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Explore the evolving world of design with Cameron Craig and Keith as they tackle the challenges of complex, monolithic products and the critical role of human-centered design. Each episode dives into topics like organizational change, the future of design in tech, and the emerging influence of agents on user experience. Perfect for designers, strategists, and leaders, this podcast offers insights on adaptability, communication, and the strategic thinking needed to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Cameron Craig (00:01.236)
Thank you.
Keith (00:02.35)
Cameron, what's going on?
Cameron Craig (00:05.354)
I don't know, man. Fewer horns and gunshots on this side of the country than over there.
Keith (00:13.452)
Yeah, it's been a, before we got on, we were just talking about the neighborhood and how things are changing and.
Cameron Craig (00:15.21)
.
Cameron Craig (00:20.106)
And you live in a nice hood. Like that's what you're talking about. It's like, you don't, you know, it's like, no, no.
Keith (00:23.118)
Yeah, I don't want to dox myself like on the internet, but I live in a good part of like and there was a shooting on the corner. And it was some dude who was well known to steal packages, Amazon packages of all off of doorsteps. And he got in a beef with somebody else and he got shot. And it's like I was sitting here one night her pop. I'm like, what the hell? I thought it was just some riff raff like a lot of fireworks because just whatever it's in New York. And nope.
Cameron Craig (00:39.242)
you
Keith (00:53.806)
Cause the guy got shot and you know, it got really quiet.
Cameron Craig (00:56.586)
Stand your ground for your Amazon packages, I guess. Like, you're on my porch, bro.
Keith (00:59.749)
Yeah
Someone really needed that cutting board, you know, what are gonna do? Man.
Cameron Craig (01:05.82)
Mm-hmm. You know, maybe with shoelaces and buttons, who knows, you know, like survival gear.
Keith (01:11.409)
God.
actually, it was funny too, because, dude, the cop was like, you know, you never really know. He's like, we went into this house a couple weeks ago and guns and Kevlar vest and he's, you know, it's a brownstone. I was like, why is like, yeah, I'm like, I didn't ask him if they were like, legally or legally illegally, like possessed or whatever. But I don't know. He was cool for a cop in New York. was, you I wouldn't want to be a New York cop right now. I think it'd be
Cameron Craig (01:14.366)
Don't take my shoelaces.
Cameron Craig (01:39.066)
No, that's a tough job. It's a really tough job.
Keith (01:42.634)
Yeah, it's getting crazier with
not the social cohesion, just like the social norms are kind of breaking down a little bit. People, I mean, you can feel the inflation with like food and stuff. There's more like bullshit petty crime kind of going on. People are driving both ways. Dude, there was an ambulance that went almost about to go on the bridge from a flat bush. He went instead of going like the right side where it's like the direction, he went the other side against traffic, stopped.
did a three point turn, came out and then looped around like he caught himself. He's like, should I go on the wrong side of the bridge? I don't know how he so I'm like, I feel like people's brains got like cooked a little bit or something or I don't know what's going on. So yeah, so yeah, this is so yeah, something's up. So something doesn't smell right. And it's not just new. And even that is New York is kind of like a funky smell. It's like, it's gotten funkier.
Cameron Craig (02:23.274)
jeez.
Cameron Craig (02:31.37)
Something's up. mean, something's definitely up. So this is the something's up episode.
Keith (02:47.574)
recently. I don't know if it's like an intuition kind of thing that's taken off, but, but yeah, so.
Cameron Craig (02:51.338)
Yeah. So, mean, we've been talking about this for a while. Like we, wanted to, so, uh, it's almost like the upfront, some scenes from this might not be applicable or appropriate for certain viewers. If you were discretion advised, like this is not that, but this is, we're going to be upfront. If you want to hear about business or design thinking or.
Keith (03:09.038)
hahaha
Cameron Craig (03:20.974)
systems thinking that is applied to business necessarily this particular episode may may not necessarily be for you but we do think there's applicable tie-ins to this and we do think that this is not doom and gloom this is prepare yourself because things are getting weird as we were just saying but there are reasons to be hopeful
Keith (03:47.181)
Yeah, I, they're all the things we were podcasting about before prior, they kind of grow from a little bit of this kind of kernel of thinking. I mean, you and I both kind of see systems everywhere and just how everything kind of connects. And when you do like customer experience, user experiences, I'm thinking you're kind of looking at everything. It's not just like the design or kind of how something functions, but it's
do you make sustainable and then with just change accelerating right now? It's how do you kind of like have an additive impact, you know, on yourself on your family where it's like, you you have like compounding interest in a bank account, how do you have compounding effect in your decisions in your actions and your relationships in your job? And I think that's
People are seeing that the youngins are kind of like wanting that because they see the potential. And I think a lot of other people don't understand or they haven't been able to put their finger on. That's the thing. I think they were kind of promised that isn't really returning anymore. So it's like, that's kind what we're getting into right now. And you're to get a little bit more of how we see the world in a unique way from this episode.
Cameron Craig (04:56.639)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (05:04.744)
I mean, I think it's more than just something's up, like, you know, to your point. If you are looking at the different patterns of things that are going on, you know, macro to micro, right? Like everybody's got their macro view of the world, wherever they sit, whatever they do. And then everybody has their micro pattern of the world and their micro view of the world.
You bring those two things together and you start to see kind of the bigger picture as it's developing. You see how the macro world around you is impacting the job that you're in, the thing that you're doing, your family, like the dynamics between you and other human beings. And, you know, we've been talking about this for the last six months as we've been doing this podcast. And this is one of the things that, you know, we felt like we wanted to bring in at some point and talk about just this like.
kind of like a WTF moment for human beings. so, you know, it is, and I mean, and maybe I'll throw out a little bit of, of prompts for us to kind of parse through it. Right. So when we're talking about this, we're talking about the global political environment, the sort of,
Keith (06:00.557)
It's unprecedented.
Keith (06:07.918)
All right.
Cameron Craig (06:17.962)
the switches in media, the switches in technology, specifically AI. We've talked about these things and how it impacts business, but it's impacting the world around us, positively and negatively. This is not to cast fear or loathing against any of these things. It's more about awareness and a prompt for anybody that chooses to listen to this to think through these things. You have to come to your own conclusion.
around what you think is happening in the macro environment and take that forward into your micro environment, hopefully to make things better. Right? Like that's this entire series of podcasts has been about that. like, let's put perspective out there. Parse through it. And then hopefully you take that forward to make your job, your position, your career, your project better. and you know, this is, this is more of the same. So I think.
you and I keep coming back to these societal impacts of these factors, right? Like how does the media equation, if you will, factor into it? How does AI overlaid into that media equation and that, you know, it's disrupting communication, it's disrupting the media itself. I think the other thing that you and I have talked about is
the lack of a better term, America's, military industrial complex, you know, being a flex at different times in our history to make change happen. And, and, you know, are we being displaced by somebody else who's doing the exact same thing, or are we in this like proxy war, multiple proxy wars on multiple fronts for, for, you know, supremacy of somebody's military industrial complex, whether it's ours or somebody else's, I don't know. mean,
Keith (08:04.706)
multiple.
Keith (08:15.116)
And the way war is being waged has changed from bombs and bullets to bits because it's more efficient. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot.
Cameron Craig (08:20.53)
It's cheaper.
Keith (08:26.422)
Okay, so we...
I think you and I see things or have a really good, one of our special skill sets is the ability to go from macro to micro and not just like macro economic or macro political, but seeing big picture to understanding, moving little details, little levers, how that's going to impact bigger details downrange. And this is kind of the systems thinking brain. You know, we're still figuring out if you can teach this or not. I think this is going to be a huge skill for people.
in the future, just to be able to understand as these systems deteriorate, how to like, not just survive, but like leverage and thrive on the kind of like aftermath and the change. And that's, that gets into like another idea, which was, you know, what we affectionately talk about is like the monolith. What was like an innovation in the past becomes like a legacy system over time. So like a lot of.
You know, your experience, both of us at Macy's, but more so like the stuff that you've been working on, if you old IBM, you know, mainframe machines, which there, there were an innovation because it was a computer that wasn't going to, wasn't going to stop computing. If it like the power got pulled out, was fault tolerant computing and it got tied to your finances or your econometrics so that it's basically your inventory and your balance sheet, which is tied to debt and all this other stuff, which gets like complicated, but
because it was so stable, you couldn't change or update it very easily. And all these that enabled all these, you know, companies and new industries like airlines and shipping and retail to kind of come online. And so that idea of being able to see patterns at like a very high altitude, almost into space, literally in space to like the ground level, almost like the, you know, the atomic level, and then seeing kind of not just size, but like past, present, future.
Keith (10:25.658)
And how something that was a legacy, whether it somebody who's been in a job for 30 years, they wouldn't want to change. And that's kind of like a cultural thing that would be like an impediment versus the way it's always been done this way. you know, working in technology and design, you know, we, those are two things we do really well. And I think it just kind of like natural, it's kind of like breathing, right? And that that's helped us no matter what we do, right? Whether it's like managing or immigration or whatever. And
Cameron Craig (10:48.201)
Yeah.
Keith (10:54.67)
we've passed an inflection point now in society where there's no turning back. for me, I don't know, you can speak to yourself about this, but I look at astrology as like a giant clock. And if the planets and the orbital mechanics are hyper regular, then they're like just different hour hands on a bigger clock. And what you can do is you can look at the past where planets were relative to today.
And you can say what happened then what happened today. And that for me is like pulling a layer cake of context. And it doesn't always mean. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (11:31.274)
I mean, I think if we're all made out of the same atomic stuff and the same atomic stuff is everywhere, Like that plays into it.
Keith (11:38.988)
Yeah, yeah, I mean the sun has an impact. I do too. It's I don't know how to this is so Cam and I are well, how do I say this?
Cameron Craig (11:51.956)
You just said it. You just said it.
Keith (11:54.063)
We are wondering what our own place in this world is now as humans, as technologists, as business people, as creatives, everyone's freaked out about AI and like, it going to take my job? And then the ones you train in the AI, they're freaking dangerous because if they understand how to leverage the tech,
they can screw the company or they can become so that you can become so dependent as a key man risk that if they leave you're screwed and then they're going to go lead they're going to work just hard enough to find the next thing and then probably go build their own thing, which the real good designers and the good engineers are doing right now. And because unless they're not entrepreneurial, but probably watching this, probably are entrepreneurial. But
I didn't want to pull in that that much yet because I don't know some people are like, it's astrology, it's bullshit. It's like, you know, whatever. It's it's fine. You don't have to believe it. It doesn't make a difference. But when you look at the patterns, like what what we're going through right now is there are many layers of cycles. The first one with like when you have Saturn and Neptune coming together, it's like structure and dissolving of structures are like the media. It rules the media. Neptune rules the media.
When those two come together in like a synodic cycle when it starts, it hasn't happened since like 3441 BC. So it's like a 6400, 6500 year cycle, which pushes the limits of like the Gregorian calendar, recorded history. Like we're going to come to grips with like a lot of new information about where do we come from? What are we doing here? Where we're ever on Mars, we know how many iterations of the matrix.
Have we have we gone through it look at this whole 3i atlas thing in the sky that no one knew the nose like is it a comment is it a you know who knows what it is like it's not about like aliens and become like the ancient aliens guy whatever which whatever kind of funny but you can look at these cycles so there's a big there's a big like zeitgeist a big societal shift about like what the hell's going on that it's like it's destabilizing and re-materializing Saturn Neptune a new physical body Aries of like
Keith (14:02.254)
we are and what we're doing as like humans. What does it mean to be human? That is a huge, huge thing everyone's thinking right now. And you also have Pluto, which takes 250 years to come around in Aquarius. And the last time that happened, where we're at right now, was the birth of United States and the French Revolution. So obviously, you can feel that vibe going around. We had the Protestant Reformation. That was Saturn, Pluto and Capricorn. That was COVID.
Cameron Craig (14:26.026)
Sure.
Cameron Craig (14:31.21)
Mm.
Keith (14:31.246)
That led to the 30 years war. was an acceleration of media through the printing press, but today it's AI. So instead of mass producing media, it's mass producing cognition and the ability to have the cognition learn on itself and grow in a whole new way. And every major war transit the U S has gone through is happening all at the same time, like right now. And that's Uranus and Gemini and that Uranus and Gemini that 84 year cycle. That's, that's the fourth turning.
It's every 20 that that's what that basically comes from. And that's your is a revolution insight. So all these things are happening. And I like these things because it helps me pull signal from noise and kind of make sense contextually on what's going on. And we talk about this in the background.
Cameron Craig (15:12.65)
So Keith, can you break it down further? Because I think one of the things that you did for me was to show me the charting, right? And back to the macro micro. What Keith was just talking about is the macro, right? This is what's happening in the overall universe that has an effect on the planet, on humans, and humans organized into some sort of societal construct. But like,
Keith (15:27.181)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (15:41.646)
One of the things that you did for me that helped me kind of ground some of this is like, went micro when I'm like, I'm asking you about my son. Like this is what's happening. And you were like, okay, hang on. Like I need to know these data points. And then based on that, I can identify like where your son fits into this timeline and the position of where he is in the universe at the point of his origin. And based on that, you were like, Hey, here's what's happening. Micro.
He's the dot here, you know, on, the planet in the universe. So I'm not asking you to go down micro like on a human being, but like, can you, can you go back and maybe explain.
exactly what you're talking about in terms of the positioning of the planets. Because in some ways, like the way I see it, and I could totally be wrong, and please correct me with anything that I don't have right. Like, the way that I've seen it is all of this structure of the universe is constantly moving and shifting, but it moves in a organized fashion in a cycle, like a clock.
Keith (16:36.278)
Yeah.
Keith (16:52.674)
Yep. 100%.
Cameron Craig (16:53.288)
And these things are happening like, you know, in these micro movements over thousands, if not millions of years, but they, they're not like, it's not doing necessarily like this. It's kind of doing it's, it's following a pattern, right? And so where we sit compared to the other things around us is going to be the exact placement of all of these things at some previous period of time.
Is what the charting actually shows like, okay, at this point in human history, like the, the alignment of all of these things looks like this. And now today the alignment of all of these things looks like this. Cause I think a lot of people don't get that, that it's about very tangible scientific things. It's it's timing, positioning the relationship between things in that position over time.
Keith (17:32.534)
Yeah, so let's do.
Keith (17:48.813)
Yeah. So basically when somebody asks about like position, to pull a chart, you need birthday, time and location, right? And that's because on the Eastern horizon, you basically see how the kind of chart breaks down. Now, each of these planets, they move slower or faster. So this guy is like, Uranus, right? So if you look at like days, he's about to go retrograde. So it's moving slower.
in Taurus relative to say the moon is like zipping around here right so the closer the planets are to the sun uh the faster they move around you know the faster the cycle is basically so there's a bunch that are happening like these two guys like these are these are basically planets these are signs so this is Saturn this is Neptune and this is Aries this is like this is actually when it's about to come together is actually in February
So is a big date. Like these two guys coming together here in this sign hasn't happened for like 6,500 years. So this is kind of like the bigger overarching, like it's probably going to be questioning a lot of people with like religion and what kind of what they believed is religion, but it's going to start new religions with like AI cults and things and just weird, crazy new belief systems. So this is kind of like at the highest level, what's happening.
Cameron Craig (18:52.498)
Yeah.
Keith (19:12.494)
So if it's Saturn giving structure to kind of like Neptune, some belief, some, some vision Aries is the start of the zodiac. That's why lunar new year starts when the new moon, I think it's the first new moon, but Aries is basically like the start of it's, it's the very first sign. That's why it starts in like March or whatever. I think it was March. I have to double check. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Perfect. the other big one is this guy down here, Pluto.
Cameron Craig (19:31.25)
It's March. I'm in Aries.
Cameron Craig (19:36.541)
Ahem.
Keith (19:40.3)
And he, you know, and if you look at like years.
Keith (19:46.895)
Like it's still, it jumps a lot 26 and then it's 25. I mean, it's, it moves a lot slower. And the last time Pluto was an Aquarius was it was the birth of the country. So everything that makes the United States what it is, uh, you know, a strong military, strong rule of law, constitution, bill of rights. That's all getting like renegotiated right now. That's why.
Cameron Craig (19:56.734)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (20:16.684)
everyone's like they wanted to rip and replace during COVID when they defund stuff that was Saturn, Pluto. Hang on, let's go to.
Keith (20:31.116)
Right? like if Saturn, if, if Capricorn was like the monolith, the old structure, Pluto is destroying the structure of the old because Pluto is about death and rebirth. It's about like destroying. It's a transformational thing. The old way is gone. So all these cycles are coming together. Like having one of these is massive, but having multiple cycles come together at the same time is like unheard of.
That's kind of what's going on right now. mean, this is like a much larger, mean, I haven't thought through like how to actually like visualize how to show this, but you're right. There are cycles that are all happening right now and it makes a lot of sense. like AI taking over, like we're seeing technologies that are going to be like human whores beyond our comprehension kind of thing. That's Pluto and Aquarius.
Cameron Craig (21:10.974)
Mm.
Keith (21:29.55)
the death and rebirth of what humanity is going to be like Aquarius, but Aquarius is very technological and almost like alien and foreign. And when that trines, when it has like a, I think it's like a 60 or 120 degree angle to Uranus and Gemini, Uranus and Gemini was the last World War II transit. It happened during the civil war. It happened during the American Revolution. That's the fourth turning route. So unless you come together, you're having this technological revolution that's going to enable
Cameron Craig (21:53.162)
Mm.
Keith (21:58.531)
the transformation for better or worse of like the human populace. So you're probably going to see things like being able to grow, you know, new limbs or growing body parts kind of thing like tissue engineering is going to take off. You're also going to see bioterrorism where someone's going to drop a bomb, but it's going to be like some airborne thing that's going to take out a populace based on their genetics. Like that is the level of kind of horror and craziness that you can see or
Cameron Craig (22:20.97)
in
Keith (22:25.388)
If we have this, you know, as we have this demographic collapse right now globally, guess what? You don't have to have a kid, you know, in the womb anymore. You can have 10 kids at once in incubators, like demolition man style. And that's, that could potentially happen and, you know, re we kickstart the population. So like those kinds of things are happening. So when I see, you know, the systems part, it's like, how do you actually make this happen? That comes from like the tech design part. But then I also think about the astrology of like, okay,
what is kind of happening on a broader level right now. It's kind of like the undercurrents, know, pushing or pulling kind of society.
Cameron Craig (23:03.09)
Yeah. And I mean, I think maybe the other thing to say in there as well is this is another way of analyzing and making sense out of what feels at times like a random trend of events. Cause I will say we tend to see things even outside of,
the astrological in terms of trends, but the trends at times feel random. And again, what you just laid out is it's not really random, right? Like if you can start to look at the bigger picture and put time to spatial, like where, where we are, our place in space, both as people on the planet, it's not that random.
Keith (23:52.333)
Yeah, it and I don't think it's so predestined though either. It's almost like a weather report, right? So it's like
Cameron Craig (23:56.916)
True, true. It's like it could go this way, right?
Keith (24:02.38)
Or it gets snowing outside. Do you want to go and shovel or do you want to like hang out and stay warm? It's like, okay, fine. But if you stay inside all day, you might miss an opportunity to do something else. So it's almost like, yeah, data, it's like waves of change. And it's like, you can learn to surf to go do that. But if you want to, you know, you're not going to go and surf, you know, Nazaré in Portugal where there's like 80 foot waves that will kill you. Cause it's just too damn big. It's just, too much to take on.
Cameron Craig (24:12.764)
It's data.
Cameron Craig (24:32.458)
So one last thing, again, kind of bringing my son back in here, because I was asking you about certain change that's going on.
Keith (24:40.076)
Yeah, I didn't want to get into his because I don't want to like Doc's your son or like, but yeah.
Cameron Craig (24:43.652)
No, no, no, no. Yeah. But like, I'll keep it high level too. It's like, yeah, like everything you said, this is one of those like, everything, everything Keith said, like, he's a mystic. He knew what was going on. It's like, you know, and, and like the thing you weren't like,
Keith (24:47.576)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (25:05.756)
There were some things that you're like, look, the, negativity is X, the positivity is Y, the positivity will like, you know, increase over this timeline, right? And the negativity will decrease after this. Like broad. But you know, as the month, the month, the two months now have worn on a lot of like what you said was like absolutely.
Correct. It was like this, this storm kind of came in and then it kind of dissipated and all of a sudden it's like this. It's like the light bulbs are going off. It's like, I finally get this and, and the change in the, like, I finally get this and now here are all these things that I can do. Like, and I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about my son. Here are all the things that I can do with this new knowledge was like spot on.
Keith (25:38.541)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (26:03.848)
You know, and it was like, like struggle, struggle, struggle. And then all of a sudden he's like, Hey, I just need you to know, like, you're to get my report card. And I'm like getting straight A's and I'm like, what? It's like, how did this happen? He's like, I don't know. I just kind of figured out a few things and then like it unlocked all these other things. And once that unlock happened, I, you know, it was, he's like, it was funny because you kind of said it's like.
Keith (26:04.686)
Cool.
Keith (26:18.616)
That's awesome.
Cameron Craig (26:33.01)
It's a download, a downloads going to happen. And then at some point that download becomes like an application, right? Like it's not just one thing. It's like apply here, apply here, apply here.
Keith (26:36.333)
Yep.
Neptune.
Keith (26:43.682)
You gotta reboot the system. had a hard reboot and he was like, I know what the what is going on. It's too much. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (26:49.192)
Yeah. I mean, he's not, you know, it's not all like roses and everything's amazing, but like on, on a few of the areas that, know, were really struggle filled. He's just like, I totally get it. And I was like, Hmm. Fascinating.
Keith (26:55.991)
It's life.
Keith (27:07.406)
So, so, so there are like big, the planets are moving and doing their thing and there's long wave cycles. And then as you're growing up from like, you know, young, a kid to a young adult, to like, you know, an old adult, an old person, there's like a, um, like a score or like a natural progression that you go through. So like when you're 18, you have like what's called your nodal return. It's when the nodes of the moon come back to where they started. like every 18 years. And then when you're 36.
So have your second nodal return, you feel like you're 18 again, but you have 18 years experience. So it's kind of like there's echoes of like what was happening back then, but it's not something totally new, but you're into adulthood. then, you know, when you're like 27 to like 33, it's like the adulting, it's the quarter life crisis, that's the saddened return. So you kind of like have an issue at 27, you make your decisions by 30, and then you see the outcome at 33.
Cameron Craig (27:52.138)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (28:00.232)
Yeah.
Keith (28:06.54)
And wherever your Saturn is in your chart, that kind of tells you kind of where and kind of how things can kind of like come together. You know, and then, you know, I was just looking at Alex's chart and then you have angles where there's kind of like, you know, a vertical and a horizontal axis, which kind of like when planets hit those pieces, hit those, hit those angles, significant things can happen, like effects you can feel like they're effects that you can kind of like sense.
And that's what I was looking at. yeah, you know, again, to me, it's like it's
If you have all this noise and you don't know what to do and you feel like something and it's increasingly getting easier for, you know, a zero marginal cost monolith, like the cost of copies are free. So it's easier for less people to kind of control you through media, you know, through whatever technology. Then resonance is the weapon to liberate yourself from the monolith. And then the resonance meaning like, what is like a reflection of your own true nature as a human, like you.
you as you know, Cam, me as Keith, you know, your son, like not not you have to do this thing and act this way and eat this food. Like here's the ideology. It's like, no, no, no, no, that's not. We tried that during COVID. And that blew up because that that was just like, it was a program they tried to like, force download to is they know what it was like, like a prompt injection into like the subconscious of humanity, like faking something rather than showing somebody the light.
on a lighthouse so they find their way back to their own shore of their own true nature. That's what I see all this for. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (29:45.0)
Which I'm kind of, yeah. I mean, it's funny you bring that up because I'm kind of wondering about that as well. It's like, you know, we're like coming into five years on from the, you know, I mean, I'd obviously kept going, but like from the worst possible point of COVID, like people are isolated, they're separate, they're learning to operate in.
Keith (30:06.082)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (30:12.938)
an environment and in a society that is now absolutely completely severed from its previous self, right? And my hypothesis is that we've not actually recovered from that. Like we wanna say that it's all okay. We wanna say that, you know, we've moved on.
Keith (30:22.51)
100%, yeah.
Keith (30:30.635)
Now
Cameron Craig (30:37.556)
But we haven't like we've fundamentally changed the fabric of how our society works. We fundamentally changed the fabric of how we relate to one another or don't relate to one another. mean, my work, like to bring work into it just a little bit, but, directly related to this, my work world has never gone back to what it was before. Like at my level and what I'm doing, I'm still incredibly isolated.
Keith (30:58.076)
yeah.
Cameron Craig (31:07.37)
And I'm wondering if from a leadership standpoint, when we talk about leadership, and I'm not just talking about corporate leadership, but I am wondering if there is a separation of our humanity in some way from our decision-making, because we're just like, you and I are sitting here across the country from one another. We sit in front of a screen. We interact with each other. You and I have a
Keith (31:28.44)
Yeah.
Keith (31:34.68)
This could be AI, we don't even know.
Cameron Craig (31:37.332)
Who knows? Hopefully not. we have this preexisting relationship that we've had to maintain with a technological like barrier between us and, somehow we've made that okay in a number of ways, right? Like, you know, to our benefit, but also maybe to our detriment. because it's awesome that I can, I can push a button and see you, right? Like it's awesome that I can do that and, and you and I can interact.
Keith (31:48.899)
Yeah.
Keith (31:54.806)
normalized.
Keith (32:03.949)
Yeah.
It's amazing.
Cameron Craig (32:07.112)
with each other in our houses 3000 miles away. Like that's amazing. But when you look at that in a day in and day out basis and the things that like, I'll use me as an example, the things that I am now absolutely tolerant of that I was completely not able to cope with previously, loneliness, doing things by myself.
Spending me before I got on the call with you. I was down in my basement for over an hour, you know, building a 3d printer. mean like In a million years, I would have never been Subterranean on a saturday afternoon when the sun's out, you know building technology i'd be like who's
Keith (32:33.805)
Yeah.
Keith (32:49.646)
Pluto, an Aquarius, subterranean Pluto, technology Aquarius, as I'm saying, there's all this shit, like the patterns, yeah. By yourself, isolated, Pluto, yeah.
Cameron Craig (32:55.743)
That's what, yeah, totally, totally. And so these are the things that I'm kind of like, are we in this space now where we actually have to figure out how to reconnect and what is the next step? What do we need at this point, right? And I won't get into my day yesterday quite yet, because I think I want to save that until we're talking about like,
What does rebuilding look like?
I'm really wondering about that. If the norms of what we valued both in terms of like a profession or a skillset or an expertise, what we value in our relationships with one another and how we fit into a societal construct or corporate organizational construct. Like I'm starting to wonder like whether or not that, that reboot is about to happen.
You know, again, you take a, you can take a pessimistic view of that. Like, Hey, I was going to wipe out, you know, the workforce and like, you know, say, shake hands with the person next to you and say goodbye. Cause like half of you are going to be here. Like I, I don't know. Right. But I have to believe that's not the end state. I really have to believe that that's not the end state.
Keith (34:22.068)
No, so I didn't give it enough thought to think about like all these leadership teams are primarily like probably remote and on zoom all day, not just email and calls, but like the disembodied, like the continuous disembodiment of that is it makes a huge difference on how you operate.
Cameron Craig (34:35.441)
I mean...
I mean, I'm imagining that, know, it's like, if, I don't see cam on a zoom anymore, it's like, it's a loss, but how much of a loss is it? Right.
Keith (34:52.908)
I I guess it's like they did calls and...
Cameron Craig (34:55.166)
He's just one less box on the screen, you know?
Keith (34:58.604)
And I mean, at some point, is it just going to be like your AI avatar that's going to like, speak? Yeah, I mean, but that that's coming too though. it's the, with the Protestant Reformation, that was the Saturn, Pluto, and Capricorn. So COVID was like the major dislocation event. And just to kind of like, quantify this, if you think about the earth,
Cameron Craig (35:02.186)
I told you about that too.
Keith (35:26.88)
is four and half or so billion years old somewhere around there. And it's like eight or nine billion people on the planet. COVID costs for the lockdown of a year, it was two Earth lifetimes spent in one year across all of humanity. When you think about like one person one year, eight billion people, that's two X the life of that, that's a massive like you can't get your time back. So you think about like the collective investment that got synced up.
That to me is like, extraordinary. And we haven't gotten over that. Like, dude, I work with a zoomer. Right now. She's really sharp. You know, and I was telling her she wanted to like negotiate and like talk to my boss about like, getting a raise. And I'm like, don't talk to her today. She's like, I'm like, listen, number one, I'm like, I'm telling you how she processes information. She's a lawyer, you got to bring the facts of the matter. And you can, you know, show them this way. And she's gonna listen.
You can't be emotional about this. She's like, Oh, and like, and number two, wait till Tuesday, I'm like Jupiter Venus conjunct together. I'm like, you're gonna make the better time to ask for a raise. She's like, Really? I'm like, trust me. And then she did it. She got it. She was great. And she was like, Huh, maybe this stuff like works. And you know, but she's
Cameron Craig (36:34.078)
Mm.
Keith (36:44.526)
she's in that great she's in the cohort that went to college through zoom like they had like real social distancing and college at least for me like I hated high school like I was like dude get me out of this this is like prison and when I went to art school I'm like this is amazing all these cool students into weird stuff and to like I'm like freedom you know it was like Fridays were off so you could like do projects or go out you know what it was great so they like lost that and like at that age
Cameron Craig (36:49.944)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron Craig (36:58.334)
Yeah, Yep, same.
Keith (37:13.57)
You know, you're an adult in a sense, but you're still like developing as like a human and as like an individual and like that, that there's spirits got kind of like reprogrammed, reconfigured in a way. And I think there's going to be like, we are going into a weird spot right now, through this winter up until like, I don't know, February, March, April of next year. And I think
a lot of what you've been talking about, it's going to happen. mean, dude, think about all these zombie companies that were kept alive as a result of like 0 % interest rates for like 20 years almost or 15 years. mean, credit to Jeff Bezos reinvesting the profit of the company back in like, they made a lot of baller decisions back in the day to like blow the company out, like grow it in a way, you know, not not like just juicing the EPS, but actually putting it back.
Cameron Craig (37:50.408)
Yeah. Yep.
Keith (38:07.436)
into like productive use of the capital, which you talk to anybody who makes real money. They're like, dude, the first few million are really fucking hard. And then after that, you understand like how to deploy capital. And that's the biggest part is how do you actually get a return on a capital like break, return on capital invested relative to your whack your your weighted average cost of capital your debt. And, you know, we it's it's a weird time. But I think what you're saying is like,
spot on, especially we're talking about with like seeing just that you're talking about Portland, having with your boss being there and then having one news channel showing it like be they the apocalypse, the other being like, yeah, it's cool. And then your boss been like, what's going on? Like, no one's getting beat up or then it's blowing up. Yeah, like, and, know, and those are their own monoliths as themselves, because you had media consolidate. It's like, Ben Thompson was complaining the guy who runs strategic and
Cameron Craig (38:50.887)
Nothing's there. Yeah.
Keith (39:03.468)
used to do exponent. He's like, he's like, no one's gonna make you an anti monopolist faster than trying to buy ticket on ticketmaster. Because it sucks. They have all these charges. Yeah. And it's like, you know, and this is what the people who are feeding our politicians are all monopolists, Peter Thiel, you know, and for better or worse, like, you know, no judgment, because like, it's, to me, the politicians, it's two sides of the same coin.
Cameron Craig (39:10.66)
Mm-hmm. It's horrible. Yeah.
Keith (39:30.338)
Because you know, nothing galvanizes a group like a common enemy. And if you can point to something and label it, it's easier to keep you fighting each other rather than fighting the actual system. But at some point, the system's going to like, you can start seeing the system breaking down right now. And it's, but it's not just here. It's everywhere. It's not just like leave the U S do it. Dude. China has their own issues. Brazil has their own issues. The middle East, like everybody's got something they're going to deal with. Like we're all.
re-synced up at some point right now.
Cameron Craig (40:01.204)
Well, I think that's one of the things too that like it's hard sometimes, but it's also one of the things that that provides again. And I think, you know, one of the things that we were looking for is thematics in this particular episode in this discussion, stability and stasis is what most systems are moving towards. Right. And, and I don't, and when I talk stasis, I'm not talking about like calcified stasis, but like
Like systems don't inherently move to a place where they implode. They do at some points, right? If something is so catastrophically wrong with an input or an output in a system. the general steady state, yeah, is homostasis. That's absolutely right. And so one of the things I think that I like,
Keith (40:41.709)
Yeah.
Keith (40:46.04)
homeostasis.
Cameron Craig (40:56.144)
you know, I've read the classics Keith, as I'm sure you have as well. And you know, the things that really drive me nuts is, is fucking doublespeak, right? And like, I'm seeing that in our politics, I'm seeing that it's like, man, have these people not read Orwell? Have they not read Orwell? Right? It's like, I'm telling you accent, like, I Peter Thiel is a great example. Like, anybody that tells you that, you know, the
Keith (41:22.764)
the Antichrist.
Cameron Craig (41:23.562)
The feature of AI is like, you know, in anybody that's anti AI is is bringing about the the Antichrist. It's like, are you kidding me? Have you not read the Bible, my man? Like everything is about like systems that number you and like what's AI going to do? mean, it's like, bro.
Keith (41:40.079)
It's going to become so I mean, so so so thick. mean, and it's funny that he's like, such an ardent proponent of AI, and he's giving a whole lecture on how he's not the Antichrist, but then he's like, close, like, make it fucking public, then don't, you know, close it off. And like, I don't know, it's dude 100%. And but I think they also know that where that where we are on the cycle,
Cameron Craig (42:01.64)
It's doublespeak.
Keith (42:08.93)
that people either don't, they don't care. I think there's like a certain amount of time that if you say the same thing to a person, they kind of basically get reprogrammed and you could show them irrefutable facts and they still wouldn't change their mind. I think that's what happened with COVID that it doesn't matter. And this is what Trump normalized when he came to came to terms with his first presidential term. He was so ratchet that I'm like, dude, the thing he's going to normalize for the next like reaction of him is going to be like crazier.
And the second or third or fourth iteration is going to be like, dude, it's going to be like.
Machiavellian Che Guevara at this point. People are going to think it's a savior, but it's going to be terrible. But it's going to be a bunch.
Cameron Craig (42:49.194)
Well, that's the thing that that's the thing that I go to, right? Like, and where we come in, being a systems thinker in these moments is hard. It really is because you're like, am I crazy? mean, and you and I like spend, we spend a lot. Yeah, totally.
Keith (43:09.762)
Dude, it's idiocracy. You're like, what the F is going on? It's like, you kidding me putting Gatorade on the fucking lawn? Like what?
Keith (43:19.978)
It worked for the Usain
Cameron Craig (43:22.634)
By the way, I'm sitting on a toilet right now.
Keith (43:25.506)
That's efficient.
Cameron Craig (43:30.58)
forgot about that movie, but that movie's brilliant. Yeah, like, it's really hard being a systems thinker in these moments, you know, and, but at the same time, it's like, I honestly think that, you know, when the revolution comes, my friend, the systems thinkers are going to be leading the next the next incarnation of this, because I think what's actually happening is
Keith (43:30.762)
Yeah.
Keith (43:39.596)
You're gonna feel crazy.
Cameron Craig (43:58.332)
all the things that you're talking about. like the, you know, maybe not the most macro, but the like geopolitical macro is everybody's found the hack. And the hack is you use the people who are the non-systems thinker and you organize them into your own crazy system, right? Like the brilliance of the strat, that particular strategy is brilliant, right? And I will say it's like you like,
Hillary Clinton's basket full of deplorables description, while maybe appropriate in her world, what, if you look at the pro use case of that, it was like, I'm gonna organize everybody's fears, and I'm gonna appeal to everybody's fears. And then I'm going to tell you that I'm the solution to your fears. And your fears are so like, emotionally driving that you are going to make bad decisions.
because it's better to make a bad decision when you are moving in fear than it is to like actually be like, no, I totally don't believe this, right? And it's funny because like you pitch these things to people and it's like, hang on, I'm gonna challenge your thinking there. And you start to move them outside of their silo and they're like, nope, I can't do that, I can't do that, you know? And it's like.
Keith (45:04.748)
Yeah, dude.
Keith (45:14.99)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (45:18.326)
And then you're like, you go to like the furthest reaches of the other silos that are still aligned into this platform. And you're sort of like, well, what about that? It's like, no, of course I don't agree with that. That's crazy. And you're just like, okay. It's like, let's just sit here in silence for a minute, right?
Keith (45:38.499)
Dude, it's like the adage of you can't convince someone to understand something that their job tells them they can't understand, or it's against their job description, like with management. It's like, and this is the dude, teach you it. God. But that, that mindset, that mental model or lack of adaptation in mental model is what accelerates the destruction of the monolith.
Cameron Craig (45:51.858)
I mean, every day in corporate is this. Every day.
Keith (46:06.318)
because you just double down on the same stupidity. You just keep adding more Gatorade. You actually use water. It's just like, it just breaks down. That's happening everywhere.
Cameron Craig (46:14.708)
But as we know, it is, you're right, it is. And I mean, maybe that's one of the problems is on a global scale, maybe that's the difference, right? Like think these things have happened in our history in pockets and there's a bunch of other maybe like-minded or aligned perspective around these pockets of crazy. And it's like, okay, wait a minute. Like, can we really?
Keith (46:18.552)
Like all over the place.
Cameron Craig (46:41.022)
decide the value of a human being based on their religion or their ethnicity. No, we cannot. Okay, let's stop that. But you know, maybe the fear has been to your point ratcheted up so high that, you know, it's starting to spread and it's spreading everywhere.
Keith (46:58.862)
survival. We're, we're genetically programmed to survive. So it's like, it's like the, teach you the amygdala hijack in social engineering school, if you like learn about how influence ops really work. And, know, someone bumps into you you're like, ah, you're angry, and then they pick your pocket in the process, because they're controlling your emotional response, and they can guide you where they want to go. And then whatever it's like, which, which isn't the way we
Cameron Craig (47:21.93)
Yeah.
Keith (47:26.346)
any kind of influence operation or kind of like anything we did was always like, how do you leave people better than they found you? And that was that that kind of made it more hard because it was one, how do get them to see outside of their normal pre-programmed value system? And then number two, how do you architect like double or triple wins where it's like the customer, the business, the employee, like everybody benefits in some way with the employee. It's like they don't want to do jobs they hate doing it. They know they're going to get outsourced in a year. It's like
Cameron Craig (47:33.332)
Yes.
Keith (47:54.959)
they have lives and kids and you know, because especially as like a man, if you have no purpose, like you go crazy. It's like, yeah, what am gonna do with myself, you know? So that's, that's why I think we're also what we did was effective, but what makes it so hard to reproduce, because I think a lot of other people, it's like, they're not going to want to suspend their ego to see the opportunity to like, understand information is opportunity as a commodity that you can intentionally seed.
Cameron Craig (48:03.529)
Yeah.
Keith (48:23.842)
And other it's like open source. It's like, give something away for free intentionally, and you erode the value in some way you can move. It's the opposite of trying to like do something like nefarious or like theft. It's, it's, it's the inverse of that. You know,
Cameron Craig (48:35.794)
Yeah. Well, I mean, and again, you know, like we were always striving for do no harm. think in those operations, we didn't do harm, but you know, I can't say that that's not always the case. Like I think if you, if you believe that you're in any kind of situation that is systems related and you think no one is going to get harmed, I think you're, fooling yourself. Right. And it is up to you to be.
Keith (48:43.085)
Yeah.
Keith (49:00.846)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (49:05.556)
Like what you just said, Keith, it is up to you to have a moral compass that attempts to not do harm. certain things happen at our time in Macy's that probably did cause harm, but it was never done intentionally. It was never done at a time where it's like, well, we're going to benefit from this and somebody's going to get screwed. That was never our intention.
Keith (49:28.702)
No, because it's one, it's bad karma and two, it's gonna like, it's gonna come back to you in some way. You're gonna open up yourself to get exposed because they're gonna want to leverage it. That's just how the game works.
Cameron Craig (49:34.826)
because.
Cameron Craig (49:39.324)
the system demands stasis. It's like, you cannot tip that balance, right? And that's the thing I think, fast forward to now, that's the piece that I am hopeful for, which is that in some way,
we are going to have to redefine the value of what we're bringing, what we're bringing in work, what we're bringing in knowledge, what we're bringing in schools, all of those things feels like we're at this jumping off point where it's like, what we've done got us to this state, right? Some of it for the positive, some of it for the negative, but for us to progress and
Keith (50:20.887)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (50:25.444)
redefine the system and then bring the system back into some sort of stasis, the inputs are going to have to change because the outputs demand that the inputs change. And that's the piece that I think I'm hopeful for because I don't, and it's not a
Hey, if you're a systems thinker or you're a design thinker, you have creativity or humanity, you know, in these things and you're not a person who's memorized the periodic table and you know how strings work in programming. I'm not devaluing any of those skills, but what I am saying is if you think about the fact that fundamentally the things that you and I spent 18 years in schooling before going, you know, out and doing more
schooling for graduate programs, cetera, like more than 80 % of it was memorized this.
Keith (51:17.816)
Hard knocks. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (51:26.244)
memorize this and know what it means. And the know what it means is the part that I think like now we're in a place where we need to double down the memorized part, which is like what most students what most business people are like really good at. Like I know these things and I know these things and I can apply these things. like you no longer need
Keith (51:26.808)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (51:51.85)
I mean, you no longer need to know these things because everything that you need, all of our previous knowledge can be accessed from the thing that you carry with you, right? Like we don't, you know.
tribal knowledge to library knowledge to whatever is now available in our pocket, right? So you don't necessarily need like, and you couldn't have kept all that stuff in your, your gray matter anyway. Now that like, the next part of the equation apply to like what it means, like I'm like, this is where every human being needs to double down. And it doesn't mean that you necessarily like switch and you're like, I'm a systems thinker, but like,
Keith (52:05.816)
Yeah, you.
Keith (52:18.125)
Right.
Cameron Craig (52:34.638)
Somewhere on that continuum, the, understand the periodic table. I know actually what it means. know what clusters of these elements mean. And I know how to apply that. If you stop there, good on you, right? Like if you can go even the step further and you're like, I know what it means and I understand the application of it. And I can think through like what else it can do. Like I think that's.
That's the next phase. Right. And right now we have people who are literally like, totally get how strings work. Let me program some things. And you're like, okay, but like, can you tell me like why this is important and what it means and like, how else I can apply it? And they're just like,
Keith (53:21.058)
That's a lot of humanity. It's a book smart. It's like intelligence being intelligent versus being smart. And I think I try and figure out how do I get the best information, right? Whether it's truthful, the best person who understands the most about, they could just give you insights that you wouldn't understand because they have too much experience or so much experience. How do you get the best info and how do you understand how to convert that to leverage?
And like a non-confrontation, not non-confrontational, but like a, you know, like a non Machiavellian or like a non nefarious way. Right. And cause we're going through a period of like massive phase transition that's going to like ripple back and forth all over the world, probably for
Cameron Craig (53:58.59)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (54:10.926)
it's going to be like a five year and then like a 15 year period. Cause like one of the things I kept thinking about trying to like understand, like trying to explain what does exponential mean that like it's, orders of magnitude, not just an incremental, like you're gaining a few more, you know, a thousand dollars, whatever in your 401k every year versus it's doubling every year or tripling. Like that's like a massive change. And like everybody felt like they aged a decade in 2020 and by 2030, it's going to feel like a hundred years of change.
Cameron Craig (54:20.074)
Mm.
Keith (54:39.438)
has like happened or you feel like you aged a hundred years and by 2040, it's going to feel like a thousand years or a full millennium has elapsed. So when I go back and look at these like astrological cycles, I'm like, okay, is the 30 years where that happened in the Protestant Reformation that we're about to go through, is that really going to be 30 years or is it to be like a three year holy war that leads to something else because time is like compressing because we haven't had this much interconnection, this much computational power, this much actual
kinetic power that we could like plug in through like solar or nuclear or whatever. It's just a much more, there's more volume and amplitude and interconnection going through the system now than it's ever been possible. So I don't know. I think the people who are going to do really well, the people who are going to be most needed are going to be the ones who aren't just really good systems thinkers, but they actually want to see the world thrive. And I think they're going to eventually become the next leaders.
Because what's going to happen everywhere, if this is like the civil war and the American revolution, it's not just going to be here, it's going to be everywhere. And it's going to be people being like, yeah, our government sucks too. Like what the hell, like we need to change. Because you look anywhere, it's like digital ID in some countries. like, it doesn't, you different, it's like a giant Silicon Valley test bed all over the world going on right now and using humans is like tests. And people don't want to be test subjects. They want to like live their lives.
Cameron Craig (56:07.998)
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Keith (56:08.44)
So I don't know. I also don't think it's gonna be, I think you're gonna see a lot of like wag the dog too, because again, like if wars are one with logistics, like it's cheaper just to like make people believe the mirage and AI than it is to actually go build a ship and blow stuff up and feeds told you, you so I don't know how it's gonna be weird and interesting, but don't give up.
Cameron Craig (56:25.185)
Yeah.
Keith (56:34.146)
That that that if anything, I think this is going to be testing everybody's spirit and resolve. And it's like, we've come this far, we're almost out to get to the next wave. And it's not like a sunk cost thing, like, I've put 30 years in this life, I've done this thing, but it's like, we're, this is the last push of this test before I think collectively like, okay, this is not working for a lot of people. mean, dude, what happens if we can't start making
like payments to social security and like Medicaid and Medicare or like food stamps. Like if that doesn't happen, like, like, there's gonna be a huge issue that like, you know, there's a lot of people with guns in the United States. And I don't think it'll be like armed conflict like that. But it's gonna be like, like you can't, you can't repress that many people all the time. Like it's just, it just, you're to run into another problem.
Cameron Craig (57:24.776)
No, mean, like, back to the status, right? Like, this country has had moments of strife and civil unrest. And what it ends up happening is after that happens, we either reject our principles in one direction or the other, we snap towards one thing or the other. And then we end up having a higher state and a long like, you know,
a longer period of prosperity, right? And I don't know that that's necessarily going to happen here. I really don't like some things that have been challenging for me and some of my conventions that I've always lived by, you know, one, I've spent a lot of time during my life in Silicon Valley, not just my work life, but my overall life. And I've watched that trend over the last
almost 50 years. And it's different. Like things are moving at a different pace. And they're moving in ways, like to your point that are much more compressed than they've ever been. The problem is we keep throwing over things that it's like, you on to the next thing, because like, this actually brings more profit. It's like, but wait a minute, like the thing that we just ignored.
actually has a lot of inherent value and a lot of application that we could actually use, right? And instead we're like, the next thing, because like the profit margin in this is much higher. It's like that can't, it's not sustainable. And I keep waiting for that, that I don't want to call it a bubble diverse because that, that I honestly don't think any of the cycles that we've had, at least on the technology end, I get, I get on the stock market side, they're, they're bubbles and that's real, but on the technology end, they aren't
Keith (59:00.213)
Right.
Cameron Craig (59:17.054)
bubbles, they're like moments of contraction where people are like, wait a minute, like, this is not right. But like, if we do this, now we actually get a delivery of the thing that we were thinking of. And it's more extensible. And in those moments, anybody that's afraid of those moments, I think you're not in the right.
Well, you're not in the right mindset. You're also not in the right gig. Like if you're heavily dependent on technology and you worry about those types of things and you consider them bubbles, you probably should think about something else because like you might not have the stomach for that.
Keith (59:56.591)
going to be a lot of change and because technology is inherently like deflationary, right? So if like, with Moore's law, if like the cost of a transistor falls by half every like 12 or even if it was 18 or 24 months or something, 18. Yeah. Yeah. So it means more people have more capability than they ever have. And what's holding them back now is the mindset. we talked about this before about the designers, like, it's
Cameron Craig (01:00:10.538)
18. It's dropped though. It's less than 18 months now.
Keith (01:00:23.854)
I can code now. think the engineers ever said I couldn't code and it's like now you could do whatever you want. Just like you gotta push through and make it happen. And that's that.
Cameron Craig (01:00:28.809)
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I think that that's what's going to separate the fearful from the next layer of leadership. Really.
Keith (01:00:41.838)
Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to go out on a limb here and be like, think we're a little bit torn about how to kind of like frame this podcast about who it's for and what it's for just because we have an unconventional skill set. We work asymmetrically, which is not, you know, not to grate against the system, but to understand the limitations and strengths of the system. They're like, can work it in a certain way, like without getting yourself shot or hurting anybody in the process. But it's almost like what? Yeah, like
Cameron Craig (01:01:08.052)
We read team things.
Keith (01:01:10.422)
Yeah, not like red teaming and just like the info sex sense of like, you're designed to be on. Yeah. Yeah. But like, yeah. How do you, how do you build resiliency to withstand uncertainty when the level of uncertainty is accelerating and increasing every day at an exponential rate?
Cameron Craig (01:01:14.354)
In the business sense, in the life sense.
Cameron Craig (01:01:23.732)
Yes.
Cameron Craig (01:01:29.054)
I would argue that this episode is very much about the micro. Like in some ways this is, I'm just gonna throw it out there. Like we can chop it up and disagree. I think this is a very self-serving episode. I think you and I had a lot to say about this from the context in the box that is our lives and our experience. Like.
We thankfully have found one another and we have some commonality. Like when we call each other, we're like, Holy shit, did you see this? And like, it can be things that are happening in our very like micro environment, like the greater New York area, the greater Silicon Valley area. And like, we're both like, yeah, dude. And like, this is going on. That is exactly that. And I don't know how to frame this episode other than then.
Keith (01:01:57.782)
yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:02:14.428)
It's purely self-serving. I'm hanging out with my friend and colleague and my co-conspirator in probably some of the most formative business ops. And you and I are just talking about how to survive, like whatever's going on from our two perspectives as humans. that's, in my mind, that's what this episode's about. It's not really, like we're not actually teaching anything. think we're just like, let's just like drop a bunch of stuff on the table and see what happens.
Keith (01:02:39.723)
Yeah, but-
Keith (01:02:44.398)
I also wonder if it's like, and I had the habit of just being really early, seeing what was happening. And this, this might just be kind of like an overture or like a preamble for what, if the theme changes or whatever. mean, I'm, I'm just down to hang out and like, you know, mind meld across this kind of context and kind of talk about it. But you know, it might be early.
for other people to kind of like catch on and see. at some point, it's going to become very clear that having a hacker mindset to just like, you you're fueled by curiosity and putting different things together in unique ways. You know, there's probably some kind of like a spiritual bent of like, leave people better than they found you kind of thing. How we always talked about like red teaming, but you know, all these things kind of like it's
Cameron Craig (01:03:30.238)
Yeah, those things come together.
Keith (01:03:34.062)
Yeah, and this is kind of what it's it's always been about. And guess you can frame it for leaders, but it might be future lead. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what I'm saying. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:03:42.046)
I think future leaders are probably like, and maybe, maybe now's the point where I share what happened to me yesterday. Cause in some ways highly positive into it brings some of this together and it is very future, future focused. and you can pepper me with questions or thoughts as well. so we took a tour of school because my son's about to exit.
eighth grade and has to go look for a different school to go to. Yeah. Which is high school. cause his school stops at eighth grade and he goes to a kind of specialized school for the school isn't focused around learning disabilities, but there is a school within the school that is focused on dyslexia and, dyslexic thinking, right? And it's to intervene and to prepare them to actually then go back to right.
Keith (01:04:09.688)
high school.
Cameron Craig (01:04:35.74)
regular school. so we went and toured a school that I'll break it down, into its, its basic forms. One, project learning to conceptual learning. So taking the atomic elements of whatever subject area that you're learning, and instead of saying, this is science, I mean, they do that. They're not like, it's not like
Hey, today in science, we're going to talk about the history of coffee. but through the years, ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th grade years, all of the classes have touch points like a meshing, right? And so examples where we're sitting in with the science teacher and he's talking about water, the lesson.
Keith (01:05:24.514)
nodes.
Cameron Craig (01:05:31.956)
We sit down for 30 minutes to learn about his water. And he starts with like, here's the atomic structure of water, right? Like it's, one part oxygen, two parts, hydrogen, atomic weight of oxygen, eight protons, the atomic weight of hydrogen, two protons, two covalent bonds holding the two hydrogen atoms to the one oxygen atom. Now let me.
I'm going to put a piece of wax paper down. I'm going to give you a toothpick and I'm going to put a drop of water on the, the wax paper play.
I'm not going to go through all the details, like in a matter of five minutes, he explains adhesion.
Keith (01:06:20.088)
surface tension. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:06:21.276)
surface tension, cohesion.
Cameron Craig (01:06:27.494)
hydrophobic properties. And he goes out and extends all these things. And then he shows you like what, like what happens when water molecules bond together, because like, you know, what you're doing is you're slicing a water molecule as you're moving things around with a toothpick. then when you like touch the toothpick and all of a sudden, like the toothpicks wet, you're seeing adhesion. Um, and so he goes through all that, but then he says, that's not enough. Like it's not enough.
Keith (01:06:29.058)
Yep, cool.
Cameron Craig (01:06:56.618)
to understand the chemical bonds. He's like, if I teach you the chemical bonds and I talk about covalence, et cetera, and we talk about all of the ways in which molecules bond together, he's like, two years from now, you're not going to remember any of this. And by the way, you can look all this up on
Any device, right? Like everything I'm teaching you, like you can have in your fingertips as you need it and probably explained to you in a way that's going to work better for you. so he, he expands out from there he's like, so one of the things that we, we try and do is tie those things to other topics. And so he's like, if you go down to the second floor of this building, you'll see on the wall, the
the Colombian exchange and the history of the Colombian exchange and how basically that event or those set of events during that time period set up the United States. This land mass is like being the super important land mass because it was like a link between, you know, central and South America and the old world of Europe. And he talks about all the things that were traded during that time. And he says, so one of the things that'll be interesting is if you go down there, what you're going to see is you're going to see the chemical compound for coffee. Actually he's like,
Keith (01:07:56.174)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (01:08:14.89)
I'm going to correct myself. He's like, you're to see the chemical compound for caffeine.
And then he starts to talk about how coffee was traded, why it was important, how it's become important. And he's like, and what, what you're going to learn through this like poster series downstairs is like how coffee has become this like centralized compound that we all take in to run the world. Like, and it was super fascinating, you know, as he went through this and again,
Keith (01:08:41.376)
Yeah, macro micro.
Cameron Craig (01:08:50.47)
He went from that to like back to water, right? So they send the students out into the city. so the second concept outside of this, like, you know, project based learning is city as classroom, right? It's like this, this, you know, campus is like right in the middle of a very, very urban downtown environment. And so they send the kids out to do things like study the.
heat signatures of concrete and asphalt and wood and dirt and trees and everything else. they're also studying all of these. They go and collect dust particles from the gutters and the street and sidewalk and everything. And so he comes back to this and he says, so one of the things that we learned through this is water is actually pretty scarce around the campus.
Keith (01:09:24.76)
Awesome.
Keith (01:09:36.225)
Heh.
Cameron Craig (01:09:45.278)
There's not a lot of water. There's not a lot of runoff except for when it rains and like it knocks all of this, like these particles from the street, like straight into the gutter and all that like flows out to the sea, which kills sea life.
And he's like, and the heat signature around here, because we don't get a lot of water and there's nothing to trap the water or there's nothing to like hold any of the water, like the heat signature goes up. It's like, we're actually like warming the planet, like with all of the buildings around here. So he goes on and on and on. And I'm not going to like keep going with all the details because you know, you had to sit there and it was, it was fascinating. It was very like, for me, it was very emotional as well. in the end, the students.
Keith (01:10:13.73)
Yep.
Cameron Craig (01:10:29.722)
realized in one in the science class, all of these problems with the campus.
And the students from like the civics class said, Hey, did you guys know that the city council has taken up? because there's a school here now, like the schools only been in this location for the last two years because there's school here now, they're starting to put medians in between the sidewalk, the street, and there's a trolley line that goes through there. And they're trying to build a bike, a safe biking lane around there.
Keith (01:11:01.921)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:11:06.312)
And to do that, they have to put in these, these medians, which are currently planned to be asphalt and cement. So they say, well, why don't we like show the city council, all of the studies that we've done about how this is the hottest district in the entire like city. Like we go to the city council member who represents the district that the school's in and we tell her instead of putting in like a concrete and, asphalt median.
Why don't we plant it? It's going to be cheaper because the dirt, the tree and whatever is going to be infinitely less than maintaining the concrete or pouring the concrete or pouring the like asphalt. And every year the asphalt's going to break. And they did all these studies around this and they went and they're like, so here's a study on the heat signature of district three. Here, like we know you're about to do this. We've actually gone and got cost estimates for like what it would take to do it in cement and what it would do.
Keith (01:11:46.328)
Yep. Yep.
Cameron Craig (01:12:04.788)
to do it in grass, trees, and plants. And it's like 30 % what it's going to cost you to pour the entire thing in cement. And she's like, OK. And she took in all their data. And essentially, was like, yeah, done. Trees, like ground cover. They're doing it. They're tearing up the street.
Keith (01:12:14.828)
My god.
Keith (01:12:26.638)
I like, actually did it?
Keith (01:12:32.482)
That's impressive, especially in San Francisco.
Cameron Craig (01:12:33.47)
They're putting in a little like concrete strip and the rest of it's going to be like planted with trees and everything, which will like shade both like where you wait for the train, the bike lane all the way around, like the campus. And they're like, and they're, what they're doing is they're now trying to figure out like other places they can do this in downtown to get the overall heat signature of downtown down in this particular area, like this district three area.
Keith (01:12:50.284)
That's awesome.
Keith (01:13:02.926)
That's awesome.
Cameron Craig (01:13:03.816)
So in the end, he comes back around to water and he's like, this entire thing started with a study of water. Like, what does it do? How does it work? What's it good for? What's it used? Like, why is it important? What does it mean to humans? What does it mean to society? And he's like, and from water, we got to this like whole change of like, how do you change the environment around you? He's like, that's what the future state of education needs to do.
He's like, if I like, just teach you the periodic table and I tell you how important water is, what are you going to do with that? If I don't teach you like how to think about water and why water is important and what water enables and like why people fight over it and why it's going to be more of a commodity. And I don't give you a reason to think about how you might change your behavior or, know, again, he's not like trying to.
They're very apolitical, which is also great. because like if I don't give you that type of thinking and get you to get curious and like, look at the system that water sits in.
Like what am I actually teaching you? And what value is it going to have? was just like, I want my kid to go to this school.
Keith (01:14:19.374)
It's awesome.
Keith (01:14:25.59)
Yeah, I want to go to this school. I mean, just thinking about like, the way they kind of teach you how to see and how things kind of connect in a logical fashion without getting into like, coffee and geopolitics without like talking about like the crazy political stuff. But also, I thought you're gonna be like, the city council didn't want to do it because of some political thing. Yeah, which I was impressed. I'm surprised. Yeah, because it's like, but
Cameron Craig (01:14:44.402)
No, they did it. They're doing it. Well, I mean, but like, how can you resist it, right? They're, they're coming with, we've done the analysis, and they went and grabbed like the Noah, like Noah has, you know, the satellite imagery of the area. And so the heat signature is real. But like, what what he did is he's used the students over the last three years to like,
Keith (01:14:52.823)
Yeah.
Keith (01:14:59.114)
awesome. That's fucking cool.
Cameron Craig (01:15:07.462)
On the ground study, like they're out there with heat guns, like looking at the things and like determining, you know, in this space, asphalt, like in this exact space, asphalt is like 10 degrees hotter than it is like five blocks away. And, know, they brought in all this data, but then like you and I have always said, you're leveraging, you're leveraging the system. It's like, it's cheaper if you don't do this. It's cheaper if you do this and it's going to be better for like the city.
Keith (01:15:20.184)
Whoa.
Cameron Craig (01:15:36.87)
for the environment and ultimately the planet, right? Like by doing this and it saves you money. Like, why would you not do this? And the city council's like, why would we not do this? I totally like Jedi mind trick that shit.
Keith (01:15:49.679)
because that's the way, but I like how it's like apolitical too, because then it's like, okay, let's try and actually find a better solution based on real data and behavior change and like, you know, all these things together. That's 20 minutes ago, I'm like, I think I wonder if this is going to become a podcast about how do you actually really be a change agent? Not like a cliche, like, oh, I'm a change agent, I'm doing this stuff, but like, how do you actually affect
you know, positive, beneficial societal change. And obviously, it's like, well, who decides and what's the right metric or whatever. But I think it's
Cameron Craig (01:16:22.056)
Well, he I mean, he said it. He's like, you have to think about the system. And I was like, fuck yeah. Like, total quote. just like afterwards, I was like, I went up to him. I'm like, I kind of want to give you a hug. And I'm sorry. Like, I know that's really weird for like a parent, like a prospective parent to come up to you. like, yeah, you're not the first.
Keith (01:16:41.102)
Well, think about if you have other Silicon Valley parents who are probably, it's gonna be more than once, it's gonna be people also there who are systems thinkers and they're gonna see it and be like, this is amazing because it's just teaching kids how to really think at multiple levels to build a solution with like limited resources, but to do the right thing. That's awesome.
Cameron Craig (01:17:02.174)
think there's a whole, there's a whole class. was funny because like, know, afterwards, like, I think it's going to be competitive to get in there. do. but I also think there's a whole class of parents there that are going to self select out. Like I want my kid to learn the periodic table and like, you know, the value of like, yeah, dude. Yeah. Because
Keith (01:17:09.699)
Yeah.
Keith (01:17:18.373)
really?
Keith (01:17:21.836)
Why wouldn't you want to your kid do that though?
Cameron Craig (01:17:25.478)
If you are not that type of thinker and you've seen success by doing the thing that we're talking about, like learning the periodic table, like element by element, or learning all of the laws of geometry and ultimately being able to like regurgitate that when called upon. And trust me, there's a lot of that going on. You know, a plus B, you know, a squared B squared, whatever C squared, you know, like, you know, the,
Keith (01:17:50.892)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:17:56.18)
cut the square this way. You know, I've proven that, you know, the hypotenuse exists. Like, I mean, and like the math class that we were in, Alex, he had the opportunity of doing like four different exercises, Keith. And one of them was observe. And what do think this guy chose? He chose to be an observer because he's lazy or so I thought.
Observing didn't mean just sit there and like watch observing meant I'm going to hand you a worksheet. Like the kind of thing, the kind of shit that you and I would like hand to somebody like, okay, you're going to go and look at this situation. Come back with your like notes, come back with like the notes from the field. Like, what did you see? How did it work? What did it do? And like, at the end, there was like a three question test that was like, you know, what were the communication like?
What was the structured communication? What was the outcome? Like what would have made that outcome like a higher degree of outcome? Like, I mean, it was like the total shit that you and I do for a living. And I was like, all right, buddy, it's like you're coming to work with me he's an, and I dude, I am like, we were both in the observing group because I'm like, I'm going to go be an observer because I don't give a shit about the square root of the hypotenuse. and
Keith (01:18:57.155)
Yeah.
Keith (01:19:09.336)
Project tables, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:19:12.538)
I'm furiously scribbling notes. I'm like, you know, as I'm like, observe this, you know, and then now observe this. I'm like, you know, making notes, I'm talking about all the things I'm seeing and I flipped the thing over and I'm like, you scribbling my answers to the thing and the entire time it sounds like this. And I was like, you know, on the back before they let us out of here, she, she may come around to our group and ask us like, did.
Keith (01:19:23.096)
Systems Thinking School.
Cameron Craig (01:19:41.3)
produce and he's like, I know I'm like, okay. So he's not scribbling. He's like going down the, the, the, the flow diagram basically. And he's circling different things and he's underlining and, know, he's writing a word here or there, but generally he's like this the entire time. And then I'm like, okay, like the five minute warning is coming. You better like write some things down. Cause if you don't, know,
Keith (01:19:42.605)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:20:09.99)
It might be a little weird if you're like, I don't know. mean, that's not, that's not a great look in a school that you're trying to get into. mean, again, I don't, he may not be trying to get in there, but I want them to go there. So he flips over the thing. He writes a sentence for each thing, sets it down. And I'm like, I can't resist. I have to pick up the paper and read. So I do. And like, he's nailed it. Like, but like he's done the TLDR of every single thing that I've written, like a paragraph.
Keith (01:20:18.955)
Yeah.
Keith (01:20:38.242)
He's efficient.
Cameron Craig (01:20:39.784)
He's written like a sentence and a half, but he's like, he's like dead on. And I was just like, man.
Keith (01:20:42.638)
He's like, keep up, dad.
Keith (01:20:49.838)
That's a parent moment of like, what are you going to do the work to the school trying to get you into to like not make us both look bad? And he's like, yeah, it's done.
Cameron Craig (01:20:55.634)
And he's like, I got this. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, in the science class, so two things with science class and sorry, like this is now just gone into the personal side. So like, go to the bathroom in between switching from the math class to science class and. And Anna's there and we, and she's got a friend, you know, childhood friend from England's here too. Who's a teacher. we dragged her on the school tour and.
Keith (01:21:23.106)
Mm-mm-mm-mm.
Cameron Craig (01:21:24.094)
I come back from the bathroom and Susie, her friend sitting out front. was like, Hey, you know, are they in there? And she's like, no, like Anna went to go and find Alex. guess he didn't. He didn't go into the class. And I'm like, all right, well, I'm to go in there and listen. So I go in there and Alex is in the class. And I was like, so I exit again. And I'm like, Hey Susie, like just give me let Anna know he's actually in the class. Like he didn't bolt.
So we're sitting there and you know, when the whole like exchange part comes up, he's like, he looks at me he's all, yeah, I know about this. And I was like, well, tell me about it. And he's, and he explains it, you know, as kind of in line to what the teacher's saying, like slightly ahead of what the teacher's saying. And he's like, yeah, you know, like this is what, it's one of the reasons why America is as valuable as it is. I'm like, okay. Like, where did you learn that? He's like school, like.
Come on. I was like, it's like, I didn't learn this in school. And he's like, well, I did.
Keith (01:22:21.163)
Eheheheheh!
Keith (01:22:30.19)
I mean, you guys, you didn't just put them in like public school the whole time, too. You guys tried to get them in some different spots to kind of like, you know, help them out a little bit, you know, or find good, I don't know, man. School is one of those things now where I'm like, high school wasn't bad, but at the same time, it was, it was like so like Henry Ford factory based that it wasn't teaching you how to like, build a model of the world and understand how to like,
act as like a sentient human being within it.
Cameron Craig (01:23:01.032)
You can still go to that school. Most of them are that way. Most of them are that way.
Keith (01:23:07.104)
Yeah, it makes you wonder about education, and like unions and stuff. mean, because that's, that's a giant voting block. It's a giant political block that I don't know, I think with internet and everything now and AI, it's just like, there's so many different resources. Now, you still need the human element. And I think that that kind of a school is like, that's amazing. Because it's just, you know, the teaching you had to like,
Cameron Craig (01:23:33.311)
Think?
Keith (01:23:33.538)
Become like productive members. Yeah, and be productive, like be a productive member of society, not just like, you know, because you don't want to
Cameron Craig (01:23:38.622)
Well, in the draw conclusions, figure out meaning and attach meaning to things and solve problems. Like I was like, again, it's all the shit that you and I are totally motivated to. know, honestly, like I wasn't really sold on it after the math class. I wasn't really sold on it after like the, they had this other thing that's like an experience class, which kind of gets you to think about systems like
And was within the classroom. Like, think about the system of certain things that are going on in the classroom. But the science class sold me on it. was just like, he's literally saying science is one of the languages that you need to have that explains meaning, that brings data, so that you're not feeling something and making a decision based on that. going through the scientific method.
Keith (01:24:21.443)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:24:32.03)
to actually like bring the data. And that was his whole point with the whole city council thing. It's like, you bring the data and based on the data, you make a decision. And I was just like, I totally. Yeah.
Keith (01:24:41.58)
Yeah, it had a troubleshoot. Yeah. I mean, it's like half intuition, half empirical, you know, scientific method. Like you need both. You can't just do one or the other. It's, it's understanding how to synthesize them and when to like, you know, one more than the other, but they don't teach that anywhere. mean, the only way you learn that is if like you had a hard time growing up because you feel like you didn't fit in and it became like a survival mechanism to kind of like understand how to navigate society and whatever.
Cameron Craig (01:25:11.262)
Well, like back to the hopeful part, like I'm hopeful that maybe we're turning a corner and these things are all like, again, to this massive shift. Like, I really hope that we're turning a corner and on the other end of the massive shift, it's going to be like, okay, we need to change our framing of this stuff. Like we have to get curious about solving these problems. We have to get curious about like forging a new system of these things and understanding it and like being deliberate. Like a lot of these systems that we're living in now, you know, like
The further I get into them and the more like I'm like, why do we do this? Like, no, it's like, yes, dude. Yes. The picture of like everybody in the wigs. Like it's that. Hey, one thing I was curious about, have we gotten to the point yet where we can, buy a computer that is faster than the human brain for under a thousand bucks? I don't think we have.
Keith (01:25:46.06)
Because we've already done it this way, man.
Keith (01:26:01.647)
I don't, well, I think if you rent a thousand dollars of like computational time through like, you know, a bank of like H one hundreds, maybe, but I don't think it's accessible.
Cameron Craig (01:26:14.332)
Yeah, but I mean, like, how much thought are you going to be processing, you know, there?
Keith (01:26:19.182)
I mean, okay, so now you have the empirical data, technically the number checks out, but is it accessible for everybody? I don't know. I I don't know, it's a good question.
Cameron Craig (01:26:26.3)
now.
Cameron Craig (01:26:29.918)
Your barrier to entry there is quite high. It's really high. Trust me, I know how high it is.
Keith (01:26:33.13)
Yeah. So I think that was optimistic. Well, yeah, so because that was on a slide that we pulled like paraphrasing Kurzweil in the beginning a long time ago. Yeah, so I don't think we can do that. Yeah. I maybe by 2030. I don't know. mean, if
Cameron Craig (01:26:52.338)
Yeah, by 2030, I think, I think we'll be there. I think absolutely. Like I don't have any reservation about that. Just seeing what I'm seeing, but the accessibility of it still, I think might be an issue to your point. I mean, directly. Yeah, we're right. Like, absolutely.
Keith (01:27:00.812)
Yeah, but you know directionally we were. Yeah.
Keith (01:27:07.49)
I mean, with Macy's, was just like they, they're so archaic and they're thinking like they thought of the real estate as an asset to leverage against for debt and to pay off expenses for shit that they tried doing that just blew up. And instead of being like, dude, you could integrate all of these things inside the real estate and make like this magic box of experience. they're like, what? like, you know, that was like a sacred.
Cameron Craig (01:27:34.474)
Don't know
Keith (01:27:37.455)
sacred cow, like they're like, don't talk, touch the real estate, don't even think about it. And it was like, I think that in hindsight, if we had done that again, I would have been like, alright, fuck it, let's figure out way to get to like, the guy who's running the real estate to talk to him and show him to be like, we're not muppets. You know, but then that may have gotten you fired at some point, because they would be like, what the hell are you doing talking to the real estate people? Because it's just, you know, I imagine Liz and them like they they wouldn't like what the hell they wouldn't have understood at all. I know.
Cameron Craig (01:27:53.16)
Well, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:28:06.858)
Well, I mean, so that part definitely, right. And then you, what you sent the other day about the eight, you know, sort of the eight horsemen, if you will. I mean, you were pretty spot on with that as well. Like all of that is legit and reality.
Keith (01:28:25.624)
What was the, I forget what the eight horseman was again.
Cameron Craig (01:28:28.266)
You just sent it to me. It was a...
And.
Cameron Craig (01:28:39.688)
The post-COVID prophecies.
Keith (01:28:43.246)
from the case study I wrote. yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:28:45.118)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that was spot on.
Keith (01:28:51.064)
Well, mean, that's been the hard part. It's like showing, you can't just show your work with systems thinking like, revenue grew this one year. It's like, Macy's was like, we're not a tech company. And like having them hire a CTO, even though it was from internal, like that was a huge thing. And then they could have gotten them, one of the head guys on the board was the fucking ex CEO of Home Depot. It's like they could have.
Cameron Craig (01:28:54.25)
You gotta picture my head.
Cameron Craig (01:29:12.585)
Yeah.
Keith (01:29:21.186)
built a little fab lab to do all these like little the outdoor eating that popped up during COVID. And they all this extra space that they could use for social distance. It's like they just had all these resources that could have not only leveraged to make economic good help society, but they could also leverage like the media PR element of it. But everybody at every level was so old school and their thinking. But it's not just their fault, though. It's like the system punishes individual thought.
So if you don't keep up with that, it's, you you basically get crucified in the process.
Cameron Craig (01:29:56.134)
Well, that's the systems that I'm really hoping break down.
Keith (01:30:00.655)
They're going to have to like they're going to otherwise someone's going to vibe code a new business and it's going to be disruptive relative to like the Claire Christensen model of I think it's the company's going to think it's a toy and then I go out of business.
Cameron Craig (01:30:12.842)
I mean, not that I want to bring the work or the business part in, but like two things related to that since we're kind of on this topic. I did the FBI board with a couple of people that I'm collaborating with right now against this project and product that we're building. And yeah, yeah.
Keith (01:30:14.51)
It's not gonna work.
Keith (01:30:33.55)
Oh, you mean like the org chart. thought it'd be like a bad, I'm like, I'm thinking FBI background check from like work work. I'm like, wait a second. I'm like, my mind was at mapping the org chart. Yeah. I'm like, what? I'm like, okay. So yeah, the, the, the, mapping the org chart, like the shadow org chart.
Cameron Craig (01:30:40.355)
no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, you're in a different world now. You're in different, you're in your day job. Yeah, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:30:52.65)
So remember what I was telling you before we started recording today about the sales orgs and like how I'm all of a sudden I'm, you know, I'm just getting just spammed. I'm getting spammed by salespeople. I start looking, man, got, it's like, I always gotta be careful. So like, I'm just gonna say this. I'm looking up my chain to the top and it's like,
Keith (01:31:03.234)
You're an asset.
Cameron Craig (01:31:21.636)
Me designer, person above me designer, person above him, engineer, person above him, engineer, not only like, like not just software engineer, but like infrastructure engineer. Right. This is my stack. And then I'm like, hang on a minute. I think so. And above him is the CEO, right?
And then I'm like looking at, so I'm like, I'm going to spend an hour looking at his, I'm going to, I'm going to build the org, the FBI org chart from his POV.
Keith (01:31:56.302)
This was what we did. Smart.
Cameron Craig (01:31:58.014)
And like, what do I get to? I get to, I get to, I get down after about 30 minutes to the people that I I'm working with in the sales org, which ladder up like to two VPs, both in sales that report directly to the CEO. And so what I'm just like a VP and an SVP.
Keith (01:32:20.374)
Yeah, VPs are a big deal.
Cameron Craig (01:32:26.204)
Who are like essentially two hops from these two other like sales orgs that I'm dealing with now. And I'm just like, I'm like, that's, that's my play. Right. Like going and having a meeting with a bunch of engineers and, you know, talking about the value, like it's funny because like one of the engineers near the top is like, do X, which is the thing that I've been doing.
Keith (01:32:31.87)
Move in laterally, dude.
Cameron Craig (01:32:53.554)
It's just the translation down is the piece where it gets muddy. Right. And like you and I've always said this. And so I'm like, well, if I, if I come at it from this angle and I go have a meeting with this SVP and the sales org.
Keith (01:32:58.732)
Implementation, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:33:11.816)
I think I'm getting a meeting with the CEO via that guy versus going up my stack.
Keith (01:33:18.126)
And it's not it's not about being an opportunist. It's understanding that the work you've done has created value that can extend and solve other people's problems. So it's like the seeding social capital thing as a lateral movement. And that that's what it's combining all these things in a way to get in front of the right person who can has a definitive yes or no vote because everybody's got a bunch of bunch of no votes. They're gonna be like,
Cameron Craig (01:33:47.017)
Yeah.
Keith (01:33:47.233)
don't want do it because they don't want do it but the finding the right yes vote is very few and that's it I don't know it's you have to like roll like an intelligence operation but you have to like as cliche as it sounds like have like a good heart about what you're doing like you can't try and like be you know if you're in like politics like people are gonna do things you're not gonna want to do and they're gonna be harder to beat because they're willing to do things you're not willing to do but the way we operate I think
it's it's a better it's like with the iterative prison prisoners dilemma, it's better to do the most altruistic thing continuously until you get screwed. And then you do tit for tat post fact or you just cut them out and you move laterally, which is, you know, you're seeing the writing on the wall, probably in lot of different ways and finding a way to kind of like, you know, build the right solution out.
Cameron Craig (01:34:40.498)
Which I think again, like to your point, I'm trying to deliver value and I'm trying to deliver value incrementally. And I'm trying to deliver value as quickly as I possibly can. Like these are actually concepts for me that, that. That are new. I'm not going to say that I didn't understand them or know them. did. I don't know that I've ever been in an environment that.
has encouraged that or values that. from back to the macro situation and what you just said about everybody's going to become an entrepreneur, that's actually true. And so if you're not moving in a way that delivers value as soon as possible to either yourself or the organization that you work in, you might as well rethink your whole strategy. one of the things that I like
I could be very monolithic. Like I have a very robust, I'm speaking to this particular product. It's like I have a very robust set of product features, but some of them are like high complexity and they are valuable. But if I'm waiting to deliver value until I can solve those like technical complexities or those system complexities, I'm probably going to like do myself out of this product.
But by delivering value and going after things that are like lower hanging fruit and basically proving the point, it's harder to shut it down because it's it's already delivering value, right? It's not a future state of value or a statement of future value. It's basically like, well, it's already delivering value.
By enhancing it to this point, I'm actually going to deliver another layer of value. And like by enhancing it again to this other layer, like I get closer to the technical complexity that I need to solve. But at every point, instead of like waiting for that value, I'm already delivering value. And I think that's the new way that everybody in product is going to need to think about it. Like if you can't deliver value in the shortest period of time, rethink your strategy because like somebody is going to beat you to it.
Cameron Craig (01:36:43.954)
And it might not do all of the things that your product does or your solution does.
But it's going to build a foundation that you're going to have a harder time competing against. And that's the piece that I think what you said sparked that other thought for me, which is everybody's basically an entrepreneur at this point. I think that's absolutely right. The entire internet is in beta at this point. It's absolutely in beta.
Keith (01:37:10.926)
It's the internet relative to Tim Berners-Lee, the worldwide web, I think is just finished at Saturn return. So it's like the second iteration, the grownup version of the internet is evolving right now. And on like the delivering value part. So delivering value. It's not just like, adding more value, know, making, you know, saving money or whatever. It's there's a very logical progression.
of where the future of the product and the service of whatever you're building is going to go. So as you're you're thinking as like a product person, how that's going to continue to like compound benefit. So it's not just like incrementally in terms of like, you know, 10 % net, you know, profit every year or whatever. It's incrementally showing them how it's getting better because you're building trust.
social capital that way with the right people, especially as you move up because now it's not just can you do it and deliver it's are you going to be low risk relative to them to have any blowback.
Cameron Craig (01:38:16.34)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And also like the sunk cost. I'm, I'm defraying the sunk cost quarter over quarter versus like, you're not going to see value out of this for a year from now. Like that's expensive. That is a really expensive proposition, like no value for a year. And then like to your point, you're eroding trust, but you're also in a place where like you're, you're ratcheting up the bar that you have to deliver in because who knows what's going to be happening in a year from now. And so like,
Keith (01:38:32.887)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:38:44.626)
It's a defensible product position. Now I'm learning a bunch of things. Now I'm changing the direction as we go versus like massive launch and then trying to figure those things out. Right? Like I'm, I am lowering my threshold for risk every single time we deliver something and, you're getting all of this net positive benefit of like right now it's an efficiency play, but eventually it will be a revenue driving play and the efficiency.
Like driving the efficiency up and the cost down has a value like right in this moment. And it's like defraying my ongoing development and R and D costs. Like it's actually like, I hadn't really put all those pieces together until about.
Keith (01:39:21.997)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:39:33.738)
three or four months ago, like it, it was still a hack back then. And I don't mean the product, but like this method was a hack. was like,
Keith (01:39:44.088)
Social Gambit.
Cameron Craig (01:39:45.123)
I am building something that is going to be too big and too valuable to fail. And it can't be taken away from me. Right. Like that was, that was the hack. And now it's like too big to shut down. And now it's like, you have all of this.
Keith (01:39:56.718)
Too big to fail, too big to shut down.
Cameron Craig (01:40:06.75)
financial data behind it, right? Like, Hey, we're lessening the cost to get something into market by X percent over every like week, right?
Keith (01:40:16.11)
Dude, that's every company wants that. Do more with less, get more efficient. I mean, that's just in the market we're going into with higher interest rates and in more competitive inflationary markets. It's like that. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:40:33.3)
I mean, if you can't drive value now, it's like fourth time I'm saying it, rethink your strategy. you know, that's the hack. Like.
Damn it, Keith, we ended up talking about business. Didn't want to talk about business today. It's all related.
Keith (01:40:45.378)
Yeah, people say,
I mean, it's not like, well, it's all.
Yeah, but it's still it's not like.
That's why it's so hard to like pin this thing down as like who it's for, what it's for, like me at least, because I'm like, it's all these pieces together. It's like if...
Cameron Craig (01:41:01.405)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:41:06.364)
It is a big system in a universe all unto itself.
Keith (01:41:09.634)
Yeah, well, you got to like, you got to grow like this is why I like I like like weightlifting because as you do progressive overload where you add more like weight, add more reps, add more sets, whatever. It still feels hard. Like it's like no matter what you do, if you keep pushing the bar, and it's not like we must grow in a parasitic parasitic way to like, you know, what's it called like, like greed and agreed kind of mental model, but like, you got to push yourself like this is, this is what it's all about. And I think
Cameron Craig (01:41:38.942)
Yeah. It's a growth mindset applied in some way, right? Like I think all the things that we're talking about are like very growth mindset, but like you have to apply it across all these things and you can't be afraid of any of these. Dimensions. Right. Like even like back to the top where you were like,
Keith (01:41:40.781)
Yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
Cameron Craig (01:41:59.314)
You know, you kind of like, this is not me being judgy at all. Like this is like, gave a caveat. You're like, Hey, you might not believe in this, in this line of thinking around, you know, astrology, that's smart hedge on your part, right? Like, cause there are a lot of people that are going to be like turned off by that. but at the end of the day, it's, it's, and you said it earlier, it's like information and it's like a system of thinking and you know,
Keith (01:42:17.42)
Yeah, and it's fine.
Cameron Craig (01:42:25.608)
Belief doesn't necessarily need to come into it. There's a science there that you can still see. It's like, it's a timeline, it's positions. You know, take it for what it is.
Keith (01:42:34.488)
Certainly an analytical method. There's so much noise. Having done sound design in the past, learning how to deal with noise and how to get more signal out of noise or how to build a complete picture with pieces of information that aren't always either accurate or right or might be misleading because you're working with people who don't want you to succeed.
Yeah, it's like I said, it's like an intelligence operation all the time, but trying to actually make this work for everybody in the best way possible.
Cameron Craig (01:43:05.61)
Yeah. Well, it might be a good place for us to leave for today. Cause we're at like an hour and 40 something minutes. It's like somebody's whole, whole commute.
Keith (01:43:14.176)
Yeah, that's our record so far.
I mean, hopefully this is good though. think about, know, I'm part of the challenge with LinkedIn and how to like present myself to is like, I put a lot of resources into all these different things, like almost going to work for the feds doing like intelligence, like studying astrology, like, you know, it's not there. There's a stigma with each of these things. When you put like four or five of them together, it's like, my God. It's like six eyes are like an alien kind of thing, but
Cameron Craig (01:43:32.243)
You do.
Keith (01:43:47.631)
At some point, I don't know, supposedly, the waves will be just right because people are to want something unconventional, they're gonna need it because they're just not going to want to but they're going to people who can actually get things done, but also see like new, new thinking that actually works for a lot of different people. So, but I like this too big to fail too big to shut down. I like that as like a, you know, that should be a talk. Yeah, if you you ever write a book, that'll be your book too big to fail too big to shut down.
Cameron Craig (01:44:03.582)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:44:07.752)
Yeah, I mean, it's kind like a little little mini mantra, little mini mantra.
Cameron Craig (01:44:17.13)
Okay.
Keith (01:44:18.498)
It'll the inside story.
Cameron Craig (01:44:19.818)
Yeah. I mean, again, we can bring it on all the hacks because everything starts with a hack. Like it's funny. Like when you start telling people that like that you work with, like you're like when you and I were working together and we were pulling in till and Jeff and other people, it's like. They kind of get excited about that. Like, I'm hacking this thing. And you're like, yep, you are like, are now. Like you see the light. You see the system, you see the mechanics, you're hacking it, but you do have to go from that.
that very human way of being into like, but like, what are we actually doing with this? And like, you and I have done a lot of critical analysis, like after the fact there's way like, we had very hacky goals, right? We're like, we got to get into the CEO's office. We're going to, we want to present in the boardroom and like, you know, we achieved all those things and we did drive revenue. Like, you know, it's definitely one of the things in my case study. It's like, look, you can see when
Keith (01:44:57.902)
Where's it going?
Cameron Craig (01:45:18.312)
When this thing got folded back into the mothership, like stock price dropped, you know, value went down, like they lost value and, but, you know, there were other things that I think you and I could have been way more precise about like, okay, we need this. You actually want to like. Poor fuel on this is what you need to do. And, know, thankfully, like, I think I learned a bunch of those things after the fact that it took, you know, two other jobs, but.
Finally, the application of some of those things is like actually worked out where it's like, okay, the case study kind of continues in some way. Right. So.
Keith (01:45:54.573)
Yeah, it evolves. mean, we were learning how to actually make it work and how not to get shot in the process. And you never really know who is going to hurt you, who's going to help you and doing change working with the CEO directly and going top down is way easier than building like a benevolent counterinsurgency from the ground up, which is what we did. And actually seeing it work like after, after we left to having them see do the changes, like getting a Google guy on the board and
Cameron Craig (01:46:01.618)
Yep. Yep.
Cameron Craig (01:46:17.054)
Yep. Yep. Yeah.
Keith (01:46:24.632)
building a real distribution center that was automated and things that made sense, should have made sense 10 years ago, but you do what you can. but better late than never, I guess.
Cameron Craig (01:46:32.21)
It took a while. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, let's leave it there.
Keith (01:46:40.416)
Awesome. Can't man. Always a pleasure, dude.
Cameron Craig (01:46:42.674)
Yeah, Keith, same. I'm glad we did this one. I am.
Keith (01:46:47.82)
Yeah, me too. This is, you know, wasn't as organized as I wanted to be with the astrology. But like, whatever, it's all good. It's like, at some point, it's just kind of one, you know, I think we both need to kind of just get outside the system to kind of find our way back at some point.
Cameron Craig (01:47:01.948)
Yeah. And I mean, I think you needed to introduce that part of it. Like we haven't really talked about that. I'm glad we like threw that out and you know, we'll come back to it. think it, brings in another dimension that we've we've behind the scenes been using, you know, kind of to our advantage. And, know, again, now you've introduced it and we can, we can start to insert that into the system as well. So thanks. I appreciate you, you going out there and, and even though it wasn't as organized as maybe it could have been.
Keith (01:47:17.49)
yeah.
Keith (01:47:25.613)
Awesome.
Cameron Craig (01:47:31.86)
I think one of the things that like we've been good about is just being like, go with the flow. Cause like that's at the end of the day, like put the value out there.
Keith (01:47:37.73)
Yeah.
Exactly. I gotta show make an actionable cam. You can take your like your picture at the end, you gotta make it happen.
Cameron Craig (01:47:45.416)
Yep. Yep. All right, man.
Keith (01:47:47.63)
Thanks for letting me have the space to do it to Kim. I really appreciate it.
Cameron Craig (01:47:49.898)
Hey, I'm so happy. Like literally that we, went this route. I, I, I've been pushing on this for a little bit and I'm glad that you, took the bait today.
Keith (01:47:59.896)
dude, I'm yeah. okay. We'll come. We'll, we'll, TV D, TV D out, you know, to be continued in some way.
Cameron Craig (01:48:05.886)
For sure, for sure. All right, man, thanks. Appreciate it.
Keith (01:48:10.13)
Awesome. All right, Cam, man. Take care, all right? All right, later.
Cameron Craig (01:48:12.008)
You too. See ya.