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Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics. Essential Dynamics is a system we're developing for understanding how organizations can achieve flow. It's applicable to businesses, but also to personal lives and bigger society problems. And on the Essential Dynamics podcast, we test these principles with deep conversations with interesting people. And I'm back today with Dave Kane, one of my interesting colleagues.
Derek:Dave, welcome back. Hey, Derek. So we started a two parter episode last time and you kind of helped us get organized. So do you want to set up what part two is like?
Dave:Yeah. I think through our last discussion, as I kind of framed it in my mind, it was we were talking about what do leaders need help with and how does technology apply to that. And the discussion is really easy around the operational and working within the system and and getting it to flow well and all those things. And it was when we stepped back to the meta level and said, how do you step back from an organization, view it as a system, and figure out how to make it better. Or or more often than not in the process that Derek goes through when he guides somebody, it's I have a problem.
Dave:How do I use systems thinking, etcetera, dynamics to look at it? And we sort of figured out what technology today isn't really there yet as far as helping work at the step back, look at your system as a whole. That's an intuitive personal thing. And I know you've been churning away on this kind of thought. So I kind of wanted to take a bit of an episode to figure out how do we give leaders a tool that doesn't require a face to face that they can use to help figure out how to work their system or how to improve their organization there.
Derek:Yeah, I have been thinking about that a lot. And let's see if we set this up. So we're thinking about a leader who has realized that they can't just organize stuff on the production line. That from time to time they have to step back from that and say, why do we have the products that we do? Why do we have the customers that we do?
Derek:Why do we work on the production line this way? What's our system for even evaluating our efforts to improve it? And there are those are those are not easy things to understand. And so how...
Dave:Even questions aren't always the questions aren't always, you know, why? It's even just I have a problem. Yeah. And the only way I'm gonna solve that problem is to look at it from a different level. You know, we're not we're not achieving all that we could, you know, I have a challenge with this individual or this visa and you always have to step back, go up a level to look at these sort of things.
Dave:So the whys come, but usually it's provoked by I have this thing.
Derek:I have this thing. I and and, you we talk about that as being stuck. And sometimes being stuck is I was moving along fine and then it stopped. And other times being stuck is I'm really not moving along and I'm used to it. And now that I think about it, I'm actually stuck.
Derek:So I want to go back to what you said because one of my favorite Albert Einstein quotations is the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the level of thinking we were at when we created them. So we have to level up our thinking. We have to get to a different level. And I find in my practice anyway that a way to get to a different level of thinking is to have a conversation. Right.
Derek:Because you can't see the system that you're in. It's very hard to get out of the system that you're in. You're in the system and sort of by definition that's what it is. So you need to get out and so one of the ways that you get out of the system is to have a conversation with someone who is already outside the system and seeing things in a way that you're not seeing.
Dave:Right. And and whether that's, you know, a guy like yourself or even just someone outside your organization, you should benefit by having people asking you questions and helping you explore things in a bit different light than the place you're in.
Derek:That's right. Right. So there's part of it is just that outside objective view. And then to add, so let's, we call that sort of the guide mentality. There's aspects to just being objective, but there's a little bit more and that is there are ways to talk about systems.
Dave:Right, which is what we use essential dynamics for. That's That's right.
Derek:So essential dynamics is a very, very simple way to getting at, well, the essential elements of a system. There's a purpose. There are processing steps, things we do to accomplish a purpose, that's done by people who show up as individuals, then we kind of stick them into the group to try and get stuff done. And so those are the three elements. That allows for all kinds of conversation.
Derek:So if we're trying to help a leader with the meta system, one step is we gotta pull them out and then we have to give them language about what they're doing at a level that's different than their org chart and their job descriptions and, you know, their specifications and stuff like that. So that's kind of what Essential Dynamics is for, one of the reasons that's for. So those kinds of conversations can really help someone think of things in a new way. And I have to say that one of the most thrilling parts about the work that I do is I don't know if I call it okay. It's that kind of knockout moment where the head snaps back.
Derek:I'm not attacking anyone physically.
Dave:I think you've described it as the aha moment. The moment.
Derek:The epiphany where you ask a question and then there's this pause. And then they say, I never looked at it that way. And you don't know what happened. Right? This is all inside someone's head. And then they start talking and they tell you about their system in a way that they haven't told you about their system before.
Derek:So the question is, can you do that with technology? Right.
Dave:And can you?
Derek:Well, so let's I think I want to compare and contrast for a second. So we have technology today where you can... where where the conversation is the interface.
Dave:Right. Like, what we're doing now. Yeah. Technology to you don't have to be there with someone. You can call or video or text.
Derek:We call, video or text. And here's the innovation that we've had in the last couple years. The other party doesn't have to be a person.
Dave:More and more. That's true.
Derek:More and more. So years ago, Doctor Turing developed the Turing test. He was the guy who cracked the Enigma code machine in World War two, if I have a it right. Okay.
Dave:Canadian? Oh, that was William Stephenson. Sorry. Anyways.
Derek:Yeah. Okay. That's that's another that's another cool guy we should talk about sometime. So, anyway, the Turing test is if you have a conversation with another entity and let's say for purposes of this time that would be a text conversation and you can't tell whether that's, and that response is indistinguishable from a person, then the machine has like intelligence. And I think I read that sometime in 2024, ChatGPT three or four was like, you know, sort of unanimously declared to have passed the Turing test.
Derek:I don't know that that's my experience with it, but so now we can have conversations with computers, which if they're not identical to human conversations, they're at least natural enough that we'll keep having them. And I'm not talking about the chatbot on the helpline at your cable company.
Dave:Yes. That versus a chat GPT are light years apart.
Derek:Yeah. Where they get you in a little loop and they don't understand anymore. There's one keyword that they're looking for. Okay, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about this large language model chat interface.
Derek:They can read context and you're having this conversation. So what happens if you go into chat GPT right now and say, I'm stuck in my business?
Dave:Well, I've done that for and what it will do is, I mean, it will go and find a number of popular ways of approaching things and it would just tell you, you know, ways to go look at it. It's going to give you a cookie cutter, I think.
Derek:Yeah. And encyclopedic volume of it as well. Right. Okay. So let's go back to our problem statement.
Derek:What's our problem statement? We have a leader who has a problem with their organization. They want it to be better. And we're working at the metasystem level. What's the limitation in the metasystem level?
Derek:It's leadership time and attention. So if you have interaction with another party and all you get in response is tons of stuff to read, it's not very helpful.
Dave:No. And then you go throw it back into a different sort of AI thing and it summarizes for you and you get it done quite quickly. But I don't think you're any further ahead.
Derek:Now what you used to do, and this is I did this for a while as at a at a big four consultancy was you would ask an expert and they would come in and interview your people, look at your competitors and stuff like that. And then they would write your report. They used to write your report. Now they just do like a PowerPoint, but you would you would get a report and the report would have 17 to 75 recommendations of stuff you should do. Has that solved your management attention problem?
Dave:That case is too many. So through the process that you go through with company is a conversation and a series of questions, but you're never at the point of sort of saying, this is what I think you should do, which my experience with some of the AI online when I'm asking other questions not related to business is it really likes to tell you what it thinks the answer should be. Yeah. So is there a way to find that middle ground of help learn but don't tell an answer?
Derek:Yeah. So this is where I think I have to, like, do the big reveal. This is gonna be easier from this point on to explain what we've been working on. So we've been working on an AI entity, a digital guide to essential dynamics or your partner in achieving systems flow as a leader.
Dave:So it's more than an AI on top of your Wiki then? An educational conversational tool.
Derek:Well, you know, it's really interesting as as we had we've had those experiences with other AIs and and what that's like and then comparing that to what I try to do when I'm working live with a client. And I like to think I can't be replaced but I also like to think there's a lot of things I do that we can develop an algorithm for because it's impractical to have a guide with you whenever you think of a great question for your guide or great discussion you want with to have with your guide. So if you had one in your pocket, what would that look like? And so our guide is called EDy and that's for the transcript here, that's capital E, capital D, small y. It relates to essential dynamics.
Derek:And EDy has a personality of being a wise and warm individual who likes asking you hard questions and provides insight from time to time. But this is what this is part of what I learned as as we were working on this is that there are different ways that you would wanna approach a conversation and, you know, reflecting on how I work. We're starting guide mode and guide is exactly what you're talking about, does not provide answers, mostly ask questions. The way we're designing our digital guide doesn't do a lot of, I don't know, pretending to be emotional. Like, you know you're talking to a computer, it doesn't tell you I know how hard that is because it doesn't, it doesn't have feelings.
Derek:But it does identify what you said and the meaning behind it and respond back and say, you know, you're saying this, what about that? Does that mean this? What we try to do as guides, as live people is we don't typically give direction. We rarely give advice. We're separate from the branch of coaching where we're convinced that the answer is inside the leader all along and we just need to like ask enough questions to get it out.
Derek:We haven't done this work on essential dynamics for so long with hundreds of years of human wisdom behind it and all facets to not pull on that. And so there are times where we need, you know, the learnings of other people, but they come best when a leader has gone through a process of getting really clear on what they're trying to do, really clear on how they're stuck and then teasing a little bit more out of the human knowledge base to put in front of them. I think that's the role of a guide.
Dave:So you've created in the guide component of of EDy is taking that same skill set that you bring to a a leader of asking the questions, but you're doing it within the context of the Essential Dynamics or that framework. Right? So you've taught EDy how to think and ask questions and, you know, probe within an essential dynamics kind of way of thinking and to help the leader discover why they're stuck and sort of where to go with it?
Derek:Yeah. And so the objective is we're trying to get the system flow. One of the interesting things about having a really helpful AI as the basis for this, As like we said, is their, like encyclopedias are very generous. They wanna give you lots of stuff. And so we're trying to throttle that back.
Derek:And so one of the things we've got so far is that the essential dynamics part of it is really understated. Because the focus needs to be on the leader and their experience and what they're going through and what they need and not where it fits in somebody else's map of how you think about a system. Like because we can think about systems then we can just have that as a base and then go to where the leader is. But at some point, curiosity being what it is, the user in this conversation will say, just hang on a minute. You said something about value flow versus cash flow.
Derek:Can you tell me more about that? And what we've got EDy doing right now is saying, hey, can I switch to teacher mode? And in teacher mode, EDy was then more confident to say value flow is this and cash flow is that and did you know there's two other flows we look at? And not give too much and keep it in context, but be comfortable to say, can we here's some concepts that we can stitch together. And then and then it would be up to the user to say, oh, you know, teach me more about that or, okay, that's good.
Derek:I got that. Now I wanna go back to talking about me and my problem.
Dave:Right. Because as you you learn the essential dynamics framework and and language, I think it helps you sort of reposition some questions. And and then kinda you learn that piece, you can kind of unpack that and go in a different direction with your conversation. You can switch back and forth is what you're saying between
Derek:Switch it back.
Dave:I want to learn essential dynamics, but I really need to have a conversation to help me explore something.
Derek:Yeah. And it's really interesting because the way that you can set these up, it would have been easier to have a guide chat and a teacher chat. But it didn't make any sense because that's not how we think. And you'd have to bring your notes from your guide chat to your teacher. Right.
Derek:And then bring your notes back. So it's all one conversation. And teacher mode is we it's hard, but we're trying to, like, tighten that down and say, you know, don't teach too much too fast and make sure that the user's tracking what we're talking about. So there's guide and teacher mode. And then there's a third mode, and I have to give you, Dave, personally credit for this one.
Derek:So the questions you asked is a bit, yeah, sometimes here we got two smart people together and there's a problem. Can't we just solve the problem?
Dave:That's just my impatience.
Derek:I know. Yeah, but it's good. So if you think about it, I'm talking about it in this episode, but the idea of a guide really comes from the idea of like a mountain guide, an outdoor adventure guide. Great thing about a guide is that they're with you every step of the way to the top of the mountain. But if you wanna climb the mountain, you have to climb the mountain.
Derek:So you can't send the guide up and then, you know, climb the mountain. You gotta go there. The guy's with you every way. Teacher mode is like you're at base camp or at prep school and we're looking at charts and gear lists and stuff like that. You can do that in theory.
Derek:It all activates when you're with your guide. But then the other mode is let's go someplace that we haven't gone before. And so we call it Pathfinder mode. And this is a we have a problem. The problem this problem is solving this problem is more important than my progression as a leader than my understanding of the system that you guys are trying to teach me.
Derek:We just need to solve the problem. And then so we take some of the brakes off and you've got your AI partner and there's a problem. And then your AI might say, well, you should try this or here's three options. What do you think?
Dave:Okay. Because that's analogous to to what you do in that you're bringing your experience and and, you know, previous engagements with you. So if you are taking somebody on a journey up the mountain and be like, yes, we could go down that path or it might lead to a cliff. Why don't we try thinking about going a different direction? And so you've kind of brought that Pathfinder piece in and we have some experience and we have some some understanding.
Dave:So it's probably a little bit more suggestive, a little bit more.
Derek:It can be very suggestive. I think I think one of the keys is that we're gonna get to a problem where the leader has the content. They know their business, they know their business doesn't know how to solve this problem or they don't know how to solve this problem but they have all kinds of context around it. And then the guide has all kinds of other experience plus the Essential Dynamics process and it's like, let's throw everything we can at this because we just need to solve the problem. In actual fact, I don't know that we have this fully figured out, but if you have a conversation with EDy and you're starting to cycle down into the action steps, then practically speaking what happens and we'll see how this holds up is at some point you say, hey, EDy, can you write the email that I'm gonna send to the team to set up the meeting?
Derek:Or can you prepare the agenda for the meeting? Or can you do the report of the conversation that we just had? And so then there's a bit of a, I don't know if it's a assistant kind of role, but you're not giving EDy all the words. And EDy's taking the conversation between, you know, let's call it equal partners. And EDy puts his hand up and says, well, I'll write the notes up for that.
Derek:Okay, now why are we trying to do this? Well, for one, we have the leader who has limited time and attention. The leader's input was required to define the problem, set it up. Who knows whether the answer came from, you know, the the chat GPT scrape of the world's information or the leader, you might not even know. Leader says, yes, that's what I wanna do.
Derek:Now EDy takes over and says, well, here, let me write it up for you.
Dave:Right. So I can kinda see like the value of this is you're you're building up a knowledge base through the conversation with EDy. And so as you explore and go through guide mode and EDy's gaining an understanding of your challenges in your organization, when it's helping you frame these letters or do a bit of work, it's pulling on the context of the background that that you're both now sharing, which is a great asset because the more you use it, the more it learns and it's going to adapt. I'm just curious as you start talking about it. I'm sharing a lot of very private information.
Dave:I have confidence when I talk to Derek that he's keeping it that way. One of the first things that probably jumped through his mind is, am I throwing my confidential information into the cloud? And so is that a concern with this?
Derek:The work that we do does not train those large language models. It it stays within the user account. So it doesn't You're not contributing to the world's data as a minimum. And then the other thing is that Pickaxe is certified under the European privacy standard, which is the most rigid one, the GDPR standard. And so that allows us to say to our clients that, yeah, your information doesn't go anywhere.
Derek:It's yours and it doesn't go anywhere.
Dave:Our way of keeping it confidential and giving people confidence. Okay.
Derek:Yeah. It's really ironic because we're using these large language models, which got information from who knows where. I think it's fantastic when I say, I find out about a new author in a new book that fits our model. And I'll just ask Chad GPT for like the table of contents or a summary. And I don't skunk it very often, right?
Derek:Like it's out there. We're all taking advantage of that, but we also want to protect our own little pocket of it. And I fully understand and that's that's the way we would work.
Dave:So as you explained, I just find it very exciting then because I'm able to have my confidential conversation with some with EDy who has all of the foundation of you and essential dynamics and sort of more that is able to pull from experiences elsewhere within the internet. But I can do it when I want in my pajamas late at night because I can't sleep. And I've got this problem with my company. And the more I use it, the more it understands. And so the questions will get more and more helpful and specific and challenging, or it can teach me, or I can go to Pathfinder mode.
Dave:But I just like how it's as with all things and technology here, it's there when I want it, when I need it.
Derek:Yeah. And I'm not. So that, you know, there's that. Right?
Dave:Well, I texted the middle of the night
Derek:and you
Dave:seem to answer, but
Derek:But So
Dave:I'm just curious. Where is it where are you taking it and what are your challenges with this?
Derek:So the challenges is that because I'm using a no code platform, you need to use text prompts to get EDy to do what you want it to do. And so you can't debug that the same way as you would debug lines of code to try and get a spreadsheet to add numbers up or something like that. So so I find that I find that complex and that's that's a big part of what's going on in the world today.
Dave:Is that almost like are you saying it's kinda like you're trying to find that balance in how any response to things or how to make it more like an interaction with the person would be. It's just sort of that teaching it how to behave.
Derek:Yes. And all of that needs to go into a prompt that's provided to the underlying large language model. And the large language models each have their own sort of personality. And so Chat GPT is very chatty and likes to give advice and likes to comment on, likes to pretend as a person and that doesn't all fit. And so we then temper that in the prompts that we put in.
Derek:So that's probably the biggest challenge right now, which is interesting. The other challenge that I have, I think I have, is that I have a bunch of Essential Dynamics content which I haven't loaded into the knowledge base that it refers to. And putting that in the best format so that it's at EDy's fingertips is also a challenge, but not I don't think it's to the same degree because it's that conversation interface which is so critical to the whole thing.
Derek:So you've got this new evolving tool that is trying to take Derek and the other unconstrained guides and provide it online when people want it. In early days, it's learning and evolving, but it's making it available to a much, much broader base. Right? So where are you at with how it's available and how can people who are kinda curious about what you've tweaked them to and want to dive into this such a dynamic world, is it available?
Derek:It's in beta now. So if you're dying to try it out, send us a note and make your case and we might let you on our short beta list. It won't be too long before it's available generally. And the website that you need to go to is a new one, which I registered yesterday, which is edy.guide. edy.guide.
Dave:I know you've put in a lot of hours building this. What's keeping you so excited about it? What's the drive? What's the excitement here?
Derek:So I just really think that if leaders have the time and ability to step back and see the system that they're going to find ways to run their organizations better. And at every level, we do better when we can step back and see how things fit together. And I think we're trying for a better world and better experiences for people to work inside organizations. And I love to do, I love to have the one on one, but as I've been sort of gaining insight that's come together in Essential Dynamics, I want as many people as possible to be able to benefit from that. And I don't think a book is the answer, although there might be one at some point.
Derek:I think this, because it's 2025 and this is right in our lap right now, on a Monday in March, I'm like, I want to do this thing this particular way, but Pickaxe isn't set up to do it. And, the other things I've looked at like this aren't even as good as Pickaxe. And then, the next day the upgrade came. And I'm like, oh, I can do that now. And it's like, oh, ball's in my court.
Derek:And then it took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to do that. But it's 2025, we couldn't have done this, we couldn't have this conversation a year ago. And so this is the tool that's available to us. And so I think it's just a great opportunity to get it out to the whole world in however form we can and however we can find the people are interested in it.
Dave:Yeah. I can tell you on my journey with Essential Dynamics from the very first conversation that we had, I remember leaving going, well, that just makes sense. Essential Dynamics, when you get into it, is just a very simple and straightforward way of of of looking at your company in the system and helping it out. But reading it is one thing. Having the conversation and then putting it into your language and your situation, it it just it unlocks it so much.
Dave:And so as you described the tool here, that's what it does for me is just it's a way for someone to very simply dive into this world and just go, well, that just makes sense. This really helps. And it's, you know, a quick five, ten minute journey on an AI to start the process. And so it's just an easy front door. That's why I kinda like what you've talked about here.
Derek:We'll put in the show notes the current information about how to get access and that will change a little bit over the next few weeks. But Dave, thanks for the conversation today. I'm excited too. Bryn Griffiths, thanks also for being on this journey with us.
Dave:So does this mean we're going get replaced? Is EDy coming on the podcast and am I out of a job?
Derek:I think that at some point we should have conversations with EDy. And I did hear someone who was from one of the major tech companies. He's left one of the major tech companies. I won't say who it is or what the company was and was talking about a similar kind of project that they're trying to work on. It's very different in some ways but the one thing he said is that everyone knows that they need to get to voice.
Derek:That the text chat is always gonna be valuable but we need to get to voice and the voice has to be natural and seamless. And so I'm not at the point with any technology yet where I can, in my car, have a conversation with, you know, an AI that's more than to, like, skip to the next song. And so so yeah. Our EDy has a voice. We'll find we'll pick a voice for EDy.
Derek:We'll pick an accent. It'll be fun.
Dave:Always been a pleasure being on with you and I'll be a long time listener then. That's good.
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Derek:So I need Dave to help me talk to EDy in the future, I'm sure. So Dave, thanks very much. Bryn, thanks very much. You can find us at getunconstrained.com. EDy will be at edy.guide and until we meet again, consider your quest.