Road Work Ahead

#8 - RETROSPECTIVE w/ Erin Durham: AI, Branding, Empathy, Responsibility

• Waypost Studio | Sam Gerdt • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Last episode, we talked a lot about the importance of retrospection in the process of growth and innovation. Thinking back through all the talks I've had over the past several months on this podcast, this idea is the one that stood out to me as being the most helpful for anyone who is feeling uncertain about the future. In looking back, we can revisit those core values and principles that should be guiding our decision making. We can find and help the people around us who've been falling behind. We can organize and optimize our business processes and our thought processes.

So today we're doing something a little different. I invited my friend and colleague, Erin Durham, into the studio to look back over the past 7 episodes and talk about the ideas that made the biggest impact for us, in our own work and thought processes. We're calling this episode a retrospective. It was an excellent conversation. I hope you enjoy it.

Sam Gerdt:

Welcome everybody to Road Work Ahead, a podcast that explores the unmapped future of business and technology. My name is Sam Gerdt and I am your host. Last episode we talked a lot about the importance of retrospection in the process of growth and innovation. Thinking back through all the talks I've had over the past several months on this podcast, this idea is the one that stood out to me as being the most helpful for anyone who's feeling uncertain about the future. In looking back, we can revisit those core values and principles that should be guiding our decision making. We can find and help the people around us who've been falling behind. We can organize and optimize our business processes and our thought processes. So today we're doing something a little bit different.

Sam Gerdt:

I invited my friend and colleague, Erin Durham, into the studio to look back over the past seven episodes and talk about the ideas that made the biggest impact for us in our own work and in our own thought processes. We're calling this episode a retrospective. It was an excellent conversation. I hope you enjoy it. All right, Erin, we're seven episodes in seven interviews something like eight or nine hours of content. What's the big takeaway?

Erin Durham:

I think the big takeaway is that nothing matters like people matter. People come first. It's the most important thing. Technology is always there as a tool to support your people, whether those people are your employees or your clients or your customers. People are the most important thing, full stop.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, it's interesting. Especially, I noticed this with Will, I noticed it with Mitch, I noticed it with the Strants. The Strants. I noticed it with Mark and probably everybody at some point. Yeah, a is a tool. Yes, then let's talk about people.

Erin Durham:

I spend all of our time talking about people.

Sam Gerdt:

It's really interesting I was thinking about this morning. Actually, I remember how I was thinking when we first started the podcast, because I remember writing interview questions and preparing for some of our first shows.

Sam Gerdt:

I remember the mindset. I remember how I was thinking about AI. I remember how I was thinking about all of this disruptive technology. I remember how I was thinking about it from that business and marketing and sales perspective. Now I look at how I'm thinking about it. It's completely different. It's evolved and changed in so many ways. Part of that is because two months have passed and this is a really really fast moving space. We're really just learning at hyperspeed. That's a big part of it, but the other part of it is getting outside of your own head with it and talking to people who are coming from vastly different places. None of our interviews have been with people who we know very well, I think, with maybe the exception of Will, who I've had a pretty good relationship with over the last several years, I was not terribly familiar with any of these people. I wasn't terribly familiar with their work.

Sam Gerdt:

To sit down and talk with them about things and not really know what they were going to say, because we do some preparations, but not a lot. It was really interesting to hear the responses because often, especially early on, the response was not what I thought, because it's not what you're hearing out in the world. It's not what you're hearing from these leaders in industries like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and even some of the podcast hosts that I think people are getting. Some of this information from Lex Friedman is one that comes to mind. You listen to that content. It's good content, but you get the impression that AI is one thing.

Sam Gerdt:

Then you talk to the people that we've talked to. That is not the impression that you get at all. Okay, how so? There's a mantra that I think has come up multiple times AI is a tool. Yes, ai is a tool.

Erin Durham:

Yes.

Sam Gerdt:

The way that people would say it it turned into. It was obvious that it was more than just a throw, a comment. Well, you know, AI is a tool. So XYZ, they would say something of impact, and then they would say AI is a tool. You could see that there's a deeper meaning behind what they're saying. In thinking about that, what I realized is if you're encountering a lot of disruption, uncertainty in business and life, whatever what do you run to?

Sam Gerdt:

You run to the things that you know are always going to be true. Okay, we all have this desire to have absolutes in our life, anchors, truths that we cling to and run to. Sure, in this particular time, one of the truths that people are uncovering and, in a sense, making true by doing so because AI could be something else, we could make it something else.

Erin Durham:

I think many people are trying to make it something else.

Sam Gerdt:

Many people are, but the people that we're talking to are, in a sense, manifesting this truth. Ai is a tool, and that's the mindset that they're fostering in their thinking about their own businesses and their thinking about what's coming in the future. I think that's incredibly important and I think that it's incredibly good. I think that what they're doing is so good. That reminder, that constant reminder AI is a tool takes you to the next step, which is to say okay, well then, obviously, what's more important?

Erin Durham:

What is more important.

Sam Gerdt:

Because when I'm out in my wood shop and I'm making something, I'm not hyper-focused on the tools. I'm hyper-focused on the work that the tools are doing. That's right. I'm focused on the goal of being out there and doing any of this, and that might not even be the work. That might be the giving of a gift, or that might be the use of a piece of furniture for years and years.

Erin Durham:

Whatever it is which still comes back to people. Yeah, exactly.

Sam Gerdt:

Exactly. I feel like that's. The big takeaway for me from all of this is just that sense of how my thinking has changed from being so focused on the technology because, we've had to learn so quickly and so much being so focused on the technology to now having those voices rattling around in my brain saying okay, yes, you have the technology, but what's way more important is what are you going to do with it? How are? You going to apply it? How are you going to improve people's lives with it? Super interesting.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, because all of this AI comes necessarily with a lot of hype and a lot of fear. I think so much of what we see, at least in headlines and in various forms of content that we're consuming, feeds into that fear-based reaction. How then, as business leaders, how then as marketers, do we avoid making fear-based reactive decisions about the directions that our companies are going? To grow. What sorts of mindsets do we need to be adopting? What are the consequences that you can foresee for those fear-based, reactive decisions?

Sam Gerdt:

Can you talk?

Erin Durham:

Ca about that a little bit.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, absolutely. That's something that I've been actually thinking more about in separate things that I'm doing is this idea of what is the value of speculation? Where does it fall? How useful is it? I lean towards it not being useful Speculation. What I keep telling myself is speculation is not productive. Where that really helps is sometimes when you're working through a problem, you'll end up getting hyper-focused on something that isn't true yet. Maybe it will be true one day, but you can get hyper-focused on an unknown future. When you leave the realm of what's applicable and dwell too long in that realm of speculation, you cease to be productive. You cease to think productively about the problem that you're working on.

Sam Gerdt:

I've been trying to make a lot of analogies recently to try to understand where we're at. One of the analogies that comes up in my mind is back in the 50s, when Sputnik went up. You had all of a sudden this strange thing that caused strange new technology, caused a ton of fear. It caused a ton of uncertainty about the future, very reminiscent of what we're dealing with with artificial intelligence. Sure, but the entire culture changed with that event.

Sam Gerdt:

One of the changes that happened was you had all the science fiction all of a sudden just flood into the market and capture the imagination of children and adults Mostly children. You had comic books, you had all the superheroes that all really flourished in that environment. I'm thinking of all of the Ward and June cleavers of the world back then who were telling their kids to get their head out of the clouds and focus on what's right in front of them. There is so much good value in both of those things, both letting your imagination run wild with head in the clouds, thinking that science fiction thinking, and saying okay, yeah, but now it's time to go into the real world, and deal with real world problems, and I think now what I'm seeing is what I want to see more of is yeah, let's have the head in the clouds thinking, but let's label it as such.

Sam Gerdt:

This is a comic book, this is science fiction. Let's clearly demarc what is real and what's not, because that's not happening.

Erin Durham:

So keep that healthy perspective on speculation.

Erin Durham:

I like what you said. You use the word hyper focus and I think that's important to pull out, because, as business leaders, it is our job to keep an eye on the horizon and anticipate what's coming and how we're going to navigate through, because we have people relying on us. Our employees rely on us, our customers and clients rely on us to be able to navigate that with skill and with accuracy. But that word hyper focus is so important because, like you're saying, it is easy to get pulled off track and live in a fictitious future. Like you're saying.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, you need that balance. You need the word and June cleaver on your shoulder saying this is awesome. Take it to the real world though, like pay attention to what's in front of you, and we get this a lot with sticking with AI, thinking about the coming of AGI artificial general intelligence or, even beyond that, super intelligences. A lot of people are spending a lot of time there. And what?

Sam Gerdt:

they need to understand is we're not there, like that's not a real thing yet, but doesn't exist yet. We're not even 100% sure that it can exist. And even if it does exist, let's not forget that first word the artificial. Whatever it is, it's fake, it's not human. It is fake.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, that's an important one.

Sam Gerdt:

It might be super capable, but it is artificial, it's not real, and there are a lot of people who are going to yell at me over thinking that, but I think that's super important, and so that head in the clouds thinking it's helpful because we are going to get more and more capable intelligences that are have the appearance more and more of human intelligence, even human super intelligence, and so when you're thinking about that, though, taking it and applying it to the real would actually exist and saying, okay, well, we have an opportunity. Now, knowing that this might be possible in the future, knowing that this is the direction we're headed, how will we apply it? And that's where those mantras AI is a tool.

Sam Gerdt:

So, important, because what that is, that mantra, that's Warden June sitting on your shoulder saying, okay, how are you going to use it?

Erin Durham:

to do good, right? Let's keep this healthy perspective yes.

Sam Gerdt:

And so there's so much that you could unpack there. It's so rich, especially when you're talking about reaching people and making human connections, marketing sales, whatever it is, even just living as people, and that's where our conversations, I think, have shined the most.

Erin Durham:

Because marketing and sales should be about making those real human connections, and we want for them to be about that. And so the use of the technology comes down to how. How can we make technology serve that mission, which Will talked about, you've all talked about, you know how do we use these tools that are emerging to serve the mission? How can we focus on that mission, regardless of what technology comes out right?

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, think about it in context of your brand. We talked a lot about brand. Think about it in context of your brand, your brand. Like Will said, your brand is a proxy for who you are Right. An analogy? I love analogies. An analogy that I use is if you were going to write a letter from the CEO, would you hire an intern to write it?

Erin Durham:

Right? Probably not.

Sam Gerdt:

Absolutely not. Much less should you outsource that kind of branded voice to an AI, to an LLM which has which has even less ability to think in a human way and to make human connections and to know you than that intern does.

Erin Durham:

Right, because, as you've said many times, it can't actually think it just does a really good. It's artificial, exactly, it's artificial.

Sam Gerdt:

It's artificial. It's really good faking of thinking and it can.

Erin Durham:

It can be kind of astounding sometimes to experience it and to play around with it and it certainly appears like it's thinking but it's not and it doesn't have a background of human experience and brand development and brand even brand maintenance, I think, is an art, and art still belongs to humans, For sure. Regardless of how much that artificial intelligence can fake it.

Sam Gerdt:

If you think your brand is meant to do something other than convey an emotional response, like to elicit an emotional response from a person, then you don't understand brand oh, that's so powerful and so.

Erin Durham:

Can you say that again? Yeah, Okay so think of.

Sam Gerdt:

I mean just just. Let's dwell on this for a second. Yeah, the purpose of brand, the singular purpose of brand, is to elicit an emotional response from your consumer, right from your customer, and the fundamental flaw with any artificial intelligence is always going to be not just now, but always, no matter how far this goes is always going to be the absence of emotion. Right, and so your brand is always and forever going to be a distinctly human endeavor. Yes, it can't be anything different. And so, even even speculative, like thinking we were, we're never to a point to where your brand should be developed by an artificial intelligence. It's just, it's just a, it's an. There's just no way forward to I would.

Erin Durham:

I would even add to that and say your brand shouldn't even be maintained. Your relationships with your customers should never be maintained by any sort of artificial intelligence, because I mean. Think about if you have, if you've put in the leg Work to develop those relationships Human to human in the first place. Can you imagine the breach of trust that's going to be experienced by your audience If a time came where they found out that the humans in that brand couldn't even be bothered to Maintain those relationships themselves and they, they, seeded that control?

Erin Durham:

Yeah over to something that is still a thing. It's artificial, it can't even, it doesn't, it doesn't think. It's not a true representation of a human and trust is Precious. It should be treated sacredly. Mm-hmm and AI cannot be trusted.

Sam Gerdt:

Yes, to do that, yeah, yeah there's a distinction to be made between Augmentation and replacement, sure so the the expectation and this is a healthy expectation, the expectation is that artificial intelligence is going to greatly augment the work that we do. Yes like every single person in our industry, is going to have AI Underpinning the work that we do right, and that's going to take a lot of different forms, and some people are going to do it poorly and some people are going to do it really well.

Sam Gerdt:

And then you talk about the loss of jobs. You know, Paul Roadster talks a lot about this. He's he's the guy who's talking about artificial intelligence in the marketing realm right. There are others, but his is certainly one of the loudest voices. He talks about this idea that AI is not going to replace you. Someone who can use AI better than you is going to replace you. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about augmentation.

Sam Gerdt:

Ai is, is is going to be this incredible, incredible Tool that when wielded by a capable person, the the exponential increase in, in output and quality. Yes, is going to be. It's going to mean that One person can do the job of. First it's going to be one person can do the job of two people, and then it's going to be one person can do the job of four people. Then maybe eight people, and that's where they'll. That's where the loss of jobs Conversation, I think is more realistic. It's fear-based. But then you have to ask yourself okay, well, what's my job now? Well, your job is to learn.

Sam Gerdt:

Your job is to know. Your job is to be the guy who can wield it, and there'll be degrees of that, you know. There'll be the person who you know they can do the work of two people, and then there'll be the person over here who's doing the work of 16, because they wield it with different skill, so that I think that's a. That's a, that's a line that we need to divide between you know what is what is augmentation, what is replacement? There are all kinds of those things that are coming up in in when we talk about AI. I want to, I want to leave AI and talk about some of the other stuff, but I'll say this but Originality is not creativity. People need to separate those two. Okay, so the outputs of the outputs of an AI are original, but they aren't creative right.

Sam Gerdt:

So people are kind of conflating the two. It's like oh well, ai can be very creative because it's putting out this original stuff. Originality and creativity two different things. The other, the other big one that I want to mention is Intelligence doesn't equal dominance. That's where people are, that's where a lot of fear comes from okay. Well, if AI is more intelligent than humans, then it will be more dominant than humans, absolutely not true. Intelligence and dominance don't equate to one another, and this is the difficulty, because Historically that's always been the case.

Erin Durham:

Well, I would say that the history of science fiction gives us that message.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, history of science fiction gives us that message. Historically, we look at. You know, biologically, in our world, the more intelligent species are top of the food chain. That's, that is how our world works. The difference is now, all of a sudden, we are making the intelligence, and it's a fake intelligence, is an artificial intelligence.

Erin Durham:

Well, it's not a species. Yeah, it's not a species?

Sam Gerdt:

It's not. It's not Biologically, it's not competing. You know, there's no process of, there's no process of competition in the ecosystem to determine who's on top and who's not. We're literally giving it the power that we wanted to have and then there's some fear that that it because it's more intelligent Than us that it will be able to take power to itself. Right fears largely unfounded. So I you know, separating out that idea of intelligence and dominance super important. All right.

Erin Durham:

Well, let me ask you this, because we're talking about Fear-based reactions. We're talking about we've touched on the loss of jobs, and I've heard you say personally that jobs are not going to disappear. They want to evolve. There will be different jobs. So, help, help me understand, and let's dig into a little bit the responsibility that those of us who are, who are sort of understanding, learning this emerging technology right now what responsibility do we have to those around us, whether that's co-workers who have some competence but have some hesitance about all of this new stuff that's coming, or they they are afraid that they're gonna lose their jobs. How can we help alleviate that fear? And also, how can we help those around us? How can we give them a leg up, how can we help them up the ladder behind us so that they aren't left behind and and losing out on jobs?

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, so let's relate this back to what we talked about with the strands, with Megan and. Lorian strand.

Sam Gerdt:

We were talking about it in the context of the diversity of a workforce you know the humanness of of a diverse workforce and and In in that discussion, what we highlighted was a lot of those fears, a lot of those insecurities, a lot of those concerns are unvoiced right, and they are a lot of the limitations that people have that we have labels for, like being whether it's ADHD or ASD or some other neurodiversity Are either undisclosed or undiagnosed, and so the the bottom line is we are not doing enough to uncover the diversity of our teams, to uncover the diversity of our workforce, and we're not doing enough to create an environment that allows for people to work in a way that feeds their strengths yes and that allows them the freedom to talk about strengths and weaknesses.

Sam Gerdt:

People can tend to be fearful when, when really simple things come up like okay, so you weren't paying attention in a meeting, or you got distracted in a meeting and you missed the next action step. Mm-hmm.

Sam Gerdt:

Are you gonna be the one who speaks up and says I'm sorry, I got distracted. Can you repeat that? What's expected of me? Or are you gonna be the one who goes back to your desk and just says, okay, now I've got a job to do, but I don't fully understand what it is? Or I'm missing a key piece of information that I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna hope it all works out for the best. You know that shouldn't be necessary.

Sam Gerdt:

We should be the kind of people who say you know what people lose attention or you know the kind of people who say, yeah, sure it was, it was XYZ, this is your job. If we were to do that, we would uncover Truths about our organizations and our teams that I don't think we fully understand right, and those truths Will walk us back to the point to where we can move forward together and be much more cohesive, much more Capable mm-hmm Individuals and as organizations.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah and there's. You know, we can unpack this in multiple different ways too, so you think about it just from an interpersonal standpoint. Like you know, people have needs, people have things that bother them, people have bad days and good days. You could unpack it there, mm-hmm. You could also unpack it with regards to, like, straight technology, like what's the point of applying a technology To a situation that you don't fully understand it would? It just adds to chaos, right that we're seeing more and more of that. People like oh ai's ability to Process our data and you surface all of these insights is going to be revolutionary for us, and the truth is, it's probably not because your data is a mess, because you've got you've got 15 years of data that you've just been throwing in a closet and it's not organized and you've got, do you know?

Sam Gerdt:

Duplicate data. You've got confusing data without context. It's a mess. There's a huge opportunity right now for, I Think, agencies like us to to start working with Clients on, you know, getting ready for that AI oracle you know, I've talked about that with Chris, chris Leonie.

Sam Gerdt:

He really wants that for his company. His is a, his is an agency. I think that will be ready for it. He's he's a very data centric, mindful guy. But there are a lot of companies out there who are like oh yeah, I would love that, but there's so much legwork that has to happen before that's even feasible because these intelligences they can't. They can't. They can't necessarily clean up your data right and then make it actionable. They're there to make clean data actionable right.

Erin Durham:

They can't make human decisions about what's valuable and what's not valuable. Yeah, and it's the most Lorian was talking about this. What's the most Valuable version of a document that's been saved?

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, and that's that's super important. So so that's another way that we could unpack this idea of Really capitalizing on the diversity of a team. Really, you know, I'm really working to understand what we have in our corner and then aligning everybody in the right direction and getting everybody working together. But you know, I think the big takeaway there is we, we have to, we have to look bad, this, this show. Mm-hmm.

Sam Gerdt:

This episode is a retrospective right. We are looking back on what we're learning so as to move forward more thoughtfully. Right? That's a whole point of this. Yeah, organizations absolutely have to do that.

Sam Gerdt:

Yes you need to look back and take stock on where you've been, what you've done, what's working and what's not. How are your people doing all of that stuff Before you jump into the next thing? And there's a whole wave of next things coming. Sure that that you're gonna want to jump into? Yeah, and they're valuable, they'll be good, but they won't be good if you jump into them prematurely.

Erin Durham:

Right. I would even like, if I can, just bring it back to the people element for just a moment, because you talked about this so much with the Distance, with the, with the neurodiversity conversation, and I would even challenge business leaders to ask themselves really honestly Are you tapping into the strengths that your people have as individuals and accommodating their working styles in order to squeeze the best of them, and Are you making provisions for the weaknesses that people have? And that's not to suggest that people shouldn't improve themselves, yeah, but I mean, we've done a lot of work around this in our own company. How do we balance each other out and how do we tap into that? And I thought it was really I found it really personally meaningful for Lorian mentioned this and I think you talked about this too when you received your ASD diagnosis that you experienced a grief period, and I think Lorian's words were that he Came in and broke down in tears and said I have to be medicated for the rest of my life Just to exist in this world, and I found that so Sad and vulnerable.

Erin Durham:

But also I think it's really beautiful, because when you receive these diagnoses, you and I'm not to even get to the point where you are chasing a diagnosis. You've had to develop so much self-awareness and you've had to develop skills around speaking up for yourself, advocating for yourself and and shining a light on things that are vulnerable and may have caused you shame right and Maybe there's a lack of that in your, in your teammates and your co-workers, or maybe there's there's fear.

Erin Durham:

I mean, we know from all of the work that Brené Brown has done over the last decade that humans are hardwired for love and belonging and we have this inherent fear of being found unworthy of belonging With our human connections.

Erin Durham:

And then, when you throw someone's livelihood on the line, yeah, to where they feel like they can't speak up about things that they don't understand, or they feel like they're gonna be judged for getting distracted or for not Working the way that they perceive that their co-workers are working. That can create a lot of toxicity in a team, and I think it's really beautiful for Neurodivergent people To bring that self-awareness and bring those language skills of hey, I have these needs. Can we please find ways to accommodate them? And even Megan said this so many times she'll speak up and somebody will go.

Erin Durham:

I'm so glad that you said that and so there's there's a challenge on individuals to develop that self-awareness and to Step out in that sort of courage to speak up for themselves, and there's also a challenge to business leaders to Make space for that and and provide the kind of working environment where People aren't going to get punished for saying I'm sorry, I was distracted. Can we please, can we, can we clarify this right? Yeah, it's funny.

Sam Gerdt:

I it's, I think. I think we're just Still as, as you know, evolved as we like to think that we are and as streamlined as we like to think we are, with, you know, managing teams and even with our knowledge of things like Neurodiversity, I think we're still really early days.

Sam Gerdt:

I agree with that I think we're still. We're still not having the right conversations or mindsets around these issues. Because there's there's an analogy that I Saw recently and I loved it. It made so much sense it was, it was such a healthy way of understanding the conversation around neurodivergence and it was this, this, this woman. I'm gonna forget it if I, if I find it again, I'll put it in the notes for the show. Just imagine a bin full of Legos, I know, and, and not any other crazy space Legos or Harry Potter Legos, but like just normal, like 1980s Legos that we grew up with, right Bin full of Legos and you take it and you dump it out on the floor, right in one central spot. The majority of the Legos are gonna land in a pile and it's gonna be, you know, all like. There's like five colors.

Sam Gerdt:

Right, there's gonna be all the different colors of the Legos Right there, but then there are gonna be the Legos that scatter, yeah, and If you, if you look at all of those Legos that are scattered around that central thing, that's what we mean when we talk about neurodiversity. We're talking about people who fall much further outside of the middle In the way that they relate to one another, in the way that they think in their abilities.

Sam Gerdt:

Their abilities, to you know, do things like time management, task management, all of the executive functions, all of the you know empathy and and all of these other things that we can talk about. They're they're all kind of in this halo Around that central space. But then you look at the colors of the Legos and you see, you know, there's a yellow one over here and around. The colors are kind of like the labels that we attach to these neurodivergences. Maybe it's ADHD, maybe it's ASD, whatever it is. Um, and so you know you say, well, you've got, you've got a yellow one over here, but there's also a yellow one up here, and those are two people with ADHD and they're miles apart from one another, but they both have this label that works in helping them work through their struggles Right.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, I love that quote that you mentioned in that conversation and you can tell me who it's attributed to, but it's if you've met one person with autism, that just means you've met one person with autism.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, tony Atwood, tony Atwood he's the one of the leading guys on autism and ASD, very helpful early on for me and for Lorian too. He's the one who mentioned him. So, yeah, that's the idea is, even with you can't take, you can't make a box out of ADHD. You can't make a box out of autism, spectrum disorders or dyslexia or any of these things. These people are all vastly different from one another, right, but if you think about humanity, if you think about your workforce, your organization, as that dumped out bin of Legos, you have to understand that there's no point on this, there's no point on this spectrum, and there's no Lego that doesn't have strengths. Right, that can help your organization, right, I mean as long as you're hiring. Well, obviously, there are. Just there are bad people out there.

Sam Gerdt:

Or bad fits Bad fits, yeah, but generally, when we're talking about neurodiversity, everybody's got their strengths and everybody's got their weaknesses, and if your focus is well, I'm just going to focus on the ones that are right in the middle. They're the most predictable, they're the easiest to meet. If your focus is there, you are missing out on some incredibly talented people.

Erin Durham:

Great.

Sam Gerdt:

I mean, you can do that. There's nothing wrong with doing that. That's one approach, sure, and there are organizations that will do that, yeah, but they are. They're penalizing themselves in a major way. I agree with that.

Erin Durham:

I think humans are wired. The human brain wants to put labels on things and it wants to sort things into boxes, and we see that every single place that you ever look. But I recently ran across a quote that I it was attributed to Dan Levy. I don't know for sure that he said I didn't hear him say it, but I tend to think it probably. He probably did and that was that whenever you think of any of these traits as being a spectrum that opens the door to empathy and I think that's the call that needs to go out everywhere is we all need to show each other a whole lot more empathy and, like you just said, if you can do that and you can accept people for how they are and give them the space to be their best selves, you are going to have some amazingly talented people doing incredible work for your organization.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, I'm really pleased with the amount of work that's happened in the last 10 years. Particularly, I think ADHD has gotten a lot of attention very recently. It's definitely and that that attention is sometimes negative. So there are those who are just jumping on a bandwagon and trying to take advantage of a perceived trend. I'm not a fan of that.

Sam Gerdt:

I am a huge fan of the awareness, because what it's doing is it's highlighting some of these things that we're talking about. It's highlighting the fact that ADHD is not a box. There's no, there's no neurodiversity, there's no condition, there's no disorder. There's nothing in any of the books that is a box, right. And the number of people who are neurodiverse in one way or another, it's a much greater number than anybody realizes and not many people nobody that I talk to who has a label, who has a disorder or a diagnosis, whatever it is.

Sam Gerdt:

None of us are necessarily interested in being treated a certain way or having any kind of special treatment applied to us or special rules applied to us, or even, like you know, nobody's saying well, you know, we need to have diversity, hiring for neurodiversity, right, like nobody's saying that.

Sam Gerdt:

What we are saying is please use me as an example of the simple truth that everyone is different, everyone works differently and that's good, and if you capitalize on that, you're going to get more. You're going to get more value out of us, you're going to get more loyalty from us and you're going to make the world and your workplace a better place, a better place to be, to exist. I think that's super important, I agree. So that's where I think we're evolving to in our thinking. Is this idea that, okay, rather than focusing on labels and boxes and diagnoses and you know, let's have a program for this person and a program for this let's just take a step back and just embrace everybody and learn how to identify strengths and weaknesses in people of all types Right and then use those effectively and that requires a great level of adaptability, understanding, empathy there's all kinds of stuff that goes into that.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, I would love to see the language change, and maybe it will. From a diagnosis to just an understanding, does that make sense? Because I feel like there's some negative connotations to the word diagnosis and I don't mean to cheapen anything that anyone's experienced. Everything is a spectrum. Everyone has different needs, different working styles, everyone's brain is wired a little bit differently, and so I would love to see more of an embracing of all of that, like you just said, and even to the point where we're changing our language around it in years to come the place where we're at right now.

Sam Gerdt:

I actually like the idea of diagnosis. Okay, as somebody who was diagnosed with something, I found it incredibly helpful. Sure, I would say that most people with a diagnosis will say that the diagnosis is not a finish line, it's a starting line yeah. It just gives you so like a diagnosis, doesn't describe you to a T Right, it never will but it gives you the right lane to start in to discover so much about yourself, and people love discovering truth about themselves.

Erin Durham:

It's so helpful.

Sam Gerdt:

The grief that comes with a diagnosis. A lot of that is rooted in missed expectations. But the freeing part of a diagnosis is now all of a sudden, you have an accurate understanding, a more accurate understanding of yourself, and so much, so much, that you struggle with. There are times in my life before a diagnosis where the pain of not understanding myself, the confusion that comes from that and probably not even being able to communicate.

Sam Gerdt:

It can feel like your brain's on fire. Yeah, it can feel like your brain's on fire. It can feel like you're just like locked inside yourself. At the times, the diagnosis kind of gives you a key. Sure, it gives you a key and you unlock the first door and there's a journey I use that term loosely, but there's this process that starts to happen. You start reading all these books and you start meeting people who have similar experiences to yourself and things just start to make a lot more sense.

Erin Durham:

And suddenly you're not alone and you have some language to communicate with others.

Sam Gerdt:

It gives you a vocabulary. It does, it gives you a vocabulary.

Erin Durham:

And it gives you a set of tools that you can experiment with. Yeah, Absolutely.

Sam Gerdt:

And yeah, it gives you like there are like everybody's different. But you know, I think there are certain areas where you can relate to one another very greatly. You know, like, for example, I had an Asperger's diagnosis. This was back when Asperger's was still a thing. They've kind of redefined it since. But a big part of an Asperger's diagnosis is, you know, they want to measure how empathetic you are.

Erin Durham:

Yes.

Sam Gerdt:

I am not very empathetic.

Erin Durham:

Yes.

Sam Gerdt:

I'm not very empathetic, but there are other people with Asperger's who are incredibly empathetic. That's not like a make it or break it thing when you're dealing with Asperger's. Same with, like OCD, obsessive, compulsive behaviors. That's a big part of an Asperger's diagnosis. I should say it was a big part of an Asperger's diagnosis. I have very little OCD in my own life, but I know other people with Asperger's who OCD is a huge thing. It's actually like a barrier for them. It's something they have to deal with.

Sam Gerdt:

So there's all of these huge differences within these individual diagnoses, but there's still so much that you can relate to one another on. There's so much that you're like, oh yeah, that's what that is. That's why people responded that way. I get it now and that diagnosis can be so freeing in so many ways, and I do still think that it's good to have it.

Erin Durham:

Yes, I wasn't suggesting that people not find those answers.

Sam Gerdt:

You just have to be careful with what you do with the label. Yes, and I like the label. Be careful what you do with it. Yes, that's good. We talked a lot, too, about responsibility. Yes, and we talked a lot about personal responsibility, and this is an interesting one, because I think the average person in any business or organization is looking at cybersecurity.

Sam Gerdt:

They're looking at artificial intelligence, data privacy and protection, data collection all of these things that we're talking about in the show and they're saying somebody else's problem. I'm not the IT guy, it's not my problem.

Erin Durham:

Well as someone who can be overwhelmed by technology can be overwhelmed by features and benefits with new platforms. I mean, I would even confess to maybe being a little cavalier about who was getting my data and what they were doing with it, and just kind of assuming as I think Christy was the one who mentioned that yeah, we talked a lot about that we can kind of assume that well, this is a reputable company, I'm sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Erin Durham:

And with the emergence of this AI technology that can crunch so much data, suddenly we can't really lie to ourselves that we're part of aggregate data and nobody can really identify us anymore, and we can't really lie to ourselves that we're just part of the white noise anymore. So what do we need to be doing about that now? How can we protect ourselves? How can we help to protect those who are more vulnerable, who don't understand it even as well as we do?

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, that was such a good conversation. There have been several interviews that I've done where the intended line of questions followed a certain path and then what people actually heard was something completely different.

Sam Gerdt:

That's perfectly fine. I love that Christy's was one of those. I think Christy's was one of those interviews where I wanted to talk about how do small businesses protect themselves, and what we ended up talking about was people need to be more thoughtful in all of these, like individually taking responsibility, being more thoughtful in taking care of themselves and their own data and making sure that they are doing right by them, their families, their children, their employers, and then looking out for others to help them do the same.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, I know you personally feel like we have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable in the specific space. Can you talk about that some Sure?

Sam Gerdt:

I have a. I have a soft spot for children and elderly people in this, when we're having this discussion, and the reasons for those two demographics are different. So for elderly people, I'm gonna use a personal example. So I have grandparents who are still alive and they're in their late 90s. They were in their 70s when home internet became a thing. Just let that sink in.

Sam Gerdt:

They were in their 70s when AOL, when you went to the grocery store and got the AOL CD and a personal computer, cost $2,500 and it was. You had your gateway 2000 and like.

Erin Durham:

Can you explain? For the young people. What a CD is.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, so they were in their 70s when that happened and I think I was probably at that point. I was probably eight or nine years old and I think I was the one, or my brother was the one, who set up home internet for them. It was that kind of thing Like there was this disconnect. They were in their 80s when social media came along.

Erin Durham:

Yeah.

Sam Gerdt:

And there's so much time back there and now they're in their 90s and their attitude now is the exact same as their attitude back in the early 90s, the early mid 90s. Right, they're not interested in this technology.

Erin Durham:

They're interested in it to a certain degree.

Sam Gerdt:

So, for example, with social media, this irked me, then irks me now my grandparents. They're having great grandchildren at that point in time and they love photos and they want photos of kids and they want to fill their house with these printed photos of and you're saying, no, grandma, you gotta get on Facebook now to get the photos of the family. That is such an injustice to that group of people because Facebook was not built for them.

Sam Gerdt:

Facebook is not a healthy place for really for anybody to be, but it's not a healthy place for that to happen and it's not better. It wasn't an improvement.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, facebook is another one of those things. Just to circle back to the example you gave earlier, facebook is a tool and nobody seems to keep that perspective.

Sam Gerdt:

Well, there's a huge conversation right now that's happening, where we're saying how do we keep what happened with social media from happening with artificial intelligence? Because social media was just given to us and there were no rules and there were no regulation and it was bad.

Erin Durham:

And your language about it being a place to be. Facebook is not a place to be, but people treat it like it is. Facebook is a tool for communication, but it's not been treated that way. So back to the being an injustice. Yeah, let's get back to that.

Sam Gerdt:

So I look at protecting the vulnerable when it comes to things like cybersecurity or even data privacy means that we need to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of any demographic. We need to recognize the implications of the usage of these technologies. I mean, I can't tell you the number of elderly people who are being scammed on Facebook and also for media Like. It's not a safe place for them to be. They're not familiar with the technology and obviously I'm not talking about every elderly person in the world. I wanna make that clear. But generally we need to be very aware that there's a whole host of people who have who are being preyed?

Sam Gerdt:

upon, they're being preyed upon and they're also being unjustly treated by people who should not be treating them unjustly, and there needs to be more awareness around it. I don't think people are necessarily doing it on purpose. We all get wrapped up in our own lives and we leave people behind and we do it inadvertently. Yep, that's an area where we've left people behind. Sure, and I've seen that. I don't like that. It's not, I mean, as hard as it is. You gotta go buy the little photo printer and you gotta connect it to your cell phone and you gotta print your pictures.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, this doesn't have to be hard and you can do that online you gotta put them in an envelope and you have to go to the grocery store and buy a book of stamps. And you have to write a letter and you have to put it in the mail and you have to send it to people.

Erin Durham:

The post office still exists folks.

Sam Gerdt:

It's hard. I can't believe that people did this every day Not that long ago. It's hard, but you have to do it. It doesn't have to be. I know you can make a habit out of it. It can be enjoyable.

Erin Durham:

It's about being intentional about the people who matter in your life. Yep.

Sam Gerdt:

And then there's children, and the issue with children is that we're not teaching them, we're not diligent enough in teaching them the implications of their actions and we're not looking out for their best interests. Again, this is not a problem that everyone has Right, but it's something that we need to be aware of.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, it's something we're seeing a trend in.

Sam Gerdt:

You can't give a child a device, whether it's a phone or a tablet or whatever. You can't give a child a device and, even with parental locks and parental protections, just let them use that device without an education to go along with it. There is, there are a number of different directions that you could look at this. There's the mental health impact of giving a child a device in the first place, oh for sure.

Sam Gerdt:

There's the mental health impact of the things that are on the device like social media, the bullying that can happen there, the interactions, the social interactions that can happen there, but also like the addictive algorithms and the. You wanna talk about issues with dopamine and attention and all of that.

Erin Durham:

Oh yeah, talk about that for just a moment.

Sam Gerdt:

So there are a whole host of people in the world who have the appearance of a neurodiversity whether it's ADHD or whatever who don't actually have that. They're just addicted to their phones. They're just addicted to the dopamine hit of TikTok or YouTube or whatever.

Erin Durham:

Which are designed specifically to keep you engaged on that platform, unable to stop scrolling to the next thing.

Sam Gerdt:

This is an area where AI could hurt us even more if we let it, because the algorithms now for social media are incredibly primitive.

Erin Durham:

Which is scary to think about, because they're pretty good.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, so you plug in an algorithm that is. That isn't like. It is intelligent and then you give it the ability not only to feed content, but also to produce the content that it feeds based on its perfect understanding of your individual psychology. Because of all of the data collection, that happens and you get into this situation where doom scrolling becomes that much more addictive.

Erin Durham:

Which is not to get too much into doom and gloom, but it is important for people to be aware that this could be coming and it makes that keeping the tools in perspective as tools and being mindful about your usage of them. Yeah, I think I've said this on the show.

Sam Gerdt:

If AI is gonna destroy the world, that's how it destroys the world. It's not nuclear winter, it's not any of that other stuff, it's by just-.

Erin Durham:

Sucking us into our phones and never letting us go.

Sam Gerdt:

Entertaining us to death, absolutely Entertaining us to death. Yeah, so children are especially vulnerable because they don't have knowledge or foresight of how these apps work. What they're doing what?

Sam Gerdt:

these devices are doing they're not thinking about. They're not thinking necessarily about themselves as adults, and parents aren't even really doing that either. I mean, parents are putting their kids on social media left and right and center. They need to be more aware of that too. But the ability to exploit even just the image of a child and absolutely ruin that child's life, your family's life you don't wanna think about it, but that reality already exists. This is not science fiction. That reality already exists.

Sam Gerdt:

I would be very cautious and I have children. My children are not on social media. They don't have access to devices outside of a very limited window with extreme parental supervision. They're getting an education at home about what these devices are meant to be used for and what they are capable of. They are. We keep them. We have some social media presence. Our children are not there. You won't see them there, that kind of stuff. I think that needs to be much more common, because these kids are gonna grow up and they're gonna want jobs. They're gonna grow up and they're going to apply to schools. They're gonna grow up and they're going to want to have relationships and get married and have partners and all of that, and when you can go back and look at all of the things that have ever happened to a person and those things can be exploited by bad actors. Those things, it's just. It's not at all healthy when you project it out into any kind of future.

Sam Gerdt:

It's not healthy to have that and children need to be more aware of that. They need to be more protected and they need to be more educated so that they can protect themselves.

Erin Durham:

So, before we get too far into parent guilt, do you have any practical suggestions for someone who is a single parent and doesn't have the capacity or even two working parents who just don't have the capacity that you have in your family to keep that kind of control?

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, it's my family, is my family and that's my experience, so that's always gonna be hard for me. It seems to me like one of the biggest problems is that we assume the necessity of certain technologies. Sure, we can relate this back to business. We assume the necessity of the next greatest tool and we lose sight of our purpose. And so if you're gonna apply this in a family scenario, regardless of the family, families have to have a brand.

Sam Gerdt:

You know what you're about. You have a brand and that brand has a purpose.

Sam Gerdt:

You have your core values. You have all of that. You have to relate any technology back to that and I think there's not enough thoughtfulness there. But generally, I think it starts when kids are young, educating them on who you are as a family, what your values are, and equipping them for thinking about outside influences coming in. And what are those influences going to do for you, to you, how are you gonna use them? Technology is one of those influences. So it's not just cell phones and tablets or whatever. It's the internet, it's television, it's all of it. You have to. It's a form of gatekeeping. You're not building an fortified shelter around your kids as much as you are going in a particular order. First comes an education, first comes an established set of core principles. Then we can begin to introduce and plug in new technology, new processes into these little lives and turn them into citizens who are going to be productive adults, productive, who are going to be positive and kind, valuable additions to the world.

Erin Durham:

So yeah, within the framework of that set of values. Right, yes, yeah, ideally I mean that's your job, is introducing those things. But that framework has to be there to begin with.

Sam Gerdt:

Every parent has a set of core values that they're instilling into their children, and every parent wants their children to retain that. They want to see that carried on.

Erin Durham:

It doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen.

Sam Gerdt:

That's a sore spot for a lot of parents and you say, oh, my kids turned out so different than me.

Erin Durham:

It's like, well, First of all, they're growing up in a very different environment. But, second of all, you can't control the outcome. All you can control is how you participate in the outcome, right, and I think the most important values are gonna be.

Sam Gerdt:

they're going to want to carry them forward, like if you, as a parent, can't communicate the value of a principle, then why would they want to?

Sam Gerdt:

Then they're not necessarily going to keep it, but if you, as a parent, can articulate a well-reasoned argument for why this principle matters, and can demonstrate it without hypocrisy in your own life and can demonstrate its application in a variety of different circumstances in the real world which is a hard job to do, but that's the parent's job Then the child is going to not only carry it forward, they're going to carry it forward with zeal. They're gonna carry it forward with enthusiasm, because you'll have done a good job of reinforcing it. Boy, we're way off track. That's okay? I don't think so.

Erin Durham:

I think that all of this is applicable to businesses too. I mean, you do the same thing as a business leader, or at least I hope that you do that. You're creating a culture, a culture code. You're living your brand. You're infusing your brand Based on the same set of principles. You have developed a set of core values. You can articulate why they're important. You can inspire your people to also work within that framework and be ambassadors of your brand. It's exactly the same set of principles that can be applied, concepts that can be applied.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, and we started this conversation, this topic. We started it by saying how do we protect the vulnerable? Well, that, but we also said at the same time how does an employee protect what's the individual responsibility?

Erin Durham:

Yes, what's the personal?

Sam Gerdt:

responsibility. How do we protect the vulnerable? But what's the individual responsibility? And so organizations can in some sense view themselves as family. I don't think that that's particularly helpful all the time. No.

Sam Gerdt:

But if you look at all of the people who work in your organization as being individuals with individual responsibilities, you have incentive to instill your company's values into them Absolutely and see them apply those not just to the job description, but apply them to the culture of the organization. Apply them to interpersonal relationships within the organization, which contributes to culture, apply them to interactions with customers, and a huge part of your brand development becomes your people and how they're working, what kind of work they're producing, how they're interacting with each other, with customers, and so there's this big correlation I think that we could draw.

Sam Gerdt:

And then the safety aspect of that is you can't have people working for you without entrusting them with a part, an important part, of your organization.

Erin Durham:

And what are they gonna do with? It. I love that.

Sam Gerdt:

So like they are an ambassador, just like our children have our last name and so if they go do something stupid and end up in the newspaper, that's our name. That's kind of an old mindset, something my dad would say to me you have my name so don't go do something stupid. But it's true. It's absolutely true. You don't want a rogue employee to go off and say something stupid on social media because you can guarantee your company's gonna get dragged into it yes or representatives?

Sam Gerdt:

So, then, how do you foster this mindset of the individual responsibility to protect the assets of the company? We talk about cybersecurity, having individual security standards that are up to par, but you can also talk about brand development and what are those core values?

Sam Gerdt:

Does your employee know your voice? Are they speaking with your voice and then you can also talk about like are they looking out for the customer's data, one another, are they looking out for threats? Because a lot of threats come not from you know. A big brute force attack top down. A lot of the threats are coming from beneath you know. We can use a personal example. We've had in the last month, two months, we've had two or three separate attempts to infiltrate our business through technology. Those attempts didn't come top down. They weren't trying to break into our servers. They weren't trying to break into our email. They were trying to find vulnerabilities with employees. Can you?

Erin Durham:

explain that for the audience.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was going to. So you get an employee gets a text message on their phone yes, not a company phone on their phone, yes, and it says, hey, this is, you know, the boss's name. Right. So the boss, can you? I need you to do something for me. Are you available?

Erin Durham:

Yeah, and there's no link. So it was four of us received this on the same day and around the same time. Whoever did this had access to our personal phone numbers which most of us don't give out and knew where we worked and knew our company president's name.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, and so the goal is to get a response.

Erin Durham:

Yes, and there was no link in the text. There was nothing to click.

Sam Gerdt:

The goal is to get a response and then from there I don't know the exact game plan, but from there you're building out this, you're building out this little, little tiny tunnel. It starts just a little tiny tunnel into the company, but eventually, once they get in, they're in and there's all kinds of damage that that these bad actors can do. And but, to emphasize the point, they're going after, they're going after the new employee, like they're going after like the intern.

Sam Gerdt:

They're going after people who've only been here for a year. And so this emphasis of awareness and training from day one super important, individual responsibility. You have to have organizational wide systems that are secure, and we do that. That's a huge part of what we do. That's a huge part of my job. Is it even just advising clients on stuff like that? But then if you don't have everybody on the same page with security practices and knowing what, knowing what a scam looks like, knowing what's okay and what's not okay, what can I do with this piece of information? What can't I do with this piece of information? From day one, you have to have that nailed down. Super important, and this is how individual responsibility plays into making a safe organization. It's making sure that you're training your people and that you're being constantly vigilant, both in keeping them up to date, but also in just watchfulness every little thing.

Erin Durham:

If something doesn't seem right, it's probably not yeah.

Sam Gerdt:

So it's individual responsibility is going to only become that much more important. It won't. I don't think AI is going to alleviate any of that responsibility. I think it's going to add to it, because that's the trend with every new technology that we've had forever. Technology does not alleviate personal responsibility, it only adds to it, because you're not giving somebody an out, you're giving them another tool to use.

Erin Durham:

Right.

Sam Gerdt:

You're not. With more powerful tools comes greater responsibility. That's what we need to understand. Ai is a incredibly complex, capable and powerful tool that can be applied in a million different ways, but it's a tool that we're in charge of wielding, and so that comes with individual responsibility.

Erin Durham:

So, would you say, that makes it even more imperative to be selective about the tools that you choose to use, and only choose to partner with tools that are actually going to support your mission, rather than we see a lot of people who go, oh, this new technology is out, I'm going to adopt it, whether they truly need it or not, or is that a different issue?

Sam Gerdt:

It's a different thing, but I'll answer it. There's actually two thoughts that I have. The first has more to do with individual responsibility. The second has to do with choosing tools. First, individual responsibility. You've given somebody this super powerful LLM now, and that LLM can assist them in a lot of their tasks. And maybe it's not an LLM, maybe it's a data analytics tool, whatever. Along with that, you have to give them training on what can and can't go into that system, because there's all kinds of things that can happen inside these AI tools to extract data that's been put into them.

Sam Gerdt:

And these tools aren't necessarily isolated or insulated in a way where a bad actor can't get at them. And so, for example, we advise companies who are using chatGBT not to use chatGBT for sensitive information. Don't let chatGBT process data that's sensitive. And that means, let's say, that you want to have it organize an Excel spreadsheet in a different format or give you insights from that, and it can do all of that. But if that spreadsheet contains sensitive customer data and that's what you're asking it to process, that's a huge mistake. That's a big mistake. Similarly, I talked about this with Mitch If you're having it assist you in product development and you're giving it source code. That's a big mistake. Your source code is that's your product, that's yours and you're putting it, you're storing it in a place where other people can see it, and you need to understand that. So that's the individual responsibility piece. Then they need to train people on how these systems work and what is good and what's not good to do with them.

Sam Gerdt:

Separately choosing technologies, you need to. I mean, we've said it already 10 times you need to support the mission and vision of your company with any technology that you choose, and so a technology that's going to complicate your workflows or add complexity to them is probably not the best idea right off the bat. A technology that's going to distract you from your ability to provide that human to human connection that becomes, in a sense, an excuse to do less, that's probably not a good idea. There's a huge amount of auditing. I think that needs to happen before any tool is added, and this has been true for a decade. This isn't just AI. Before you add a tool, you need to go back and revisit all of your tools. We do this with clients who are, let's say, they need a CRM. Well, we're not going to just throw a CRM on top of whatever you're running.

Sam Gerdt:

We're going to go back and look at every single thing that you're running and we're going to thoughtfully integrate a CRM into that stack in a way that doesn't add complexity, it adds capability.

Sam Gerdt:

To your existing processes Exactly, and then we're going to go back and we're going to train everybody on it and make sure that everybody's in the same place as far as how is data organized, where is it stored safely, is, do the right people have the right permissions, all of that. So there's this huge auditing process that happens. That needs to happen on the individual responsibility side, to where, when you add a tool, you're saying how does this affect our risk? How does?

Sam Gerdt:

this affect the vulnerability Like? Are we taking an unnecessary risk by introducing a technology that maybe is new to the market or maybe it's. We're not sure how the data is stored or who has access to it. And with AI tools I would be especially wary, because people are hungry for data to train models right now. And so, buried in those terms of service, you'll see them reserving the right to use data from the platform to train future versions of the model.

Erin Durham:

Interesting.

Sam Gerdt:

So that would be, zoom got into trouble for this.

Sam Gerdt:

We talked about it with Christie. Zoom got into trouble for this very thing because it's like, okay, wait, we're using Zoom to have like private closed door conversations and you're telling me you want to use that closed door conversation to train a model that's gonna be released to the public and as much as you wanna say, well, that data's not necessarily gonna be surfacable. You would be amazed at how people have been able to surface specific training data in platforms like GITGPT, where you can bring to the surface like actual information that was used years ago at this point in the training of that model, that it exists somewhere. I would liken it to when we had hard disk drives People still use them.

Erin Durham:

Can you explain that?

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, people still use them but most of the time we're fixed this media, flash media, all that new stuff, right. But back when we had hard drives, it was, you had to emphasize just because you deleted it off your computer, just because you removed it from the recycle bin doesn't mean that it's gone off of that hard drive.

Erin Durham:

And that's even more true today, when we keep everything in the cloud just because you deleted off your Facebook account. Kids doesn't mean it went away.

Sam Gerdt:

So the forensic ability of someone who knows what they're doing to go in and recover and extrapolate data from surface data from when you think it's locked down. It's incredible, and that same is true. You can make that same comparison.

Erin Durham:

It's only gonna get worse because people can already do that and have done that, certainly in legal industry.

Sam Gerdt:

It's super important to have good policy around this stuff now and start training people now to think properly about it. Well, that was a roller coaster.

Erin Durham:

Yeah, so just to sort of book in the conversation. Sure. What is your big takeaway, if you haven't mentioned it already, from the first seven episodes of your show?

Sam Gerdt:

Big takeaway is I kind of mentioned it at the beginning it's this idea that your thinking is going to change so rapidly when you're presented with so much all at once. Distruction yeah, business owners are gonna deal with this a lot. You're gonna think you have it nailed down and then the next day something's gonna change and then you're gonna have to think differently about it. Those fundamental truths about who you are as a company, about how you want to connect with your customers, those can't change. Those have to be non-negotiable. Mm-hmm.

Sam Gerdt:

In some senses you're making a bet. Some things it's a safe bet, you know, like human interaction. Prioritizing human interaction, that's a safe bet. Prioritizing the idea that people want to deal with people, that people want a human connection with their brands yeah, safe bet. You know what we don't have to? There's not too much skin in the game when you bet on that, but there are some truths that are still being discovered and you have to put some skin in the game and then stick with it. Every company does this with their brand purpose. That's, yeah, you should be. It's unique to you. You're putting all your eggs in that basket, that brand pur, and there's no rule that says it can't change and adapt over time. It's an evolution process, but you have to have it. You have to articulate it, you have to train your people on it and then you have to stick with it. That's your guideline. So if you're going into the darkness, that's your like super narrow flashlight beam that's just guiding you every step of the way.

Erin Durham:

I love that. It's a really great analogy.

Sam Gerdt:

If you can do that. You're not always gonna end up at this super successful place. Sometimes the initial truth that you've latched onto will turn out to not be profitable.

Sam Gerdt:

You know, there are a number of companies who have really well articulated purposes but they just don't resonate with enough people for the company to survive. They didn't target a purpose that was going to pan out. But you have a much better chance of finding that deep purpose, that human connection. I made the analogy with I think it was with Mark with the film industry, kodak and some of these small, like film developer, film development mom and pop shops.

Sam Gerdt:

There were people whose purpose was too wrapped up in their product and they weren't willing to adapt with the technology, whereas if they had drilled down just another layer and said, okay, our brand purpose is to preserve your memories, then the product doesn't matter. The technology doesn't matter.

Sam Gerdt:

As long as you're staying true to that deeper purpose, you can add technologies, but you're just building this brand that says we're here to help you keep those memories safe. And so we see that all the time. There are companies that were established 100 years ago and what they do now is completely different than what they did back then. But you trace it through and you're like, wow, their product is so completely different, but their purpose somehow is exactly the same. It's crazy.

Sam Gerdt:

I was actually just reading about the founder of Lego. I won't get into that. Go look up the founder of Lego and read his story. It is incredible the amount of the amount of challenges, the trials that he had to face in order to keep his company going and how he bucked every single conventional piece of advice that he ever got and ended up just and it's almost to the point to where he didn't even see Lego become what we know it as. But he is absolutely the one that made it what it is, and he did it not by focusing on product as much as focusing on that deeper purpose. So I think that's the big takeaway for me is all this technology stuff.

Sam Gerdt:

We don't start with that. Start with those fundamental truths that define you as a person or as an organization, and then apply carefully and thoughtfully to that as you go along, let it evolve and just keep an eye on that purpose. I love that. What about you?

Erin Durham:

The people thing that we talked about in the beginning, yeah, it just and I would even add to that to the people discussion and put out just that kind of general call for empathy, because even if maybe you don't score highly on an empathy test, it is a skill that you can build.

Sam Gerdt:

It is.

Erin Durham:

And people matter, and especially in a post-COVID world, in a world of knowledge, work, where you do have the opportunity to leverage the strengths of really talented individuals, if you can just have enough empathy. And that's not to say you shouldn't expect personal responsibility, you shouldn't hold people accountable. You absolutely should do that, but in my opinion you should do that with a healthy dose of empathy too. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, it's a superpower. It's one that I wish I had more of. You're right that you can develop it.

Erin Durham:

I agree that it's a superpower. It's not often recognized as one.

Sam Gerdt:

Yeah, it's the ability to, the ability to put yourself in a situation that maybe you don't even agree with and see it from a perspective that maybe you don't even like, but then to fight from that perspective, that's. It's something that I don't understand.

Erin Durham:

It's not a gift that I have, or even continue to see the humanity in a person and refuse to treat them as something other than you or less than you, which we see a lot of, especially on a political stage we want to dehumanize people that we disagree with, and Bernadette Brown talks about this in her book Braving the Wilderness. She talks about if we can hang on to each other's humanity in the face of disagreement, we will have much more productive conversations.

Sam Gerdt:

Sure, I mean bringing it to that team level, building a strong, creative, effective, productive team. Empathy is the gift that belongs to the person who can. When somebody is not aligned, when somebody is contributing to a decrease in all of those good things, the empathetic person is the one who can see it, understand it and correct it as quickly as possible, and that's why it's a superpower, because what you're building, then, is this self-correcting, self-aligning, highly functioning team, and without that empathy, what happens is second law of thermodynamics entropy. What happens is you might have it at one point, but then, immediately, you start to lose it. As soon as you have it, you're starting to lose it, and so empathy is that glue that can keep it together for longer periods of time to greater degrees of effectiveness. Very good, thank you.

Sam Gerdt:

Erin.

Erin Durham:

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Sam Gerdt:

And looking back at the last seven episodes, seven interviews that we've done. This show is gonna go in all kinds of directions but I really hope that in our coming interviews which I'm really excited about we have some really cool people already lined up Awesome In those interviews. I'm really hoping to hear more from them about this, but I'm also hoping to go even deeper into some of the things that we've already talked about. Yeah, I think you will.

Sam Gerdt:

Yep, and I'm gonna go ahead and put a plug in here. If there's, as we look forward to the next set of interviews, if there's something that we need to talk about more, email us and let us know, Because this show is not just us saying what we wanna say. This is us seeking the perspectives that you find valuable.

Erin Durham:

Yes.

Sam Gerdt:

And so the email address is Roadwork at WayPostStudiocom, and if you send an email there, I will receive it. I will make sure that our producers see it and we will make every effort to incorporate your feedback into the show moving forward so.

Erin Durham:

And you're also super active on LinkedIn now.

Sam Gerdt:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Erin Durham:

So definitely connect with Sam yeah.

Sam Gerdt:

Thank you for doing this, Erin. We're gonna do it again after another batch of episodes.

Erin Durham:

I think, it was a valuable exercise.

Sam Gerdt:

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Erin Durham:

Me too, thank you.