What Leaders Need from Technology

Derek Hudson and Dave Kane explore how technology is helping—or hindering—leaders in 2025. They map out where leadership attention gets hijacked, what clarity looks like at the operational and meta levels, and where technology still falls short. From financial visibility to systems insight and real-time flow feedback, the conversation traces both risk and opportunity, concluding that technology’s greatest potential lies not in automation, but in context-aware guidance and timing.

Derek and Daver are at Unconstrained.

Full show notes are on the Essential Dynamics Wiki.

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Derek: 00:20

Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm Derek Hudson. Today I'm with Dave Kane and together we're happy to be here for another episode of the Essential Dynamics podcast. Dave, how are you?

Dave: 00:32

I'm great, Derek. Thanks for having me back. I guess it starts as a summer tradition here.

Derek: 00:37

That's right. And we're in season five, we had two fantastic guests, four really interesting episodes. We were trying to look for examples of system flow. And I just have a few things that were really burning on my mind and so we thought we'd take a little bit of a detour from our esteemed guests and work together as unconstrained colleagues on this one. So I'm really interested because it's 2025 on what leaders need from technology.

Dave: 01:14

What do leaders need from technology? So let's see. Can do you wanna focus that a little bit? Because that could go all the way from, you know, the the systems and tools and stuff. You're you're sort of refining down to leadership.

Dave: 01:30

Correct? As opposed to leaders in organizations and where they take it.

Derek: 01:34

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's what's the leadership function? And we've had, you know, we've had episodes on different aspects of that.

Derek: 01:42

What's the leadership's role and how can leaders directly, I guess, be helped with technology and how can technology get in the way and sometimes how it's hard to tell the difference.

Dave: 01:56

Yeah. Well, I would say, yeah. If you take it back to some of the other languages, there's drivers and constraints associated with bringing in sort of technology to help leadership and it's intended to be a driver, but so often it's a distraction and a constraint. And how many times have I burned a couple hours trying to figure out a new tool or a new widget or something?

Derek: 02:18

Distraction is a huge element when we say that the fundamental constraint of the progress of an organization is leadership attention. The capacity that leaders have to pay attention to something is the fundamental constraint of an organization because the leader's job is to put everything in place so that an organization can get to system flow and progress. And anything that takes away from their efforts in doing the most valuable part of that is getting in the way. And so leadership distraction is a huge risk. And here we are living in times when there are all kinds of things that are tugging at our attention here, there and everywhere.

Derek: 03:11

And technology is one of them. So is technology only the problem or is there a solution in there? So what I thought I'd do is maybe step back a little bit and say, do leaders need? Or you know, what might we expect leaders to be able to help that leaders can get to do a better, to do better particularly on this issue of leadership attention deficit. And then try to apply technology tools to it because often what we do is we pick up a shiny new tool and then we try it out on stuff.

Derek: 03:50

And I think that's perhaps where we are in 2025 with AI is don't know, you know, leaders might say, don't know what it is and I don't know what it does, but I know I need it because they say everybody needs it. So before we get into that, just back up and say what aspects of leadership might be benefited by particularly particular applications of technology.

Dave: 04:16

Okay. So I know in the past you sort of talked about leadership at sort of the two levels. One being the meta level and looking at the system from the outside. And then there's the inside side of leadership of working on the operations and finding flow and getting things to work. So let's kind of break it up a little bit and start with the the inside view and sort of look at, you know, what what what do they need?

Dave: 04:44

And I think a lot of it to me comes back to the two that jump to mind are making sense out of complexity. I mean, there are just so much information and so many pieces and it's it's that just making sense of the volume. And then with that is sort of that prioritizing and setting direction. So maybe for sort of figuring out how one starts to find flow and starts to manage the operations, I think that's the piece I find leaders rely on their teams for, and they rely on sort of the sports around them. So to me, a natural place for technology is starting to help understand how do you synthesize the complexity and then how do you help prioritize.

Dave: 05:29

Does that kinda make sense?

Derek: 05:30

Yeah. Those are good. So the accountant in me says, well, one thing we've got is that at one level of viewing the system, the numbers add up and they add up really if you wanna think about it very simply, they add up into two things. One is they add up into revenue. All the activities you do generate activity with the customer and the customers get value and they pay you for it and that's revenue.

Derek: 06:01

And you can have in the same organization, revenue and service revenue and you can license things instead of manufacturer. And so there's different ways to get revenue but it all adds up. And the great thing about using dollars is you can translate different activities into a common denominator by looking at the dollars of revenue. And on the same side, there's the expenses, which we tried to capture and roll up as well. So one of the things that a leader, so say a CEO, one of their challenges is that they delegate out parts of the organization to different leaders and different people in groups like departments or divisions.

Derek: 06:53

And they tend to get focused on their particular activity to the point where they may not make decisions that optimize the overall flow. And so when you add up the results of those activities in terms of revenue and expenses, you see how that all works in the CEO and in my experience, the CFO are kind of the only ones in the organization that are looking to see how that all works. And so any technology that will help them do that and help all of the leaders see the results of all of the system will be helpful. I've not seen that a lot because the other thing that accountants do and accounting systems can do is divide things up into departments and divisions and account codes and sub codes. And we break things down into these little pockets where maybe somebody has responsibility.

Derek: 07:56

In fact, fact, are accounting terms like responsibility accounting and responsibility center. And so some little pocket has, some little person, or some person has jurisdiction over a little pocket and they optimize that pocket.

Dave: 08:11

So when I hear you sort of talk through that in my non accounting mindset, I'm sort of translating that into it's a visibility issue because you're using revenue as and and sort of the the systems of reporting it is that visibility into operations or how things are performing. And then you're putting it into a common denominator. Yeah. And so the the leaders kind of need that that uniform or unfiltered way of seeing everything in within the organization and then comparing the different uncomparable sections to sort of wait and go back to the prioritization. So that to me is that similar to that complexity and prioritization I was talking about.

Derek: 08:55

Yeah. Yeah. The other part about that is once you understand that, then you look at what is the constraint to the flow of revenue. Like what limits the flow of revenue? It's act speaking simply, it's either that you are able to fill all the customer orders and you need more orders or you have more orders than you can fill and you need no more production capacity.

Derek: 09:28

And sometimes different parts of the business would have one and a different part would have the other. But if you look at it very simply then what is it that limits the flow of production in our system? And then that's where you set the priority and that's where you set the focus. And the responsibility of every other part of the organization is to stay out of the way and to have enough capacity to not become a problem. And, you know, information can either help that or make it worse.

Dave: 09:57

So let me challenge you a little bit on that because or I get you to explain it a little further because identifying the constraints to me, yes, leaders need help with that. And I'm curious how technology in your mind is an asset to identifying the constraints. Because for for me, one of them would be identifying patterns. And technology, especially AI is very good at identifying patterns and sort of finding the simplicity on the other side of complexity, right? It can synthesize vast amounts of information that we can't.

Dave: 10:33

But how do you take that technology and help the leader identify a constraint?

Derek: 10:39

Well, it's very, very simple. One of the things that I like to do with clients is to look at the product mix or the project portfolio and say, of these projects use our constraint to best effect and which ones don't. And so if you think about, let's just say a law practice, you have clients that are great to work with, have really interesting problems that pay on time, pay your rates and are happy. And then you have clients that miss meetings, send you stuff late, complain about the bill, cause you all kinds of time to rework. And their recovery of a lawyer's hour is not quite as good as the great clients.

Derek: 11:29

But most law firms, accounting firms and others don't have really rigorous ways of tracking that. And it's the same in a production system where you have a bunch of different products that some may be worth your time and some may be getting in the way of adding real value. So so understanding that mix. So this is a complex technology.

Dave: 11:53

No. I think it's more of a methodology

Derek: 11:54

or Yeah. That's your

Dave: 11:56

mind said. And you're using technology or, you know, that data synthesis almost to provide the inputs to it. It's not replacing the decision making. It's just helping make more efficient use of your time to get to it.

Derek: 12:12

So Yeah. Now, you know, other applications of technology outside sort of the information of watching the flow, adding to the flow itself. Let's say you have an administrative process that includes consuming large amounts of textual data, like insurance claims or something like that. And you could develop advanced tools to make that easier for someone or automate some of those tasks. That's great.

Derek: 12:41

If it's not on the constraint and if you don't take advantage of it, what you'll do is you'll either push more information through the system that could be handled elsewhere or you'll have some person with their feet up on their desk twiddling their thumbs because the AI did all the work for them, But you don't capture it because you haven't changed the system to adapt to that. So I guess within the operations, are ways to understand the operations where you can use technology. And then in some places there is actually a technology solution to speed up something. So if you think, we refer to the book The Goal by Eli Goldratt a lot. And as part of the plot of that book, the plant manager, they've got a bunch of robots to automate manufacturing processes in their plant, but they weren't putting any more output out because they still had constraints that they hadn't automated.

Derek: 13:39

And in fact, what the robots were doing is making inventory faster than they could process it through the rest of the system. And that's analogous today to automating, you know, administrative or knowledge worker tasks. Yep. So I think we should bounce up to the meta system as well. Is there anything else you want to talk about in the operations?

Dave: 14:02

Well, the only other one, because I know we always focus on purpose, path, and people. And you know, we got a lot of the path in there. I'm just curious quickly if there's any thoughts on the people side and sort of, you know, what are leading entities help with there and how does technology apply at all?

Derek: 14:18

Well, that's interesting because I think it's one of the ways we think about the the people question is really about people's hearts and minds and whether they're willing to give up some of their autonomy to join the group and how you access people's individual contributions and their ingenuity and creativity. It's hard to automate those kinds of things. But if you automate the

Dave: 14:45

But technology doesn't always mean automation.

Derek: 14:47

So Yeah.

Dave: 14:48

And so I think it can go back to your, your, your visibility almost and finding that common denominator and just, I mean, are there technological tools that can sort of help with that collection and organization of data. And, you know, other than, you know, getting better with pulse checks and having some AI, some more synthesized for you and tell you what the answers are, but which I know there are some really fascinating tools out there that do that for you, but

Derek: 15:17

Okay. I get where you're going with this Dave, or maybe you're not going there, but you got me on a track here and that is what if you could use technology to make the progress of the organization more visible to everyone? Like we watched, we just watched the hockey game last night. Everybody knows what the score is all the time. And they dig down into various details like the number of hits and how many times you score in the second period and stuff like that.

Derek: 15:46

But everyone knows what the real game's about and they know the real score. But in complex organizations, don't see that as much. And what if there were ways of tracking flow through the organization that people could see visually, see in real time? I do, I'm aware of one organization that has a big screen in the lunch room where they try to do that. So I think there's some opportunity there because I would way rather have people understand what we were trying to do and see the progress that we're making and then figure out how they can contribute than try to design systems to, you know, modify their behavior into the things we do, which we think will help.

Derek: 16:30

I guess that's too much work. It's way it's way better to have people see the objective and see how they figure out how they could contribute. So there might be some to that.

Dave: 16:38

So that's not exactly where it was going, but it's it's really smart. So I'm going to take credit for it. But I think there's that balance there of of, you know, what leaders help with. One is the visibility and understanding of where the people are at and what they need. And then the second piece that you had was the reverse of the people get from the organization is going to be, you know, technology can enable better visibility and sort of alignment that way.

Dave: 17:03

So, but in the instant time, I know you want to bounce up to the meta level. So can we just start with you redefining what the meta level is so that everybody stays on the same page here?

Derek: 17:14

Yeah, sure. So the way I think about it is fundamentally the organization should have a system to create value and that could be a production line or yeah, like a kitchen and serving and that the product gets to the customers and you can see it flow through and that's the value creation system. But somebody's got to decide what that is to see where it could change to maybe reset what the purpose of the organization is. And that's not in that system, that's a different system. So I call that the meta system, the system for the system.

Derek: 17:54

And while the constraint of a value creation system is some limiting factor in the flow of value, in my mind the constraint of the meta system is always that there's not enough leader time and attention to do all the things that you want to do. And often in smaller organizations and even some really big ones, the leaders are spending time either working in the production system or working with the production system and not spending time stepping back in at that meta level and saying, is this even the system that we want? And is this how do we how what's the system for improving the system?

Dave: 18:34

Okay. So in the first step, we found ways that, you know, we're gonna use technology to sort of ideally free up a bit more time so you can work up on at the meta level here or at least as we always say, be able to step back for a little bit and just look at your organization from from the outside. If you were looking for ways that technology can help leaders do that, are there any sort of specific areas in which you think it would apply first? Or how would you go about coaching somebody on bringing more technology into to work at the meta level?

Derek: 19:10

Well, one of the ways to think about is that is to look at what do I do when I sit down with the leader and talk with them about the organization. And you talk about stepping back, I am often asking questions to try and pull them out of the day to day, pull them out of the month to month, ask them like, why are you here? Why do you do what you do? Why do your customers care about it? Why do your employees show up?

Derek: 19:39

And at some point we reframe the system in a way that they can describe it and understand it and we do that with questions and inquiry. I have a great time doing that. It's a little bit painstaking. Leaders don't have a lot of time and sitting down with someone like an Unconstrained Guide costs your time and some money. So there might be some ways and we're certainly thinking about this of helping leaders kind of go through that thought process independently to some point.

Derek: 20:17

And I would while there might be some tools to show them the patterns of what's in the system, I would want to start with a blank sheet and say, the system to me the way you think about it. And then we'll talk about how they think about it and see if there are other ways to think about it. And I've seen some great progress made when people are able to do that. I mean, I think it's a fundamental principle that you cannot see the system from inside the system. Right.

Derek: 20:48

And so the first thing would be to get outside the system. And then another thing would be, now what do you do in terms of applying all the things that, you know, sort of mankind has ever learned about organizations? What's the one or two things that you need to understand now to move forward? And so, you know, we created a wiki for Essential Dynamics. I had high hopes that that would be really helpful to people but I don't think it's all that accessible because you kinda have to kinda to formulate the questions yourself.

Derek: 21:26

Otherwise you're just reading a textbook. And so I think there's more technology needed for formulating the questions than finding the answers, especially these Yeah.

Dave: 21:38

And I I think it is that asking of the questions because the wiki, you know, online seminars, webinars, presentations, you know, technology can enable the learning, and it can sort of build that foundational educational mindset to it or or here's the framework how you wanna look at it. But what you sort of mentioned, the best ways to look at your meta system is one is to be able to see the system and some sort of way of of capturing what you're seeing and organizing that. But to get there, you have to be asking the right questions. But you also need a bit of that learning and that that that foundational education piece. And so the wiki brings us in, but you can write down a question and it doesn't necessarily mean people are gonna go down the right path with it.

Derek: 22:30

So so if I think about what real learning is, where that really happens with adults is you have to have a problem. You have to have a thing that you're trying to do and you don't know how to do it. And then and like you and you really want to know how to do it. And then when you can you might have to work to dig it out, which these days might be watching 20 YouTube videos. But then but then you get the answer of how to how to replace that part in your underneath your sink.

Derek: 23:11

When you need it and you get the information and then you and then you do it, That's real learning and that doesn't happen very often. You can think about like an entire university course that you might have taken where that didn't happen once. But there's a big textbook and you wrote some papers and some exams but sometimes learning happens. And if you're talking about the reality of running an organization that affects people, customers, all your employees, your suppliers and their employees and other stakeholders, this is actually serious stuff. And if you can learn the thing that you need at the time you need it, then you can make a fantastic change in the organization.

Derek: 24:01

But if you go to a course for four days and get nothing that you need in the moment, by the time you need it, and it might all be good stuff, you might not even remember where to look. So I think there's an opportunity for technology to serve up what we need when we need it. And that's one of things I've been thinking about.

Dave: 24:21

In the context you need it. I mean, that's that's a big twist because it's certainly available if you go search for it. And then that's gonna take away from your management attention because they're spend hours googling something trying to go find what you need. So what you need when you need it in the context of of your thing because we have always approached companies and said, you know, every problem is unique. Therefore, every solution has to be unique.

Dave: 24:46

And when you go find an article or a Wiki or whatever, it's that translation into my situation, my language, my problem. And I think that's where technology should be able to step in with all these AIs out there. They're it's doing so good at translating things into context.

Derek: 25:05

So so the information is available and now we can get pieces of information. And so if we can figure out what a particular leader needs at a particular time, delivering that tidbit isn't that's not the hard part anymore. Now, the other thing is to put it all together because if you think about this sort of overload experience you have, you can have it online but you can also have it physically if you walk into a bookstore and you go to the business section next to the self help section and you say, I think I would like to run my business better. And then you start looking at the titles and you're like, I don't know how to do any of that stuff. I need all of those things.

Derek: 25:51

I don't know where to start. And so we need some help in, you know, zeroing in what's the critical thing in your organization that you could change. And then put in front of people when they're hungry the thing that they need to be able to make that change.

Dave: 26:10

Because right now, what we have is we have Derek the guide who has probably read most of those books and you sit down with him and he's pulling the pieces that are most relevant for you and sort of bring it into the context that you want. So we just need technology to go that route of my situation, my Derek, help me where it goes.

Derek: 26:32

Yeah. I think I think there's a lot of potential for that and I wanna wanna talk about that in our next episode. I guess the other thing that I'll just put out there is you can get it close and not quite right. And so the challenge with this technology we're facing today, just like all other technology we've had in the past is its capacity to do the wrong thing at increasing levels of efficiency. And so when we're talking about, we need that one nugget of information at the time in context for the thing we need to do.

Derek: 27:06

Now what we have are these taps that we can't turn off. You said, well, you could Google it. Okay. If you Google it, you get a hit, you go to a website. If you go into the AI services that we have now, you can get a 20 page document with references.

Derek: 27:24

You could actually even get it to change the name and then you could send it to your board. And then they would be overwhelmed. And so there's just the potential for being overwhelmed with information which looks like it's on point. Like that's a real potential waste of time. Yes.

Derek: 27:45

And you can look like you're doing good work, but it could be a huge waste of time.

Dave: 27:49

And I think that sort of takes us all full circle here, if I can kind of wrap it up of that risk of technology helping leaders is that distraction or providing not what they need and just too much of it. So when we talked about it, what leaders need, especially when we're looking internally at at the operational or below the meta level, I think technology is a long way along in that process of providing clarity, speed, scalability, resiliency to all of these data things, and there there's ways to go. But that's certainly where it's an asset today. I think what you sort of touched on though is at the meta level, I don't think we're quite there yet. I don't think the tools are widely available that are going to help people reflect on that.

Dave: 28:43

I think that's where the opportunity lies.

Derek: 28:45

Absolutely. I appreciate you summarizing it that way, Dave. And I think maybe that'll help us get a title for either this episode or the next one. But let's reconvene and talk about you know, technology assistance at the meta level. Let's dive into that one at our next episode.

Derek: 29:07

So with that, thanks very much for that conversation, Dave, and thanks to Bryn Griffiths for recording this and helping us sound, if not intelligent, at least coherent. If not coherent, at least

Dave: 29:23

Clear. Clear.

Derek: 29:24

Clear, yeah. Thanks for that. And Dave and I are with Unconstrained and you can find us at Get Unconstrained and on the line and until next time, consider your quest.