot to go I, I, I don't know, probably 7% of my cognitive life is on Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it. So if you want to hear my mental exhaust every day, and see who I'm following and where I'm sort of Twitter genuinely is a part of where I get critical learning and insights across a variety of technical domains, social domains.

00:36:47:21 - 00:36:49:19
Matt Beane
that that's another place you can go.

00:36:49:21 - 00:37:10:21
Kevin Eikenberry
At Matt Beane. That's two T's and an E at the end. so before we go and before I thank Matt and all those things, the question that I always ask you and I'm going to ask it again today, and that is now what what are you going to take from today, not just intellectually but from an action perspective?

00:37:10:21 - 00:37:29:21
Kevin Eikenberry
What are you going to do with what you got today? Hopefully you're going to go get a copy of the skill code and read it. But beyond that, like what? What insight do you take from this? Maybe one of those three C's really connected for you. And you said, hey, that is an important part of how I learn, or that's what's missing for me right now.

00:37:30:02 - 00:37:57:02
Kevin Eikenberry
And if that's what you were feeling or thinking as we were walking through that, then you need to take some action to change that. Or maybe something that Matt said, that challenge you as a leader or an individual contributor about what you can do right now is the thing that you need to take action on. All I can tell you is whatever that is, is that if you don't take action, you'll get far less value out of the the investment of time you've just made than if you do.

00:37:57:04 - 00:38:02:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Matt, thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure. I was looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint.

00:38:02:23 - 00:38:08:16
Matt Beane
I cannot agree with you more now. I've been looking forward to it. for a while. Really been a delight.

00:38:08:18 - 00:38:31:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And everybody, if you found this to be useful and enjoyable, especially if this is your first time, make sure you subscribe wherever you're watching, whether it's on a social media channel or whether it's on whatever podcast platform you're listening from. Make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you let somebody else know, and make sure you come back next week, because we'll be back next week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.