Podcasts about Friction

In this episode, we kick things off by examining Tesla's ambitious push into the European freight market as the electric vehicle giant ⁠targets late-2027 customer deliveries for the Semi⁠ after demonstrations begin in the first half of that year. The first European trucks will roll off the Reno, Nevada production line, which is designed for fifty thousand units annually, and will feature a 342-mile usable range with the ability to recover more than sixty percent of range in just thirty minutes using Tesla's new Megacharger network of over one hundred stalls across Europe. Shifting gears to the rails, we examine how Norfolk Southern is positioning its proposed combination with Union Pacific as a transformative step for intermodal freight. According to the railroad's leadership, ⁠the proposed mega-merger is central to removing structural friction from the freight network⁠ by creating single-line service for roughly ten thousand existing lanes and eliminating approximately 2,400 railcar handlings and 60,000 car-miles per day. With Norfolk Southern's intermodal volume already up nearly fourteen percent year-over-year, the railroad argues that removing friction rather than simply undercutting truck prices is the key to capturing highway freight. Finally, we cover a critical new resource for freight brokers navigating heightened liability in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling. Cambridge Mobile Telematics has ⁠officially launched Freight Safety Intelligence, a platform that analyzes carrier driving behavior⁠ from the previous ninety days and generates real-time carrier-level safety scores. The platform leverages data from carriers' existing telematics systems without requiring new hardware, and it arrives at a crucial moment as brokers face increased exposure to negligent-selection claims following the Supreme Court's ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II. ⁠Follow the FreightWaves Today Podcast⁠ ⁠Other FreightWaves Shows⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know there's a whole scientific field that just studies friction?? It's true! And we can apply a lot of those findings to help us stick better to the pole.In this episode we'll dig into why you might be too slippery or too sticky by focusing on friction and research from tribology (much of it drawn from prosthetics studies). We'll talk about how skin, fat and muscle all contribute to grip and how to navigate each. I also break down all the different types of grips and when/why you might want to use each one.Want to train with me? Check out the Science of Slink membership: https://scienceofslink.com/Citations: Gerhardt LC, Strässle V, Lenz A, Spencer ND, Derler S. Influence of epidermal hydration on the friction of human skin against textiles. J R Soc Interface. 2008 Nov 6;5(28):1317-28. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0034. PMID: 18331977; PMCID: PMC2607440. Xu, Z., Sun, H., Tang, W., Fang, X., Kosimov, A. A., & Mamadamon, A. (2026). Influence of muscle fatigue on pain based on friction and brain activation. Tribology International, 112362. (I didn't talk about it, but this is a fun blog post about tribology: https://www.stle.org/files/TLTArchives/2024/12_December/Feature.aspx)Chapters:00:00 Sticky vs Slippery 00:38 Science of Slink Membership02:17 Friction and Tribology Basics03:34 Skin Layers and Hydration06:16 Body Fat and Surface Area10:10 Muscle Tension and Fatigue15:32 Grip Aids Explained20:25 Wrap Up

In this episode, we kick things off by examining Tesla's ambitious push into the European freight market as the electric vehicle giant targets late-2027 customer deliveries for the Semi after demonstrations begin in the first half of that year. The first European trucks will roll off the Reno, Nevada production line, which is designed for fifty thousand units annually, and will feature a 342-mile usable range with the ability to recover more than sixty percent of range in just thirty minutes using Tesla's new Megacharger network of over one hundred stalls across Europe. Shifting gears to the rails, we examine how Norfolk Southern is positioning its proposed combination with Union Pacific as a transformative step for intermodal freight. According to the railroad's leadership, the proposed mega-merger is central to removing structural friction from the freight network by creating single-line service for roughly ten thousand existing lanes and eliminating approximately 2,400 railcar handlings and 60,000 car-miles per day. With Norfolk Southern's intermodal volume already up nearly fourteen percent year-over-year, the railroad argues that removing friction rather than simply undercutting truck prices is the key to capturing highway freight. Finally, we cover a critical new resource for freight brokers navigating heightened liability in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling. Cambridge Mobile Telematics has officially launched Freight Safety Intelligence, a platform that analyzes carrier driving behavior from the previous ninety days and generates real-time carrier-level safety scores. The platform leverages data from carriers' existing telematics systems without requiring new hardware, and it arrives at a crucial moment as brokers face increased exposure to negligent-selection claims following the Supreme Court's ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II. Follow the FreightWaves Today Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CAPTION 1919 VERSAILLES CONFERENCEDiplomatic Strains Impact Global Western AlliancesMary Kissel notes global polls indicate declining trust in American leadership as both the United States and China are perceived as international threats. Friction over tariffs and rhetoric pushed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to pursue European Union associate membership and deeper ties with Beijing. In Ukraine, American requests asking Kyivto spare Russian oil refineries reflect a flawed moral equivalency that undermines deterrence against aggression. Meanwhile, escalating Middle Eastern instability and Houthi chokeholds along Red Sea shipping lanes threaten Saudienergy security, risking a shift where Gulf allies seek Chinese security partnerships if Washington fails to provide reliable military backing today. (2)

1943 WAR EMERGENCY PIPELINECONTENTS THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW 9-16Global Diesel Shortage Spans Multiple ContinentsMichael Bernstam explains Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian refineries impact domestic Russian consumption rather than global markets because Moscow previously banned refined petroleum exports. The worldwide diesel crisis stems from losing 2.5 million barrels daily due to Middle Eastern supply disruptions, Strait of Hormuz closures, and pipeline attacks. With global refineries running at 96% to 98% capacity, facilities face severe quality mismatch issues because domestic shale crude yields less diesel than heavy Middle Eastern imports. Meanwhile, overall Russian oil production dropped by 1.5 million barrels per day. New United States congressional legislation permits potential 100% tariffs on purchasing nations. (1)America Deploys Operational Space Control WeaponsRick Fisher reports Air Force officials publicly confirmed that the United States deployed operational space control weapons capable of protecting joint military forces. A French Space Agency graphic recently detailed orbital assets operated by America, Russia, and China, including telemetry jamming, proximity operations, and kinetic collision satellites. These classified capabilities were maintained secretly across multiple congressional administrations to prevent a dangerous space arms race. Strategic tensions surrounding Iran or potential Russian aggression in Europe likely prompted this public disclosure. Importantly, these conventional defense systems fully comply with established Outer Space Treaty terms because the agreement exclusively bans nuclear weapons. (2)Canada Seeks EU Integration Amid RealignmentCharles Burton reports Canada is rapidly reorienting its economic and defense relationships away from dependency on the United States. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed opening associate membership to Canada, creating a unique alliance covering defense, trade, and personnel movement. Supported by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canadian leaders are promoting infrastructure initiatives to redirect trade flows while granting Europeaccess to critical minerals. Polling indicates that over 70% of Canadians identify with European values, whereas USsympathy dropped to 16% due to trade unpredictability. Canada also quietly strengthened strategic military defense ties with China regarding security. (3)Hellscape Defense Strategy Deters Taiwan InvasionRebecca Grant reports the United States Indo-Pacific Command developed an offensive tactical framework named Hellscape to counter potential Chinese invasions of Taiwan. Designed by Admiral Samuel Paparo, Hellscape deploys swarms of cheap drones, loitering munitions like Damocles, and unmanned vehicles to confuse attacking Chinese forces. This strategy draws upon lessons from Ukrainian drone warfare to disrupt enemy spectrum operations and clear pathways for heavy precision weapons. Regional allies including Japan, Australia, and the Philippines are integrating into this defense architecture. To ensure deterrence succeeds, Taiwan must receive delayed military shipments of advanced electronic warfare systems for its fighter jets without delay. (4)Diplomatic Strains Impact Global Western AlliancesMary Kissel notes global polls indicate declining trust in American leadership as both the United States and China are perceived as international threats. Friction over tariffs and rhetoric pushed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to pursue European Union associate membership and deeper ties with Beijing. In Ukraine, American requests asking Kyivto spare Russian oil refineries reflect a flawed moral equivalency that undermines deterrence against aggression. Meanwhile, escalating Middle Eastern instability and Houthi chokeholds along Red Sea shipping lanes threaten Saudienergy security, risking a shift where Gulf allies seek Chinese security partnerships if Washington fails to provide reliable military backing today. (5)Addressing Transnational Repression Before Summit MeetingPiero Tozzi, co-host Gordon Chang: Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's summit in Washington, Tozzi urges increased protections against Beijing's transnational repression targeting dissidents, Tibetans, and Uyghurs on American soil. China operates clandestine police stations in cities like New York and Boston while using its United Frontapparatus to suppress peaceful protest movements. Grounded in a legalist Leninist governance ideology that demands complete cognitive control, Beijing recently enacted an ethnic unity law requiring families to teach love for the Communist Party. United States foreign policy must prioritize releasing prominent political prisoners, including Hong Kong Catholic publisher Jimmy Lai from solitary confinement in prison. (6)Historical Roots Shape Complex Yemen ConflictGregory Copley explains the ongoing conflict in Yemen reflects deep historical, cultural, and tribal divisions stretching back to pre-Islamic Jewish roots. Mountainous North Yemen, led by Hashemite Zaydis, maintains historical claims as traditional guardians of Mecca and Medina predating Saudi control. Demonstrating sophisticated defense capabilities, North Yemeni forces recently downed a Royal Saudi strike jet. Meanwhile, Egypt refuses to reenter the conflict after its disastrous 1960s war, leaving Oman as the primary regional mediator. Additionally, Canada is strengthening economic ties with Europe and King Charles III to reassert national sovereignty independent of Washington trade policy pressure across global commercial sectors today. (7)European Inflation Escalates Under Energy PressuresSimon Constable reports a severe heatwave in southern France damaged sunflower harvests while diesel prices soared to $9.20 per gallon, causing widespread agricultural and logistical distress. Rising European natural gas costs pushed electricity rates up 12% in one month, driving price hikes across essential agricultural commodities like corn and wheat. Meanwhile, public opposition against artificial intelligence data centers reflects underlying hostility toward wealthy technology figures rather than environmental impact. In the United Kingdom, escalating national debt service costs reached $127 billion annually, far surpassing the nation's $80 billion defense budget during severe ongoing international economic challenges facing European leadership in government circles. (8)Commercial Space Programs Advance Amid ShakeupsBob Zimmerman reports SpaceX is preparing Starship Super Heavy for an orbital test carrying commercial Starlinksatellites, while Amazon booked extra Ariane 6 launches to deploy its constellation. Meanwhile, NASA awarded Blue Origin a $700 million Mars communication satellite contract based on its Blue Ring orbital tug, prompting an unusual formal protest from Rocket Lab. Internationally, China is conducting an unannounced major organizational overhaul of its lunar program following recent mission failures. Additionally, American authorities arrested a Chinese tourist for flying drones over restricted Kennedy Space Center launchpads, and Djibouti joined the Artemis Accords as the newest member nation in global space. (9)

Push that rock up that hill. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode. Sponsors: Shop at Sephora or get 10% off your first purchase at k18hair.com with code RIDE. That's code RIDE at k18hair.com. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/RIDE. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.  Use code RIDE at jonesroadbeauty.com to get a Free Gift with your first purchase! #JonesRoadBeauty  #ad  Try Tinder Double Date — because everything's better with friends. Download Tinder today. Check out https://www.squarespace.com/ride to save 50% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code ride.  Today, Beekeeper's Naturals is giving my listeners an exclusive offer: Go to beekeepersnaturals.com/RIDE or enter code RIDE to get 20% off your order. Beekeeper's Naturals products are also available at Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, Amazon, CVS, and Walgreens. Tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your Tonal purchase with promo code RIDEPOD. Head to Tonal.com! Produced by Dear Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most AI tools promise to make you more productive, but few actually remove the friction hiding in your daily grind. This episode breaks down four AI tools used every single day, not for the novelty, but for the real bottlenecks they eliminate: typing, email triage, meeting notes, and building the small tool you always wished existed. If you want less busywork and more bandwidth for the parts of management that actually matter, this one's for you.Conversation Topics(00:00) Introduction: Becoming Obsessed with AI Tools(00:44) The Core Idea: Removing Friction, Not Just Adding Features(01:59) Wispr Flow: Ditching Typing for Dictation(02:53) Shortwave: Taming Email Overload with AI Sorting(04:18) Granola: Meeting Notes That Write Themselves(05:30) Replit: Building Custom Apps Without Coding(07:12) What These Four Tools Have in Common(07:33) Your Challenge This Week & Closing ThoughtsAdditional Resources✨ Read the full transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u3xuVepkPpSSdju0--Kgu4M8U4qetYczr1h7MmCKGrY/edit?usp=sharing✨ Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadershipwithmamie/✨ Visit my website for more: https://www.themodernmanager.com/✨ Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7jhYz8b16g1SsLia4EhO5w?sub_confirmation=1✨ Check out Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/r?MAMIE12✨ Check out Granola: https://join.granola.ai/t/e74nryr4pc✨ Check out Shortwave: https://www.shortwave.com/✨ Check out Replit: https://replit.com/refer/mamieksJoin my newsletter to get episodes delivered directly to your inbox: https://www.themoddernmanager.comThe Modern Manager is a leadership podcast that helps you close the gap between knowing what good management is and actually doing it. Follow The Modern Manager on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode! #Leadership #ManagementTips #AIforManagers #Productivity #ArtificialIntelligence #WorkSmarter #ManagementSkills #FutureOfWork #TechTools #TimeManagement

Your plan can be “on time and on budget” and still be headed for failure. We sit down with Leslie Ellis, founder of Meaningful Change Consulting, to get brutally clear on why complex change initiatives derail even when leadership teams believe they're doing everything right. If you've ever watched a transformation turn into a flurry of templates, communications, and training while the real problems stay untouched, this conversation names what's missing and what to do about it.We dig into the difference between change management tasks and true change leadership: making trade-offs visible, building shared clarity, and developing the capability to execute. Leslie introduces a simple diagnostic that instantly sharpens decision-making: is the constraint ability (skills, tools, bandwidth, execution capacity) or alignment (coherence, commitment, and coordinated action)? We also unpack a critical nuance that saves teams months of wasted effort: alignment is not agreement, and chasing consensus can slow change more than any skeptic.Friction comes up for a reason. Leslie reframes tension as “strategic tension,” the raw material of organizational change, and explains how curious leaders use it to create commitment instead of short-term compliance. You'll hear a real digital transformation turnaround where everything looked green on the dashboard, yet the team was drowning, and a two-day reset brought clarity, realistic expectations, and better outcomes.If you lead change in the employee benefits industry or any high-stakes environment, you'll leave with a Monday-morning checklist and a leadership mindset reset. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a colleague who's living through a messy rollout, and leave a review so more leaders can find it.

Did the wine industry push away a generation of drinkers by making wine too expensive, intimidating, and inconvenient?This week, we sit down with Los Cuernos founders Zeke Blattler and Cory Assink to discuss why they believe wine has a consumer trial problem and how they plan to fix it. Their solution is premium California wine served in single portion cans and kegs, designed for places where quality wine is often missing.We taste three wines from the Los Cuernos lineup: Sauvignon Blanc, Sparkling Rosé, and their flagship Petite Sirah based Red Blend. Along the way, we discuss stale restaurant pours, the value of nonvintage wine, the science behind canning, and why breweries, burger bars, golf courses, hotels, and outdoor venues could become the next frontier for wine.Can canned wine break through the traditions holding the industry back, or will consumers struggle to look beyond the package?Wines tasted:Los Cuernos Sauvignon BlancLos Cuernos Sparkling RoséLos Cuernos Red BlendLearn more about Los Cuernos through their Instagram, LinkedIn, and online store.Website: https://loscuernos.com/Online Store: https://loscuernos.com/shop/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loscuernoswine/Support the show!Buy us a glass!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://buymeacoffee.com/cheers3⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with the show. We would love to hear from you!Stop Wasting Your Wine on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/stopwastingyourwine/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stop Wasting Your Wine on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@StopWastingYourWine⁠Chapters 00:00 Did the Wine Industry Ruin Itself?00:15 Introducing Los Cuernos02:25 Why the Wines Are Nonvintage03:42 Should You Drink Wine From the Can?05:30 The Idea Cory Initially Rejected11:28 When Wine Became Too Precious14:42 Wine Has a Consumer Trial Problem22:53 Tasting the Sauvignon Blanc26:37 A Sparkling Rosé Built for the Can29:47 Meeting Winemaker Gerardo Espinosa34:13 Is This the Future of Accessible Wine?38:07 Is Canned Wine Inevitable?39:29 Tasting the Sparkling Rosé43:06 The Flagship Red Blend47:04 Why Zeke Almost Rejected Wine Spectator54:28 Can Los Cuernos Help Wine Grow Again?57:41 Reviewing the Los Cuernos Lineup1:02:11 Pick Your Poison1:05:37 Where to Find Los Cuernos1:07:31 Outro

What if one of the most important things we give young people at school is the opportunity to struggle? My guest today, Nicole Dyson, believes classrooms should help young people build the confidence and agility to navigate uncertainty, challenge and change. This is the second time Nicole and I have spoken on The Art of Teaching, and I'm thrilled to welcome her back. Nicole is a multi-award-winning educator, entrepreneur and founder of Future Anything. Across two decades in education, she has worked with more than 130,000 students and teachers, helping schools design learning that builds agency, adaptability and confidence. Her recent TEDx talk explores why the classroom might be one of the safest places for students to struggle, stretch and learn how to respond when the answer is not obvious.

JUNE 1783 KINGSTON ONTARIOU.S. Canada Friction And International DiplomacyMary Kissel assesses escalating trade tensions between President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, driven by disputes over protectionism and retaliatory tariffs. She notes that while both leaders find political advantage in public confrontation ahead of domestic elections, economic integration across energy, banking, and defense remains crucial. Kissel warns against Ottawa using China as an economic counterweight. Turning to European security, Kissel expresses skepticism regarding recent White House diplomatic overtures to Moscow, arguing that negotiating without imposing firm consequences fails to counter Vladimir Putin's unyielding demands and ongoing hybrid warfare tactics across Western Europe. (7)

Richard Hill sits down with Roger Dooley, the behavioural science author and neuromarketing expert behind Brainfluence, Friction and his latest book The Persuasion Engine. He unpacks why 95% of purchase decisions happen below the level of conscious thought and what that means for how eCommerce brands sell, price and design their checkout. Roger walks through the research behind non-conscious buying triggers, including a countdown timer test that lifted conversion by 15% simply by creating urgency. He shares the JCPenney story of what happened when former CEO Ron Johnson stripped out discounts in favour of “everyday fair pricing”. Disclosure, sales collapsed within three quarters, the company nearly went bankrupt, and the old markdown strategy was reinstated almost overnight.  From there the conversation turns to friction, including Amazon's one-click ordering patent, the legal fight with Barnes & Noble that followed, and Steve Jobs paying Amazon $1 million just to license one click for the original iTunes Store. Richard also brings in a live example from an eComOne client, where removing guest checkout in favour of forced account creation quietly killed conversions on low-value orders. This isn't a polished highlight reel of marketing hacks. It's a genuinely practical breakdown of where eCommerce brands are losing sales without realising it, from pricing pages that anchor on the wrong number, to product pages stuffed with logical features and missing the emotional cues that actually move people to buy. Along the way, Roger and Richard cover a wide range of themes including, how AI tracking tools can now show exactly where customers look on a page for the cost of a coffee, what actually makes a testimonial credible, the psychology of price colour and anchoring, and a live experiment showing that AI-written customer messages were rated more empathetic than human-written ones, until people knew which was which.  Roger also shares the lesson in trust and community he took from co-founding College Confidential and a sobering AI case study involving a Starbucks Korea promotion that went badly wrong. If you're running a scaling eCommerce brand and want to understand exactly why customers hesitate, what actually gets them to act, and how to make the buying journey easier without giving away margin, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Listen to the full episode now, and don't forget to hit subscribe. Topics Covered 00:00 – Cold open: friction vs persuasion, pricing psychology 02:33 – 95% of decisions are unconscious (Zaltman's research) 04:23 – Buying psychology across machinery, fragrance and apparel 06:04 – Countdown timer test: +15% conversion 07:59 – The JCPenney story: killing the markdowns 10:19 – Why "friction" is eCommerce's most important word 10:42 – Amazon's one-click patent, Barnes & Noble, and Jobs' $1M payout 12:55 – How Amazon made returns a loyalty weapon 17:43 – The guest checkout mistake costing a client conversions now 18:38 – Inside The Persuasion Engine's "neuromarketing 2.0" 21:23 – AI eye-tracking: predicting where customers look 21:38 – Roger's own invisible CTA fix 23:54 – AI eye-tracking tools: Feng Gui, Neurons Inc, Expose.io 25:16 – Levelling up social proof beyond star ratings 27:39 – Borrowing authority: when a logo does the selling 29:05 – Pricing psychology: red tags and anchoring 33:08 – Quickfire round 36:16 – What College Confidential taught Roger about trust 38:03 – Roger's 3-year AI/eCommerce prediction 38:59 – Starbucks Korea's "Tank Day," and the AI empathy audit fix 41:41 – Book rec: Cialdini's Influence

Our highest desire is for each of you to succeed on your journeys back to our heavenly home. BYU is designed to aid you along that journey to become the person God wants you to become. C. Shane Reese, president of Brigham Young University, delivered this devotional address on September 8, 2026. Read the speech here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Olivier Sibony est professeur à HEC et spécialiste de la décision. Eric Hazan est investisseur et ancien senior partner chez McKinsey. Ils viennent de publier ensemble "Faut-il encore décider ?", un livre qui refuse d'être technophobe comme il refuse d'être technophile, et qui cartographie ce qu'on peut confier à une IA et ce qu'on doit garder pour soi.Je les connais tous les deux, mais séparément, et c'était la première fois que je les avais en face de moi ensemble. Ça se sent : ils se coupent la parole, se corrigent, se chambrent sur les anglicismes, et surtout ils ne sont pas toujours d'accord. C'est exactement ce que je cherchais.Ce qui m'a le plus remué dans cette conversation, c'est cette idée qu'on ne se fait pas déposséder de nos décisions : on les abandonne. Par confort. Parce qu'on est fabriqués pour économiser notre énergie, et qu'une réponse bien formulée par une machine nous suffit largement.Dans cet épisode, nous parlons de l'effet de contentement, du risque de démission, de ce que devient la confiance en soi quand on fait relire chacun de ses mails, de la justice et du recrutement comme zones interdites, du deskilling, de la joie au travail, et de ce scénario de technocratie IA vers lequel on glisse sans l'avoir choisi.J'ai questionné Olivier et Eric sur ce que ça fait aux jobs, sur les valorisations d'OpenAI et d'Anthropic qui dépassent le PIB de la Pologne, et sur ce fameux moment où le médecin, l'ego coincé entre lui et la machine, fait moins bien que la machine seule.Une conversation dense, drôle par moments, et qui m'a laissé avec une question simple : sur quoi est-ce que je refuse de lâcher, moi, et pourquoi ?Citations marquantes« Le risque, c'est d'avoir toujours tendance à se défausser sur la machine, à lui demander une réponse et à finalement abdiquer toute responsabilité. Et ça, c'est un vrai danger. » (Olivier Sibony)« Les meilleurs médecins ont à peu près 74 % d'acuité, la machine 90 %. Mais quand tu mets les meilleurs médecins avec la machine, ils n'ont que 76 %. » (Eric Hazan)« Comment tu vas utiliser une IA comme partenaire de réflexion pour mieux réfléchir, et non pas comme une béquille sur laquelle tu vas te reposer pour ne pas réfléchir ? Toute la différence est là. » (Olivier Sibony)« L'IA est en train de devenir l'infrastructure du monde et notre infrastructure personnelle. On marche sur un petit tapis roulant, et on n'a aucun moyen de savoir comment il a été programmé. » (Eric Hazan)« Penser est un plaisir. Réfléchir n'est pas seulement instrumental : on le fera aussi pour le plaisir, comme on joue du piano. » (Olivier Sibony) Idées centrales discutées 1. L'IA générative pense comme notre système 1, et c'est exactement le piège (03:30 – 07:20)L'histoire de l'IA a commencé par une tentative de répliquer le système 2 : les règles, le calcul, les systèmes experts des années 70-80. Ça n'a jamais marché. L'IA générative, elle, imite le système 1 : rapide, fluide, spontanée, presque humaine. Pourquoi ça compte : quand ChatGPT nous dit de vérifier, il nous demande d'activer notre système 2. Or c'est fatigant. Alors on lit la réponse avec notre système 1, on la trouve plausible parce qu'elle est bien formulée, et on ne vérifie pas.2. L'effet de contentement et le risque de démission (08:00 – 09:40)Se satisfaire d'un résultat correct sans se demander s'il en existe un meilleur. Olivier l'appelle l'effet de contentement, Eric y ajoute le risque de démission : on abdique la responsabilité de la décision. Pourquoi ça compte : le problème n'est pas que la machine décide mal, c'est que personne ne décide plus vraiment. Et quand tu n'as pas réfléchi par toi-même, tu ne sais même pas ce que ta réponse aurait donné.3. Un LLM généraliste n'est jamais un bon outil de décision (14:40 – 16:00)Un outil d'aide à la décision, c'est un outil entraîné spécifiquement sur ta décision, avec tes objectifs, tes données, et testé sur un échantillon suffisant pour vérifier qu'il fait mieux que toi. Pourquoi ça compte : personne ne demanderait à ChatGPT le prix du siège d'un Paris–New York. Et pourtant on lui demande des décisions de recrutement, de couple, de carrière.4. Le paradoxe du médecin : l'ego entre la machine et le diagnostic (12:00 – 13:20)74 % d'acuité pour les meilleurs médecins, 90 % pour la machine, 76 % pour les deux ensemble. L'expérience du praticien s'intercale et dégrade le résultat. Pourquoi ça compte : ça retourne l'intuition dominante du "human in the loop". Sur certaines décisions, l'humain dans la boucle est le maillon qui abîme la performance. Le vrai gain, c'est de rendre au médecin le temps de l'empathie, pas de maximiser le nombre de patients.5. Performance x acceptabilité : la carte des décisions (24:00 – 26:15)Deux axes. Ce qui est performant et acceptable : trading haute fréquence, logistique, optimisation de données massives avec des règles claires. Ce qui est performant mais pas encore accepté : la voiture autonome, malgré plus de 40 000 morts par an au volant aux États-Unis. Ce qui reste inacceptable : la justice, l'évaluation des personnes. Pourquoi ça compte : un humain doit juger un autre humain en le regardant dans les yeux. La théâtralité du procès fait partie de la procédure démocratique, pas du folklore.6. Le deskilling n'est pas nouveau, la vraie question est de savoir ce qu'on refuse de perdre (26:15 – 30:00)On a cessé d'extraire des racines carrées à la main, on a gardé les tables de multiplication. Le GPS abîme peut-être l'hippocampe. Perdre une compétence libère du temps pour autre chose. Pourquoi ça compte : la bonne question n'est pas "est-ce que je perds des compétences", mais "quelles compétences, pour qui, sont assez importantes pour que je refuse de les perdre". Au cas par cas, personne par personne.7. Les jobs ne disparaissent pas d'un coup, l'économie est visqueuse (41:00 – 49:00)Le FMI évalue 22 à 25 % de la population active à risque d'automatisation quasi totale. Mais la transition industrielle prend une quinzaine d'années, et les entreprises ne font pas ce qui serait pourtant rentable. Deux consultants avec un demi-siècle de métier à eux deux l'ont vérifié mille fois. Pourquoi ça compte : les tâches disparaissent, les jobs se reconfigurent, d'autres apparaissent. Il y a plus de radiologues qu'avant. Il y a vingt ans, on ne pouvait pas imaginer le métier de podcaster.8. Il manque une infrastructure de la confiance (55:40 – 57:20)Quand tu achètes 400 grammes de carottes, tu ne demandes pas si la balance est truquée : quelqu'un l'a certifiée, et ce quelqu'un est certifié par l'État. Pour l'IA, cette chaîne n'existe pas. Pourquoi ça compte : aujourd'hui, un DRH sait que son outil de tri de CV est bon parce que la startup qui le lui a vendu le lui assure. C'est comme demander au boucher si la viande est bonne.Questions posées dans l'interviewPourquoi écrire ce livre à deux, et qu'est-ce que la décision et l'IA se disent l'une à l'autre quand on les croise ?C'est quoi le système 1 et le système 2, et pourquoi cette distinction éclaire-t-elle l'histoire entière de l'IA ?Qu'est-ce que l'effet de contentement, et comment savoir qu'on est en train d'y tomber ?Que se passe-t-il quand des millions de gens utilisent un LLM comme psy, sachant qu'il ne produit qu'une moyenne statistique de toutes les réponses possibles ?Est-ce que ça vous dérange que notre infrastructure cognitive quotidienne soit américaine, entraînée sur des valeurs qui ne sont pas les nôtres ?Quelles sont les décisions qu'on ne devrait jamais déléguer à une IA, et pourquoi la justice en fait partie ?Le deskilling : où est la limite entre une compétence qu'on peut abandonner et une compétence qui nous constitue ?Que fait l'IA à la confiance en soi de celui qui n'ose plus envoyer un mail sans le faire relire ?Comment repense-t-on la formation des juniors quand on automatise précisément les tâches qui servaient à les former ?Quels sont les jobs réellement à risque, et que valent les prédictions des entreprises qui ont besoin de justifier leur valorisation ?Quelles questions un dirigeant doit-il se poser avant de décider ce qu'il délègue à une IA ?Comment sait-on qu'on peut faire confiance à un système d'IA, et qui est censé le certifier ?Que penser d'un pays qui nomme une IA à la place d'un ministre, ou d'un patron qui remplace son management intermédiaire par des agents ?À quoi voulez-vous ouvrir, et à quoi voulez-vous claquer la porte ?Références citées dans l'épisodeLivres et auteurs"Faut-il encore décider ?", Olivier Sibony et Eric Hazan, le livre discuté (01:00)Daniel Kahneman, "Système 1 / Système 2" ("Thinking, Fast and Slow"), socle de toute la première partie (02:56, 03:35)Chercheurs et acteurs de l'IAYann LeCun, ex-responsable de l'IA chez Meta, sur les limites des Transformers et les World Models (37:40 – 40:40)Alex Lebrun et AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence Lab), société créée à Paris, valorisée environ 3,5 milliards de dollars pour environ 1 milliard levé (40:20 – 41:00)Fei-Fei Li, ex-Google, citée comme l'une des rares personnes travaillant sur les World Models (40:00)Mark Zuckerberg, annonce de son clone IA accessible à tous ses employés (59:40)Jack Dorsey, patron de Block (ex-Square), suppression annoncée du management intermédiaire, note "de la hiérarchie à l'intelligence" (60:00 – 60:40)Elon Musk, cité pour son scénario d'IA maximaliste (50:50)Études et institutionsÉtude Anthropic sur les utilisateurs qui perdent confiance dans leur propre système de valeurs (10:45)Étude Brookings sur l'automatisation qui supprime les barreaux de l'échelle de promotion interne, et sur les tâches automatisées qui faisaient partie de la joie au travail (30:50 – 33:00)FMI : 22 à 25 % de la population active à risque d'automatisation quasi totale (46:20)État du Maine et une douzaine d'autres États américains interdisant de nouveaux data centers (43:50)Professeurs d'université français se déclarant objecteurs de conscience face à l'IA générative (43:30)Outils et conceptsChatGPT, Claude, Gemini (09:40, 05:40)NotebookLM, cité comme piste de contrôle des sources (57:20)Friction fonctionnelle : une IA qui pose des questions au lieu de donner des réponses (52:00)Codécision, modèle central du livre (22:30, 54:30)Biais d'automatisation, effet de contentement, deskillingDestruction créatrice de Schumpeter (45:50)Personnalités mentionnées par GregEsther Perel, comme exemple de figure que les gens demandent aux LLM d'imiter sur les relations de couple (10:00)Timestamps clés 00:00 – Introduction Faut-il encore décider ? La question de l'épisode, posée d'entrée : où suis-je pertinent, où la machine l'est-elle davantage, et pourquoi déléguons-nous plus que nous ne devrions.01:50 – Deux auteurs, deux expertises Pourquoi écrire ce livre à deux : Olivier a passé sa vie sur la décision, Eric sur l'IA. Un livre qui refuse à la fois la technophobie et la technophilie.03:30 – Système 1, système 2, et l'histoire de l'IA L'IA des années 70-80 voulait copier notre pensée formelle et a échoué. L'IA générative imite notre pensée intuitive, et c'est pour ça qu'elle nous paraît presque magique.06:10 – Pourquoi on ne vérifie jamais Le système 1 est toujours actif. Vérifier demande un effort. Comme la machine s'exprime bien, on trouve sa réponse plausible et on s'arrête là.08:00 – L'effet de contentement Se satisfaire d'un résultat correct sans se demander s'il en existe un meilleur. Le moment où on cesse d'être exigeant.09:00 – Le risque de démission Déléguer les décisions qu'on ne devrait pas déléguer, par paresse. Et l'usage de l'IA générative comme psy, qui n'est qu'une moyenne statistique de toutes les réponses possibles.11:00 – Le biais d'automatisation Plus la machine est sophistiquée, plus on lui fait confiance. Y compris dans des contextes de guerre où elle indique où tirer.12:00 – Le chiffre qui dérange 74 % pour les meilleurs médecins, 90 % pour la machine, 76 % pour les deux ensemble. L'ego du praticien s'intercale et dégrade le diagnostic.14:00 – Un compagnon électronique, est-ce grave ? Distinguer la conversation qui tient compagnie de la décision. Olivier assume : il n'a pas de problème avec la première.14:40 – Vos objectifs, pas ceux de la machine Pourquoi un LLM généraliste n'est jamais un bon outil de décision, et ce qu'est un vrai outil d'aide à la décision.16:00 – Le tapis roulant L'IA devient l'infrastructure du monde et notre infrastructure personnelle, programmée par d'autres, pour leurs objectifs. Et l'anecdote des dash que l'IA refuse d'abandonner.19:00 – Le vrai sujet, ce sont les finalités Plutôt que traquer les biais de la machine américaine, définir les objectifs qu'on veut poursuivre. Exemple concret sur le recrutement : le mauvais prompt et le bon.22:30 – Déléguer, codécider, refuser Les trois régimes. Quand un radiologue confie ses radios à l'IA pour passer plus de temps avec son patient, ce n'est pas du temps perdu.24:00 – La carte : performance et acceptabilité Trading et logistique d'un côté, voiture autonome dans la zone grise, justice de l'autre. Un humain doit juger un autre humain.26:15 – Le deskilling Les tables de multiplication, la racine carrée à la main, le GPS et l'hippocampe. Chaque compétence perdue libère du temps, mais lesquelles refuse-t-on de perdre ?28:50 – Penser est un plaisir On peut obtenir un morceau infiniment meilleur en appuyant sur un bouton, et pourtant des gens jouent encore du piano. L'activité mentale comme fin en soi.29:50 – L'ennui des enfants Un passage indispensable à la construction cognitive, devenu rare. Et la réponse d'Olivier, qui déplace le problème vers les parents.30:30 – Les juniors, la formation, la joie au travail L'automatisation retire des barreaux à l'échelle de la promotion interne. Et elle automatise parfois précisément ce qui donnait de la joie au travail.33:50 – La perte de confiance en soi Celui qui n'ose plus envoyer un mail en anglais sans le faire relire. Est-ce l'IA qui abîme la confiance, ou est-ce qu'elle montre où était la barre ?36:50 – Une IA qui penserait comme un système 2 ? Le Graal technique : garder la richesse et la vitesse, sans les erreurs de raisonnement.37:40 – Yann LeCun et les World Models Pourquoi il n'y a pas de voitures autonomes à Paris, pourquoi une IA ne sait pas prévoir la chute d'un verre, et ce que changeraient des modèles qui comprennent le monde en 3D.41:00 – Les jobs : ce que dit le hype et ce que dit la réalité Les valorisations d'OpenAI et d'Anthropic dépassent le PIB de la Pologne. Il faut bien justifier ça par une révolution radicale et rapide.43:20 – Le backlash a déjà commencé Professeurs objecteurs de conscience, États américains qui interdisent les data centers. Extrapoler une tendance sans anticiper les réactions est l'erreur de prévision la plus courante.45:00 – Tâches, jobs, et manque d'imagination Il y a plus de radiologues qu'avant. Et il y a vingt ans, personne ne pouvait imaginer le métier de podcaster.46:20 – Les chiffres et la viscosité de l'économie 22 à 25 % de la population active à risque selon le FMI, mais une transition sur une quinzaine d'années. Ce qui est rentable n'est pas fait pour autant.48:40 – Un plan Marshall de la formation La seule chose vraiment utile à faire, et pourquoi il ne faut pas mettre de bâtons dans les roues de la transition.50:40 – Le scénario technocratie IA Un monde où quelques acteurs technologiques maîtrisent notre destin. On y va, non par bêtise, mais parce qu'on ne se pose pas les questions.53:40 – Les bonnes questions pour un dirigeant Ai-je assez de données ? Mes objectifs sont-ils clairs ? Et surtout : comment je sais que je peux lui faire confiance ?55:40 – Le test du boucher Un DRH qui sait que son outil de tri est bon parce que le vendeur le lui affirme. Là où on recevait 1 000 CV, on en reçoit 10 000.57:00 – L'infrastructure de la confiance 400 grammes de carottes, une balance certifiée, un service de l'État. Ce qui existe pour l'épicier n'existe pas encore pour l'IA.58:00 – Une IA ministre, un clone de Zuckerberg La croyance sous-jacente : le management ne serait qu'un tuyau de transmission d'informations. Il suffit d'avoir travaillé un peu en entreprise pour voir le problème.61:40 – Ouvrir la porte, claquer la porte Ce à quoi les deux invités veulent ouvrir, et ce qu'ils refusent : le catastrophisme technophobe qui suppose, sans jamais le dire, que l'humain est parfait. Suggestion d'autres épisodes à écouter : #188 Comment prendre de meilleures décisions? Avec Olivier Sibony (https://audmns.com/yXyKFbD) #357 Eduquer nos enfants à l'ère de l'intelligence artificielle avec Mathilde Cerioli (partie 1) (https://audmns.com/yftVVet) #324 Une Intelligence Artificielle comme amoureux? La réalité depasse la fiction avec Naomi Roth (https://audmns.com/tONiUZI)Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

A text about how life rewards us with friction and what can we learn from facing it instead of running from it or indulging in too many pleasures. A story about being a professional pianist, becoming a parent and creating a film in the Canadian forests. You'll see how it is all connected! Get full access to PianoBuffs at pianobuffs.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Carl talks with Stephen from Digital Serenity about the growing frustration of living in a digital world where apps, passwords, and account systems create constant friction, including real examples of being locked out of essential services like parking apps.They discuss why even tech-savvy people can get trapped by company-side login loops, and why using an agnostic password manager (rather than browser-based password saving) helps across browsers and devices. Stephen advises avoiding single sign-on when possible due to privacy and identity risks, explains two-factor authentication, and describes how passkeys work and why they still often require fallback passwords. He outlines his coaching-style service, including audits, “lost phone” simulations, and five pillars of digital health, and emphasizes using tech to improve life while maintaining an analog balance.00:00 Welcome Back Stephen00:15 Digital Friction Reality02:08 Parking App Password Fail05:22 Digital Locksmith Analogy07:29 Browser Password Managers10:53 Privacy And Neural Data14:49 Passkeys And Simulations16:46 Five Pillars Coaching19:31 Password First Principles23:38 AI Search And Photos25:15 Audience Q And Wrap28:46 Portuguese Farewell Outro29:19 A Team Promo TagBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-good-morning-portugal-podcast-with-carl-munson--2903992/support.Get help moving to and living in Portugal

This week! Two Nintendo Directs loom on the horizon, Sony's State of Play has some highlights, Double Fine launches their Kickstarter, and Sonic picks up a gun in Fortnite (but it's fine, because it's not actually Sonic). Then it's off to What'cha Been Playing, where Greg wraps up Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy and dives into the Final Fantasy Resonance demo, and CJ works through Onimusha, Blood Dungeon, Sword Art Online, and a very janky, very entertaining Halloween The Game. Join us, won't you? https://youtube.com/live/BAYvns-uqAc News Zelda Direct and a Nintendo Direct this week Nintendo updating games for SW2 — Pikmin 3 and MK8D New NES games added to NSO Sony held a State of Play LEGO PlayStation is real Until Dawn 2 got help from Ad Hoc Studio Keeper is on PS5 (also, the Double Fine Kickstarter) Rhapsody in Scarlet Sonic in Fortnite is a robot so he can use a gun What'cha Been Playing Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy (Greg) Final Fantasy Resonance demo (Greg & CJ) Onimusha: Way of the Sword demo (CJ) Blood Dungeon (CJ) Halloween: The Game (CJ) Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad demo (CJ) Socials P1 Bluesky P1 Discord P1 Twitch P1 Patreon Greg's Twitch Greg's Patreon P1 Facebook P1 YouTube Check out Greg's web series Generation 16 - click here. Thanks for listening! Don't forget to visit our new website at www.playeronepodcast.com. Running time: 01:35:34

S6:E78 AI doesn't arrive inside a business as a neutral cure for everything that isn't working. It encounters the decision structures, silos, leadership behaviors, customer experience and culture that are already there and then it can make them move considerably faster. That's the tension at the center of this episode of Small Business Stories with Tullio Siragusa, founder of Inventrica Advisory. Tullio works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, leadership and organizational transformation. His argument is refreshingly human: don't automate away the very qualities that made people value your business in the first place. If customers don't trust the experience you give them, more automation won't manufacture trust. If employees don't have sufficient autonomy to make decisions, adding faster technology won't necessarily produce better decisions. And if what your business promises externally doesn't match what people experience internally, AI can amplify that contradiction at scale. That's where this conversation intersects directly with Dr. LL's work on misinterpretation risk and Decision Integrity: the signals a business sends aren't created by marketing alone. They're created by how the business actually behaves.

S6:E78 AI doesn't arrive inside a business as a neutral cure for everything that isn't working. It encounters the decision structures, silos, leadership behaviors, customer experience and culture that are already there and then it can make them move considerably faster. That's the tension at the center of this episode of Small Business Stories with Tullio Siragusa, founder of Inventrica Advisory. Tullio works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, leadership and organizational transformation. His argument is refreshingly human: don't automate away the very qualities that made people value your business in the first place. If customers don't trust the experience you give them, more automation won't manufacture trust. If employees don't have sufficient autonomy to make decisions, adding faster technology won't necessarily produce better decisions. And if what your business promises externally doesn't match what people experience internally, AI can amplify that contradiction at scale. That's where this conversation intersects directly with Dr. LL's work on misinterpretation risk and Decision Integrity: the signals a business sends aren't created by marketing alone. They're created by how the business actually behaves.

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Summary In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship, consulting psychologists and authors of Friction: How Tension, Emotion and Change Reveal Better Leaders. Project managers are trained to remove blockers, and much of the time that's exactly right. But Maggie and Ross draw a distinction that's easy to miss: some friction is simply waste, and some friction is information. You'll hear how the unwritten rules we learned about emotion early in life still shape how we lead, what starts happening in a room before an irritated leader says a word, and the four words Ross thinks can rescue a team meeting. We also dig into why burnout is often a system design problem instead of a self-care problem, what a project leader can actually do about structural friction when they can't redesign the whole system, and which human capabilities are worth protecting as AI makes more of our work faster and easier. If you're looking for a more practical way to read the tension on your team and use what it's telling you, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "But I think the unwritten rule at home was that talking about emotions and living through them safely were two distinct things." "Humans need things, and sometimes they don't even know what they need until you are together in a space or in a call." "You don't ask questions. You don't bring up creative ideas because you have no idea how that's really gonna go given what you're watching a leader do." "But I think the older I've gotten, the more convinced I am that our job as adults inside organizations is not necessarily to be perfect, but it's to repair as fast as possible when you make a mistake, and that's the thing that doesn't happen when people are scared." "I've found that these four words can save your team (and marriage): 'I'm experiencing some friction'." "It helps me remember that between the stimulus and the response, I have space, and the more that I give myself, the better." "There is no real way to separate task and relationship because the humans are doing the tasks." "Being the hero may allow you to solve massive problems or create really compelling products in the short term, but it's not a sustainable way to run a business because businesses are run by people and people have limits." "It's a good example where AI makes you more productive, like, you got 'em done faster, and almost entirely strips the meaning out of it." "And we need to take seriously that our kids need to learn to fail so that they develop resilience." Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:14 Start of Interview 02:23 The Unwritten Rules Maggie Learned About Emotion 04:06 Growing Up in Ross's House 05:41 Why Ross Was Skeptical of EQ 08:22 What Ross's Pushback Changed for Maggie 11:01 Do You Have EQ, or Do You Do EQ? 13:06 Can We Get Too Good at Smoothing the Path? 16:56 Where Ross Deliberately Leaves Friction in Place 18:46 What AI Missed When They Tried Using It on the Book 20:35 Leadership as Emotional Intelligence in Action 20:50 What Happens When an Irritated Leader Walks In 24:39 Four Words That Can Change the Room 27:00 When Your Body Writes the Story First 29:28 Maggie's Physical Cue and How She Creates Space 32:55 Burnout as a System Design Problem 35:28 Patterns, Hero Ball, and Structural Friction 37:00 A First Move When You Can't Redesign the System 38:39 Which Human Capabilities Should We Protect From AI? 42:11 What Maggie Refuses to Outsource 43:27 Parenting: When to Remove Friction, When to Allow It 46:22 The Tin Can Phone and a Kid Who Made Her Own Plans 48:44 End of Interview 49:18 Andy Comments After the Interview 53:13 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Maggie, Ross, and their book at TalentSmartEQ.com/friction. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 397 with Dr. Julia DiGangi. It's a discussion about emotions that has stuck with Andy for years, and it's a great supplement to today's conversation. Episode 394 with Joshua Freedman. Joshua is a leading voice on emotional intelligence, making this a really good follow-up to Friction. Episode 446 with Adam Galinsky. Helpful insights on how to inspire those around us instead of sucking the life out of them. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Emotional Intelligence, Friction, Conflict, Psychological Safety, Burnout, Team Culture, Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, Self-Awareness, Communication The following music was used for this episode: Music: Ignotus by Agnese Valmaggia License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Nathan Frank, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Aetna, discusses how AI and digital tools are simplifying prior authorization, improving interoperability and enhancing member and provider experiences. He also shares Aetna's approach to responsible AI, emphasizing human connection, trust and practical technology solutions that reduce administrative burden.

Could the Antichrist already be alive today…and would Christians even recognize him?In this episode of Faith & Friction, Annaly Mawire sits down with pastor, author and end-times researcher Ryan Speakman to examine a provocative theory about the identity and origins of the biblical Antichrist.Ryan believes the biblical clues may point somewhere many Christians aren't looking. His case takes us through the tribe of Dan, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, Daniel's “king of the north,” Syria, Islamic end-times prophecy and the mysterious figure Muslims call the Mahdi.And eventually, Ryan names the world leader he believes could be a serious candidate for the Antichrist.Rather than simply accepting the theory, Annaly puts it to the test.In this conversation:What does the Bible actually tell us about the Antichrist?Could the Antichrist come from the tribe of Dan?What happened to the Ten Lost Tribes?Could the Antichrist be both Syrian and Israelite?What does Daniel's “king of the north” actually mean?Does Daniel 9:26 point toward a Roman/Greco-Roman Antichrist?Could Islam's Mahdi actually be the biblical Antichrist?Could Islam play a role in Tribulation persecution?Why does Ryan believe Ahmed al-Sharaa deserves attention?And what evidence could prove his theory wrong?QUESTION: After hearing Ryan's case, are you convinced…or not? Let us know in the comments ⬇️

When it comes to maintaining a nutritional supplement regimen, the decisive question is not "what's in the bottle" — it's what makes a person actually take it, day after day, long after the first burst of motivation fades Motivation behaves like weather: it rolls in and rolls out. Any routine that depends on feeling inspired every morning is built on sand Friction is where habits die. Every extra step becomes another reason to skip a dose, and people rarely quit a supplement routine in one dramatic moment; they drift, one missed dose at a time We are creatures of cue and context: habits anchored to something we already do, like a meal, tend to stick, while habits that depend on memory and willpower tend to evaporate So, we're redesigning some of our supplements to work with how people actually behave — fewer steps and a food-first format anchored to eating — so staying consistent barely depends on willpower at all

In this episode, Peggy Duggan, MD - EVP, Chief Physician Executive and Chief Medical Officer, Tampa General Hospital, discusses addressing physician burnout by reducing administrative friction, using ambient AI and creating space for physicians to lead improvement efforts. She also shares how transparent data and a shared focus on patient outcomes can align physicians across different employment models.

01. Doshi, Dimod - Want U 02. Groove Division - All For You 03. Loboski & Elipsa - Another World 04. Bensley - Sinking Ship. (D&B Mix) 05. Daynamix - Initiate 06. Shockone, Sless, Indy Skies - Golden Hour 07. Icons - Angels In Our Mind 08. Jordin Sparks, Nghtmre - No Air 09. Immortals - Do It All Again 10. Pantherium - Crash Landing 11. Goddard. & Charlotte Haining - Stamina 12. Culture Shock - U & I 13. Ryan Audley & Mage - Brockout 14. Andromedik, Teddy Bee - Up 15. Coop'd Up - Straight From The Underground 16. Nocturnist - Runway 17. Dimension & Subsonic - Ghost Town 18. Mjoi - Energy 19. Kaizah & Luv-li - Rhythm Flow 20. Apokain - Lose It All 21. Drum Dad & Bass Boy, Churcher - Bounce 22. M'go - Biopunk 23. Dnb Doctor, Ichor - Disorders 24. Andy C, Mali-koa - Come Together 25. Synthetic - Bullet In The Heart 26. Mage - Yayu 27. Steve Hartz & Ddrey - Won't Look Back 28. Rudimental, Original Koffee, Winny - Send Shots 29. Koven - wHERE the rhythm goes 30. Bugwell - The Chain 31. Eskei83 - The Champ Is Here (Festival VIP) 32. Fuze (UK) - Hands Up High 33. Lee Mvtthews & Cammie Robinson - Who Do You Run To 34. Xtinctor - Work It 35. Document One - Holy Moly (VIP) 36. Emzee & Kralojc - HIT EM 37. Sens Age - Turn It Louder 38. Yasuki & Nbc9 - I'm In Love 39. Dub Elements - Bring It Back 40. Yehor Got Your Money 41. Ragemode, Chrillio - Without You 42. Punchman & Monahova - Gde Ti? 43. Zombie Cats - Gozer 44. Ac13 & Nct - Spinning 45. Charley Stride, Acelin - Sink Or Swim 46. Harriet Jaxxon - Motorola (feat. Mila Falls) 47. Friction, Irah - Lead Dem 48. S.I.O.N, Motexx - Taste My Love 49. Nuvertal - Cartoon Ñhase 50. Ichor - The Exorcist 51. Neonlight - LEAVING WONDERLAND 52. Akov - WHTNF 53. Absu_ntql - Norowareta 54. Tntklz - Reckoning (Stonx Remix) 55. DJ Ferro - Hedonist 56. Gravitape - Rudra 57. Magnetude - Plan B 58. Nerv3 - I Don't Know 59. Dylemma, 666 - Hands Up 60. Inerpois, Back Up, Aptom - Technoid Galaxy 61. Tom Hostile & Section 63 - Framework 62. Ring Noord, The Upbeats - No Secret 63. Minor Forms, Crystal Clear - Nightmares 64. Theoretical - Creation 65. Dkn, Hologram - Louder 66. Roadboyz, Bad Legs - Crazy Roll 67. Lymitless - Aura Farming 68. Georgie Riot, Freemxn, Ekstatic - Divine 69. Tsuki - CLOSE2U 70. Chimalli - Devastator 71. Run In The Jungle, D*minds, T>i - Destroyer 72. Sxn & Jxn - Amnesia 73. Kublai - Maaannn You Crazy 74. Disarm. - Ambush 75. Tc - Lean 76. Manuve - Abyss 77. Posk, Bunnerz - Carmela 78. Creatures - Dubble Trubble 79. Monolyth - Decimate 80. C-du - Donut 81. Voltage & Ayanna - Free 82. Serial Killaz & Mad Sam - Man Ah Junglist 83. Sub:liminal & Kvr - En Busca del Sol 84. The Upbeats - Haunted 85. Arfur Six - In The Jungle 86. Disrupta - Inside The Rider (Samuari Breaks Edit) 87. Milo - Junglist Shuffle 88. Darkyycomet - Fluttery

01. Doshi, Dimod - Want U 02. Groove Division - All For You 03. Loboski & Elipsa - Another World 04. Bensley - Sinking Ship. (D&B Mix) 05. Daynamix - Initiate 06. Shockone, Sless, Indy Skies - Golden Hour 07. Icons - Angels In Our Mind 08. Jordin Sparks, Nghtmre - No Air 09. Immortals - Do It All Again 10. Pantherium - Crash Landing 11. Goddard. & Charlotte Haining - Stamina 12. Culture Shock - U & I 13. Ryan Audley & Mage - Brockout 14. Andromedik, Teddy Bee - Up 15. Coop'd Up - Straight From The Underground 16. Nocturnist - Runway 17. Dimension & Subsonic - Ghost Town 18. Mjoi - Energy 19. Kaizah & Luv-li - Rhythm Flow 20. Apokain - Lose It All 21. Drum Dad & Bass Boy, Churcher - Bounce 22. M'go - Biopunk 23. Dnb Doctor, Ichor - Disorders 24. Andy C, Mali-koa - Come Together 25. Synthetic - Bullet In The Heart 26. Mage - Yayu 27. Steve Hartz & Ddrey - Won't Look Back 28. Rudimental, Original Koffee, Winny - Send Shots 29. Koven - wHERE the rhythm goes 30. Bugwell - The Chain 31. Eskei83 - The Champ Is Here (Festival VIP) 32. Fuze (UK) - Hands Up High 33. Lee Mvtthews & Cammie Robinson - Who Do You Run To 34. Xtinctor - Work It 35. Document One - Holy Moly (VIP) 36. Emzee & Kralojc - HIT EM 37. Sens Age - Turn It Louder 38. Yasuki & Nbc9 - I'm In Love 39. Dub Elements - Bring It Back 40. Yehor Got Your Money 41. Ragemode, Chrillio - Without You 42. Punchman & Monahova - Gde Ti? 43. Zombie Cats - Gozer 44. Ac13 & Nct - Spinning 45. Charley Stride, Acelin - Sink Or Swim 46. Harriet Jaxxon - Motorola (feat. Mila Falls) 47. Friction, Irah - Lead Dem 48. S.I.O.N, Motexx - Taste My Love 49. Nuvertal - Cartoon Ñhase 50. Ichor - The Exorcist 51. Neonlight - LEAVING WONDERLAND 52. Akov - WHTNF 53. Absu_ntql - Norowareta 54. Tntklz - Reckoning (Stonx Remix) 55. DJ Ferro - Hedonist 56. Gravitape - Rudra 57. Magnetude - Plan B 58. Nerv3 - I Don't Know 59. Dylemma, 666 - Hands Up 60. Inerpois, Back Up, Aptom - Technoid Galaxy 61. Tom Hostile & Section 63 - Framework 62. Ring Noord, The Upbeats - No Secret 63. Minor Forms, Crystal Clear - Nightmares 64. Theoretical - Creation 65. Dkn, Hologram - Louder 66. Roadboyz, Bad Legs - Crazy Roll 67. Lymitless - Aura Farming 68. Georgie Riot, Freemxn, Ekstatic - Divine 69. Tsuki - CLOSE2U 70. Chimalli - Devastator 71. Run In The Jungle, D*minds, T>i - Destroyer 72. Sxn & Jxn - Amnesia 73. Kublai - Maaannn You Crazy 74. Disarm. - Ambush 75. Tc - Lean 76. Manuve - Abyss 77. Posk, Bunnerz - Carmela 78. Creatures - Dubble Trubble 79. Monolyth - Decimate 80. C-du - Donut 81. Voltage & Ayanna - Free 82. Serial Killaz & Mad Sam - Man Ah Junglist 83. Sub:liminal & Kvr - En Busca del Sol 84. The Upbeats - Haunted 85. Arfur Six - In The Jungle 86. Disrupta - Inside The Rider (Samuari Breaks Edit) 87. Milo - Junglist Shuffle 88. Darkyycomet - Fluttery

In this episode, Peggy Duggan, MD - EVP, Chief Physician Executive and Chief Medical Officer, Tampa General Hospital, discusses addressing physician burnout by reducing administrative friction, using ambient AI and creating space for physicians to lead improvement efforts. She also shares how transparent data and a shared focus on patient outcomes can align physicians across different employment models.

Somewhere in Korea there's a climbing gear store on the second floor with no stairs — just a giant rock in the middle of the room. You want in? You climb. It filters out every poser before they touch the merchandise. Only the exact customers the store wants ever reach the register.That store is the entire episode. Most detailers do the opposite — red carpet for anyone with a pulse and a car, then wondering why the calendar is full of price shoppers.Shawn's back from vacation having finally watched The Social Dilemma — in Spanish, social network is "redes sociales," the same word as a fishing net. Sit with that. And it was retraining his own algorithm on purpose that surfaced the rock store that built this whole conversation.The guys get surgical about friction versus positioning. Friction slows a ready buyer. Positioning puts a deliberate climb between you and the wrong customer. Qualifying isn't "they clicked my ad" — that's free. The real distinction is ready versus WILLING — willing to maintain their vehicle, commit to the relationship, and climb. Marshall's line of the year: the right customer doesn't say "I have to climb that rock." They say "I GET to."Marshall's longtime customer looks around and says "a lot of cleaning going on here." Not detailing. Cleaning. That's what people value — and cleanliness is a class of values, not a tax bracket.Industry gut-check: the $4,000-coating ego era was a moment in time, never the industry. It's 2026. One-year coatings like Uno dominate because they're the easiest yes in car care. Sell ten years of protection ONE YEAR AT A TIME. You're not selling details — you maintain vehicles.Plus the logo test: strip your branding off your last ad. Can a stranger tell what you sell? Most can't.Then the big one: REV THE RAPTOR is coming. Luna trained a new AI hunter — a marketing department in an app. Rev studies your territory: events, weather, news, customer data. Then Rev hunts — flyers, sales scripts, profiled call lists of past customers, delivered on autopilot. One free hunt monthly, credits to throttle up, free app, open to everyone — even other (shitty) systems. Fire the $2K/month agency. Beta drops Friday with limited, cherry-picked spots — you'll climb for this one too. And the HyperClean growth program exits beta: everyone auto-activated. Mobile detailers — add your address. Coatings can't ship to a mystery.⚡ Key TakeawaysPosition, Don't Add Friction: Friction slows ready buyers. Positioning filters wrong-fit customers before they waste your time.Willing Beats Ready: Ad clicks mean nothing. Qualify for customers willing to commit long-term. That's where lifetime value lives.Run the Logo Test: If a stranger can't tell what you sell without your logo, it's decoration, not an ad.The $4K Ego Was a Moment: Sell the one-year coating, keep the relationship. The R in CRM is the whole business.Route Zones Are Rock Climbs: "We're in your neighborhood Tuesdays" is the ice cream truck play. You set the schedule.Rev the Raptor is Your Marketing Department: Territory studied, opportunities hunted, materials delivered. Beta Friday. Climb for your spot.

Relive the metal glory of 2002: """Rawdogs & Warhogs"" TED NUGENT Craveman ""Annunaki's Golden Thrones"" MELECHESH Shpynx" "title FLOGGING MOLLY Drunken Lullabies ""Geniune Hatred"" THY PRIMORDIAL The Crowning Carnage" ""Call To Arms"" MANOWAR Warriors of the World ""Nailed Quareteed Consumed"" VOMITORY Blood Rapture" ""Sorrow"" BAD RELIGION The Process of Belief title CLANDESTINE BLAZE Fist of the Northern Destroyer" ""Fighting Man"" UFO Sharks ""Years of Enlightment"" KATAKLYSM Shadows & Dust" ""Someone To Fuck"" ROSE TATTOO Pain ""Friction"" DEFLESHED Royal Straight Flush" ""Illegal Angelz"" ANTEUS De Principii Evangelikum ""And Then We Heard Thunder"" TANK Still At War"

What if AI could help us understand people better, rather than simply replacing what humans do?Episode summaryHow can we use AI to become better at persuasion, communication and understanding human behaviour? My guest on this episode is Roger Dooley, author of The Persuasion Engine, a new book exploring what happens when behavioural science meets rapidly evolving technology.Roger argues that tools once available only to large organisations — from behavioural science expertise to eye-tracking — are becoming accessible to almost anyone. We explore how AI can act as a personal “nudge unit”, helping us apply ideas from behavioural science, test communications and understand how different audiences might respond.We also discuss why simply asking an AI for an answer isn't enough, how to push LLMs beyond predictable responses, and why human judgement remains essential.Roger introduces his idea of a “60-second audit” — using AI to identify how communications might be misunderstood or backfire before we send them.Along the way, we talk about Cialdini, cognitive biases, invisible calls-to-action, board papers, cultural disasters, AI collaborators, rally driving, long division and why the best analogy for AI might be a power tool rather than a replacement for human thinking.Guest bioRoger Dooley is an author, speaker and behavioural science expert who has spent years exploring a deceptively simple question: why do people do what they do?His latest book, The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026), looks at what happens when behavioural science meets AI — and how tools once available only to big companies with big budgets are now becoming accessible to almost anyone.Roger is also the author of Friction, named a Top 3 Management Book by PwC's strategy+business, and Brainfluence, which has been published in 11 languages.He brings an unusually practical perspective to the subject. Roger co-founded College Confidential  and today he combines that entrepreneurial experience with behavioural science in his writing, speaking and teaching.He is a lecturer at McCombs Business School, a Forbes contributor and host of the Brainfluence podcast — and his work focuses on helping organisations understand people better, remove unnecessary friction and communicate in ways that actually work.AI-Generated Timestamped Summary00:00 — What if AI could be your behavioural scientist?05:00 — Cialdini, behavioural science and why people don't know why they decide10:00 — Eye-tracking, attention and what people actually notice15:00 — Making important information more visible20:00 — Board reports, visual hierarchy and designing for human attention25:00 — Better prompting and getting AI beyond obvious answers30:00 — What happens to human expertise when AI knows the theory?35:00 — Reactance, unintended consequences and communications that backfire40:00 — Cultural context, reputation and Roger's “60-second audit”45:00 — Using AI to become better at understanding other audiences50:00 — Roger's lifelong interest in technology and what comes next55:00 — Cognitive offloading, critical judgement and rally driving57:00 — Why AI is best thought of as a power toolLinks to topics discussedThe Persuasion Engine — Roger's latest book on how AI, behavioural science and neuromarketing tools are becoming accessible to organisations of all sizes.Roger's previous appearance on this podcast talking about Friction.RogerDooley.com — Roger's website, including his books, articles, speaking and latest work.Roger on LinkedIn — where Roger regularly shares ideas on behavioural science, persuasion, AI and marketing.The Brainfluence Podcast — Roger's podcast exploring behaviour, persuasion, neuroscience and business.Roger's episode on The Persuasion Engine — his own introduction to the ideas behind the book, including what he calls “Neuromarketing 2.0”.Friction — Roger's previous book, and the subject of his earlier appearance on The Human Risk Podcast.

At dating app The League, Kunal Thadani's team found that when daily matches took longer to load, people stopped skimming profiles and started actually reading. The wait wasn't a cost — it was the product saying these matches are worth your time. Now he's Senior Director of Product at Houzz, a platform for homeowners to plan renovations, and his take is that the goal was never no friction. It's to create the right kind of friction. In this episode, Kunal drops his: His three-part framework for productive friction, and The two ways friction turns toxic, including the one that punishes your most loyal customers Plus, everyone is building AI workflows for themselves right now. Almost nobody is building them for a team, and Kunal has the clearest answer I've heard in a long time for what that looks like. Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunal-thadani-72a13722/ Insider Growth Group: https://www.insidergrowthhq.com/ Houzz: https://www.houzz.com/ 0:00 Introduction 0:28 From The League to Houzz: Finding the DIY Decorating Gap 2:03 Not All Friction Is Bad 4:39 Trust Signals, Progress Arcs, Commitment Moments 6:41 The Signup Test That 10X'd Email Conversions 10:25 Two Ways Friction Fails: Fake Protection and Endless Re-Verification 15:16 Why Personal AI Setups Break Down at Team Scale 16:47 Inside the Team OS: One Repo and a Shared Product Context Layer 20:38 Claude Code in the Terminal: Mining Gong Calls and Killing Handoff Tax 24:41 Feedback Loops: Why a Team OS Improves Faster Than a Personal One 25:58 Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Kunal Thadani.

In this episode, Nathan Frank, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Aetna, discusses how AI and digital tools are simplifying prior authorization, improving interoperability and enhancing member and provider experiences. He also shares Aetna's approach to responsible AI, emphasizing human connection, trust and practical technology solutions that reduce administrative burden.

You’re busy all day but still feel like you’re not getting enough done. The culprit isn’t your to-do list — it’s hidden workflow friction. In this episode, Thanh and Brooks walk you through a practical Workflow Friction Audit: how to spot the invisible drains like context switching, setup overhead, unclear handoffs, and rework — and […]

What if the goal of great leadership isn't to eliminate friction, but to learn from it? In this episode of LeaderChat, Maggie Sass, PhD, and Ross Blankenship, PhD, authors of Friction: How Tension, Emotion, and Change Reveal Better Leaders, join us to discuss what tension can reveal about leaders, teams, and the systems in which they work. You'll hear about: The three places friction shows up: within ourselves, between people, and within systems How leaders can help teams navigate tension without simply smoothing it over Why emotions can provide useful information during uncertainty The difference between unhealthy conflict and productive tension What can happen when a team becomes too frictionless How to recognize when the system, not the individual, is creating the problem Practical ways to respond more intentionally the next time friction shows up If you're navigating change, uncertainty, or tension on your team, this episode offers a different way to look at those difficult moments—and what they might be trying to tell you.

Trust isn't built by what your company says. It's built by what your team and customers experience every day.In the first episode of Where's the Friction?, Culture of Convenience founder Jeff Kahler explores what it really takes to build trust in business, and why the biggest gaps between leadership's intentions and the customer experience often go unnoticed.Drawing on lessons from building businesses in the restaurant and e-learning industries, Jeff shares why declaring a standard is only the beginning. The real test is whether that standard makes it all the way through your organization to the frontline employees and customers you serve.You'll learn:• Why trust is built in the gap between what you promise and what you actually deliver• How leaders can get closer to the honest feedback they rarely hear in meetings• Why reducing friction starts with personally living the standards you expect from your teamGreat company culture isn't a mission statement on the wall. Customer experience isn't something you can simply delegate. And trust isn't something a business gets to declare for itself.You have to earn it... one interaction at a time.

Growth consultant and author of The Damn Rules, Nick Richtsmeier joined me on Ditching Hourly to talk about why internet-based inbound marketing systems have stopped working, aren't coming back, and what might work instead.00:27 Nick's Background and Work01:10 Why the Internet Is Toast03:09 What Distribution Means Now04:36 Inbound as Attention Arbitrage07:56 The Attention Economy Is a Casino13:37 Five Major Disruptions22:36 Trust and Attachment as Scarcity25:34 Friction as a Load-Bearing System30:10 Restoring Trust Through Human Contact35:01 Selling When People Are Scrolling39:19 Notice Meetings and Relationship Networks41:47 Why Friction Polishes Ideas50:37 The Damn Rules and Closing ThoughtsNick's bio:Nick Richtsmeier is the creator of Trust-Made Growth® and the author of The Damn Rules: How Vulnerability, Inefficiency, and Love Liberate Leaders from the Trustbroken Economy, a strategist and cultural navigator helping founder-led, relationship-driven firms build durable businesses in the age of AI extraction and from the wreckage of the trustbroken economy. Nick's links:Personal » https://nickrichtsmeier.comBook » https://nickrichtsmeier.comNewsletter » https://damnrulesbook.comLinkedIn » https://linkedin.com/in/nickrichtsmeierPodcast » “Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier” available on all major platforms ----Do you know you need to niche down, but keep hesitating because you're afraid of picking the wrong niche, cutting off good opportunities, or boxing yourself in?You DON'T need more convincing that vague positioning is a problem.You DO need a way to make positioning feel less risky so you can finally choose a direction, test it in the market, and adjust without blowing up your business.On Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, at noon Eastern Time, I'm running a live workshop called Positioning For Soloists Having A Hard Time Niching Down.That's what we'll tackle in this workshop.It's the second session of my Fall 2026 Soloist Growth Workshop series for expertise-based business owners just like you.Live attendance is limited to 20, so don't wait.Learn more at: https://jonathanstark.com/sgsEnroll in Positioning For Soloists now »Hope to see you live in Zoom on Tuesday.

1er épisode solo de la rentrée solo je vous raconte mon été, celui où je suis parti trois semaines à Stockholm écrire le livre sur lequel je travaille depuis un an et demi.Un livre sur ce que la technologie nous retire quand elle nous facilite tout.Ce départ est né d'une sensation que je traîne depuis longtemps, ce pincement au ventre chaque fois que je demande mon chemin à Google Maps plutôt qu'à un humain, chaque fois que je fais rédiger un texte par une IA, chaque fois que ma vie devient un peu plus pratique et un peu plus vide en même temps. Je me suis imposé une règle : aucune ligne de ce livre ne serait écrite par une machine. Et pour tenir cette règle, il me fallait un endroit où rien ne viendrait m'aider à fuir.Ce que je n'avais pas vu venir, c'est que je partais écrire un livre sur la friction dans le pays qui a le mieux réussi à la faire disparaître. Et que ça allait d'abord me mettre à terre.Dans cet épisode, nous parlons de la première semaine, celle où je n'ai adressé la parole à personne et où la solitude que je croyais désirer m'a serré le ventre pendant sept jours pleins. De l'effet de dévitalisation, ce mot que j'ai fini par trouver pour désigner ce qui nous arrive collectivement. Du papillon qui doit déchirer sa chrysalide lui-même sous peine de ne jamais voler. Du pigeon de Skinner, que je porte en moi chaque fois que j'essaie d'affiner ma routine du matin. De la nuit où j'ai décidé de jeter la moitié de mon manuscrit. Des Suédois qui s'effacent plutôt que de vous contredire, et de ce que ma sœur m'a dit à ce sujet qui m'a scié. Du Rat Park et de la cage confortable qu'on se construit tous. Et du moment où j'ai griffonné mon numéro de téléphone sur un bout de papier, à mon âge, pour le tendre à quelqu'un.Je me suis questionné sur ce que la solitude fait vraiment, sur la différence entre celle qu'on choisit et celle qui nous tombe dessus, sur ce qu'on croit épargner à nos enfants en leur retirant l'attente et l'ennui, et sur ce qui reste d'une société quand elle a poli tous ses angles.C'est un épisode long, personnel, et sans doute le plus intime que j'aie enregistré. Si vous vous êtes déjà surpris à ne pas savoir ce qui vous avait fait sourire ou pleurer dans la journée, il est pour vous.3. Citations marquantes« Comprendre un piège ne vous permet pas d'en sortir. Vingt ans plus tard, je suis plus accro que jamais. »« Je critique, je rejette, et je reste. C'est sans doute la définition la plus honnête de ma situation, et peut-être de la vôtre. »« J'ai reçu des mails de lecteurs qui me remerciaient pour ce texte que je n'avais pas écrit. Le fait que ça marche m'a prouvé l'efficacité du système et a creusé le vide encore un peu plus. »« Si vous ouvrez le cocon du papillon pour lui simplifier la vie, vous le condamnez : il ne pourra jamais voler. »« On est devenus des athlètes de la certitude dans un monde qui réclamerait plutôt des acrobates de la complexité. »(Bonus si besoin d'un sixième extrait pour les réseaux)« Je suis venu écrire sur ce qui nous arrive quand on retire toutes les frictions d'une vie, et je me suis retrouvé dans un pays qui a fait exactement ça, mais à l'échelle d'une culture entière. »4. Idées centrales discutées 1. L'effet de dévitalisation≈ 09:30 Les systèmes conçus pour nous retirer les frictions de la vie, l'attente, l'effort, l'ennui, le désaccord, finissent par nous vider de l'intérieur. Ils réduisent notre capacité à décider, nos compétences, jusqu'au sens qu'on donne à notre existence. On devient performants, productifs, et vides. Pourquoi ça compte : c'est le mot qui manquait. Tant qu'une sensation n'a pas de nom, elle existe dans le corps mais pas dans la conversation collective. Nommer permet d'agir.2. Savoir ne suffit pas≈ 03:10 Vingt ans à connaître parfaitement les mécanismes d'addiction des plateformes, et vingt ans à y céder quand même. La lucidité n'est pas un levier de changement. Pourquoi ça compte : ça disqualifie toute la littérature qui promet qu'il suffit de comprendre pour se libérer, et ça déplace la question du côté de l'environnement plutôt que de la volonté individuelle.3. Le vivant se renforce par la résistance, pas par le rendement≈ 21:00 La friction est un mauvais élève en ingénierie, on la supprime pour gagner en rendement. Mais un arbre se renforce sous le vent, les valvules du cœur avec le flux du sang, et le papillon a besoin de l'effort qui brise la chrysalide pour que ses ailes se remplissent. Pourquoi ça compte : les designers de la Silicon Valley ont appliqué la logique de la machine au vivant sans vérifier qu'elle s'y appliquait. C'est une erreur de modèle, pas une erreur de morale.4. Friction n'est pas souffrance≈ 23:00 La souffrance réelle, celle de la maladie, du deuil, de la précarité, ne construit rien, elle épuise et elle diminue, et elle demande de la justice et du soutien. Les frictions du quotidien, elles, font grandir quand on les traverse. Pourquoi ça compte : sans cette distinction, tout le propos bascule dans le discours réactionnaire du « c'était mieux quand c'était dur ». C'est le garde-fou de l'épisode.5. La bonne solitude a besoin de micro-liens≈ 32:00 Le flot d'écriture n'est pas venu de l'isolement pur. Il est arrivé au moment précis où j'ai commencé à échanger trois mots avec le type de la cantine et la femme de la sécurité. J'avais besoin d'être seul pour écrire et de ces quelques regards pour tenir debout pendant que j'écrivais seul. Pourquoi ça compte : ça renverse le mythe de l'artiste retiré du monde, et ça donne un dosage concret plutôt qu'un idéal.6. Ce n'est pas la substance qui crée l'addiction, c'est l'isolement≈ 51:30 Le rat seul se tue à la morphine, les rats du Rat Park en consomment jusqu'à dix-neuf fois moins, et ceux qui étaient déjà accros réduisent d'eux-mêmes une fois replacés dans la vie sociale. Pourquoi ça compte : appliqué à nos écrans, ça déplace tout le débat. La question n'est pas de savoir si TikTok est mauvais, mais de savoir dans quelle cage on le consomme.7. Le désaccord est un muscle qu'on a laissé fondre≈ 42:00 Les Suédois s'effacent plutôt que de vous contredire, et le résultat n'est pas un enfer, c'est doux, propre et sûr. Mais le prix, c'est un lien social qui se dévitalise. Nous suivons le même chemin avec les bulles de filtres et la disparition des lieux où l'on croisait des gens qui ne pensaient pas comme nous. Pourquoi ça compte : c'est la friction dont personne ne parle, parce que tout le monde a envie de s'en débarrasser. Et c'est peut-être celle qui nous manquera le plus.Questions structurantes de l'épisode(Format solo : ce sont les questions que je me pose à voix haute et qui portent le récit. Utilisables telles quelles pour les chapitres, les descriptions courtes, ou comme angles de relance sur les réseaux.)Pourquoi ma vie devient-elle un peu plus pratique et un peu plus vide en même temps ?Comment peut-on connaître parfaitement les mécanismes d'un piège et y rester enfermé vingt ans ?Qu'est-ce qu'une sensation qui n'a pas de mot ? Existe-t-elle vraiment tant qu'on ne peut pas la nommer ?Que se passe-t-il exactement quand on retire à un être vivant toutes les résistances qu'il rencontre ?Où passe la ligne entre la friction qui construit et la souffrance qui détruit, et pourquoi les confond-on autant aujourd'hui ?Est-ce que la solitude qu'on désire est vraiment celle qui nous fait du bien ?Qu'est-ce qui a changé entre une époque où l'attente était le décor et une époque où elle est devenue une agression ?Pourquoi cherche-t-on à affiner jusqu'à son repos, et qu'est-ce que ça dit de notre rapport au hasard ?Que faut-il pour accepter de jeter la moitié d'un travail quand une solution confortable est à portée de main ?Combien de décisions ai-je réellement prises aujourd'hui, et combien ont été prises pour moi ?Que devient une société qui a réussi à supprimer le conflit de ses relations quotidiennes ?Est-ce qu'on protège nos enfants en leur retirant l'attente, l'ennui et l'échec, ou est-ce qu'on les prive de ce qui nous a construits ?Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Are you tired of drowning in back-office busywork and wondering how AI can actually improve your freight operations without overcomplicating your daily workflows? Today, let's discuss the reality of freight automation with my guest, Alex Reed of Overroute, as we talk about how true AI in transportation is built not to replace but to empower people!  We get real about utilizing robotic process automation to 10x your output, strip the emotion out of your operational decisions, and meet your customers exactly where they are.  Whether you are a small brokerage or a massive enterprise, leveraging the right freight tech and supply chain automation tools is about simplifying the mundane so your team can focus on what actually drives revenue in this highly competitive trucking market.  If you want to stop over-engineering your business and start implementing tech that actually works, tune in to this episode!   About Alex Reed Alex Reed is the founding CEO of Overroute. He has spent his career commercializing technical software and optimization platforms in complex industrial environments. Previously, Alex was the founding CEO of Fluence Analytics, a Tulane spinout he led from lab-stage IP through global commercialization and acquisition by Yokogawa Electric Corporation in 2023. Earlier, he was Associate Director for Operations and Strategy at Tulane-PolyRMC. He was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 (2016), serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Lepage Center at Tulane University, and advises founders and investors across deep tech and AI, both personally and through Founder Sherpas.   Connect with Alex Website: https://www.overroute.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/overroute/  

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Max Spero, co-founder and CEO of Pangram Labs, which builds models that identify AI-generated text and images. Max goes under the hood to explain how AI detection actually works. They also discuss the institutions that quietly assumed writing was expensive: credit bureaus that negotiated the right to shred templated dispute letters, grant committees where reading the application is five percent of the work, and unemployment offices staffed for a world where claims cannot plausibly rise two hundredfold. –Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/how-ai-detection-actually-works-with-pangrams-max-spero/ –Presenting Sponsors: Mercury & GranolaComplex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury Spend hands your team and agents their own cards with limits you set once, so nobody waits on you to approve a SaaS invoice and nobody chases a receipt. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/. If meetings consistently leave you with hazy action items and lost context, Granola handles the transcription so you can actually participate and gives you searchable notes afterward. Try it free at granola.ai/complexsystems with code COMPLEXSYSTEMS–Links:Pangram Labs: https://textguard.ai/ –Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(00:27) Why AI detection exists(01:42) Friction as a rate limiter(05:42) What Pangram actually does(06:57) Authorship identification at scale(11:01) Common Crawl and the crawling arms race(15:52) Being in the weights(18:08) Ghostwriting letters to banks(19:45) Templated letters and the FCRA loophole(22:38) The anti-memetic property of LLM text(25:28) Value above the weights(27:03) What happens to programmers(30:19) Sponsors: Mercury | Granola(33:39) Jevons Paradox and the compiler(36:44) What comes after the coding harness(40:19) Mode collapse and the dinner recommendation problem(43:00) The patio11 fan blog(45:58) Cognitive surplus and the dead internet(49:40) Is this fight winnable?(54:35) Reputation and disclosure norms(58:02) Training on books and moral standing(01:01:52) Attention, phones, and what we've gained(01:04:17) Wrap

Struggle has value, and the internet just rediscovered it. Friction-maxxing means making your tech deliberately harder to use — and Dom Bettinelli, Fr. Joseph Sund, and Pat Scott find that the monks got there about seventeen centuries first. The post Friction Maxxing: The Internet Rediscovers That Struggle Is Good for You appeared first on StarQuest Media.

Motivation can get you started.Discipline is what keeps you moving when the excitement disappears.In this episode of The Level Up Podcast, Paul Alex breaks down why consistency matters more than hype and how your ability to tolerate difficult, repetitive work can become a serious competitive advantage.Every entrepreneur eventually reaches the point where the dopamine wears off.The work gets boring.The rejection gets heavier.And the results take longer than expected.That is where discipline takes over.In this episode, you'll learn:• Why motivation is too unreliable to build long-term consistency• How systems and standards keep you executing when your mood changes• Why difficult, unglamorous work creates a natural barrier to entry• How friction tolerance helps you outlast less disciplined competitorsThe truth is simple:Motivation gets you to the starting line.Discipline carries you through the race.Stop waiting to feel inspired.Follow the system.Do the work.Build the ability to execute even when you are tired, frustrated, or bored.When motivation fades, discipline has to take the wheel.Your Network is your NETWORTH!Make sure to add me on all SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS:Instagram: https://jo.my/paulalex2024Facebook: https://jo.my/fbpaulalex2024YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGhDAD1JyGGzSQUPD9lc9HQLinkedIn: https://jo.my/inpaulalex2024Looking for a secondary source of income or want to become an entrepreneur? Check out one of my companies below to see if we can help you:www.CashSwipe.comFREE Copy of my book “Blue to Digital Gold - The New American Dream”www.officialPaulAlex.com

How AI and Behavioral Science Are Transforming Customer Experience    Shep interviews Roger Dooley, keynote speaker and author of The Persuasion Engine. He talks about how AI and neuromarketing tools help businesses predict consumer behavior, measure emotional reactions, and avoid costly customer experience mistakes.     This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:     How can businesses use AI to predict customer behavior accurately?   How can companies use AI and behavioral science to eliminate customer friction?     In what ways can companies use behavioral science to improve customer loyalty?   How do customer expectations directly shape customer experience?   How can predictive AI prevent negative customer reactions during policy or product changes?    Top Takeaways:      AI in customer service has moved beyond automation and support. Today, successful companies use AI to understand customer behavior. By tracking engagement like website clicks or scrolling patterns, companies can determine what customers like and dislike.    Technology such as eye-tracking, biometric sensors, and AI-powered simulators, at one time available only to a limited number of companies due to cost, is now more accessible to businesses of any size.     Customer experience and marketing are deeply connected. Understanding and predicting customer desires isn't just a marketing strategy. It is an important part of delivering a frictionless, positive experience.    Customer expectations strongly influence how they perceive the experience. For example, when the average customer is told that a bottle of wine is expensive, they tend to enjoy it more. This is seen in their feedback and even in their brain activity.    Small details can have a big impact when it comes to connecting with your customers. When companies remove small perks their customers are used to, the change might put off some loyal customers. Don't underestimate how small gestures can build long-term emotional loyalty.     Plus, Shep and Roger talk about insights from The Persuasion Engine. Tune in!    Quote:     "AI is better than most humans at predicting how people will react emotionally to any communication. Whether you change your loyalty program or alter your customer experience in some way, AI can predict and even prevent negative blowback."        About:      Roger Dooley is an author, speaker, and McCombs Business School lecturer known for bestselling books like Brainfluence and Friction. His newest book, The Persuasion Engine, discusses how AI democratizes powerful marketing tools for organizations of any size.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guffy Wright is an elite insurance producer. He has a multi-million dollar (commission) Book of Business, but only after figuring out how to remove the hurdles of Friction, overcome Stagnation, achieve maximum Velocity, and then Accelerate month after month. In this episode host Charles Specht walks alongside Guffy as they discuss how producers can get out of their own way, find and dominate a profitable Micro-Niche, overcome the limiting beliefs, and accelerate toward Book growth with a steady velocity. Key Topics: Guffy Wright on writing Attach High after his father's passing Removing friction means attaching to the client's best interest Stagnation vs. cruise control: knowing the difference matters Why failure beats stagnation, since failure creates clarity Three types of friction: not clear, not safe, not aligned Trust gets you in the room, alignment moves the decision The V3 framework: value, vulnerability, and validation Micro-niching builds the expertise needed for real alignment Velocity: directional movement once friction is removed Stagnation cost Guffy seven figures, personally and professionally Reach out to  Guffy Wright Charles Specht Visit: Permission Network Chief Sales Officer Permission Producer School Produced by PodSquad.fm

Don’t miss the marketplace revolution! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode of the Ultimate Partner Podcast, Vince Menzione sits down with AWS Marketplace leaders George Maroulakos and Arif Razvi to uncover the rapidly shifting ecosystem of technology procurement and partner transformation. They dive deep into the evolution of buyer experiences, the critical necessity of executive alignment, and how agentic AI is redefining software discovery and consumption. If you want to accelerate deal velocity and ensure your business isn’t left behind, this conversation outlines exactly why integrating the AWS Marketplace into your core co-sell motion is no longer optional. https://youtu.be/Avp0sIyxRU8 Key Takeaways Embracing the AWS Marketplace should be viewed as a natural extension of your co-sell motion, not an interrupt-driven exception. Successfully leveraging the marketplace requires top-down executive sponsorship to overcome internal friction across legal, finance, and revenue operations. Partners must prepare for global expansion by ensuring local entities and currencies are wired up to meet buyers where they are. Agentic AI and natural language queries are leveling the playing field for software discovery, moving beyond traditional SEO-driven presence. SaaS pricing models are shifting toward consumption and outcome-based structures, demanding highly detailed product metadata. The speed of deal closure is drastically increased when partners are prepared to transact seamlessly through the marketplace. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWS Marketplace, partner transformation, buyer experiences, hyperscalers, co-sell motion, revenue operations, strategic alignment, agentic AI solutions, outcome-based pricing, metadata optimization, software discovery, private offers, global expansion, deal velocity, cloud centers of excellence. Transcript Arif Razvi and George Maroulakos Audio Episode [00:00:00] George Maroulakos: From my perspective, think about marketplace as a why not as opposed to a why. [00:00:06] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:17] Arif Razvi: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. [00:00:22] Arif Razvi: And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:39] Arif Razvi: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. [00:00:44] Arif Razvi: Let’s start. [00:00:48] Vince Menzione: I’m excited to, because we were talking about some of this earlier with Matt, but I thought this would be a great conversation. I’m gonna ask each of you to introduce yourselves, George and Arif, and your roles. ’cause you have two very unique roles. Uh. Contrasting roles, I would call it, within the AWS Marketplace Organization. [00:01:06] George Maroulakos: Yep. Happy to do so. So I think Vince just didn’t wanna say my last name, so that’s why I’m gonna introduce myself. Mayor. Very, very good. So Mayor Laki, George Meki, pleasure to meet. Hey, I can say that, uh, all of those that I haven’t met before, lots of familiar faces as well here. Uh, so it’s really great to see. [00:01:21] George Maroulakos: Uh, I’m part of the AWS Marketplace team and our center of excellence. That focuses on buyer experiences. So like why is a buyer guy here in this partner session? And I think, you know, I’m gonna help to try to bring some perspective around what our buyers see as the value for using marketplace and. [00:01:40] George Maroulakos: Working with all of these great partners that are here in the room and, uh, you know, the experiences that we see in helping to drive, you know, the blood to all organs. I’m using that a lot, Alison, to copyright it. It’s, it was really good. I love that, that analogy. But, um, for, but for both our partners as well as for our customers. [00:01:59] Vince Menzione: That’s awesome. [00:01:59] Arif Razvi: Hey everybody. I’m Arif Roski. I’m based here in New York City, although I’m a Celtics fan. Um, uh, go, go. I, I still supported the Knicks through the championship and I’m very happy for them. So excited to be here. Excited to be among, uh, other channel and alliance leaders. I’ve spent my entire 25 plus career in channels and alliances. [00:02:20] Arif Razvi: The last seven years, uh, on AWS marketplace where I lead, uh, a couple of functions. One is I support all of Matt Ian’s feature launches. So from a go-to market perspective, uh, I support his launches. I also focus on international expansion of marketplace. So, uh, Matt alluded to this earlier. I’ll mention some, I’ll talk about some stuff in a little bit. [00:02:39] Arif Razvi: And then, uh, we do some deep engagements with some of our most strategic partners to help them accelerate and unblock their marketplace business. By embedding a subject matter expert from my team into their organization to really help drive, uh, adoption of marketplace. [00:02:55] Vince Menzione: So important. Both of your roles. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: By the way, this is standout roles. I, you know, I. I don’t want to get into trouble here. I talk about other hyperscalers, but I said this with Matt on stage earlier. You guys have been at the forefront of driving marketplace in such a strong way, having somebody who’s customer focused, right? And that lens is so important. [00:03:15] Vince Menzione: I don’t feel, I feel like that’s missed so many times. And then you also have. You know, quite a bit of an important role here in terms of what you’re doing in embedding resources. ’cause a lot of times people get lost in the process and it seems to be the, the common currents. So, um, really great both sides of the same equation here, right? [00:03:33] Vince Menzione: Buyer led, partner built, uh, let’s start George here. Um. Let’s talk about how buying has changed. Right. We go back to the early days of marketplace. It felt like it was a listing at first and it started to become important. Organizations like Work Span started to come to fruition and started to drive, at least in my part of the world. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: And then we started talking a lot more about Marketplace. And of course the, the cus customer commits really started driving things in a different direction. You’ve got the customer, so talk about what your journey’s been like. [00:04:05] George Maroulakos: So I’ve been with Marketplace nine and a half years, which is pretty long time since the beginning of it, and watching the evolution of, of where things have come and where they started. [00:04:15] George Maroulakos: And I remember, uh, I was covering the, the northeast region when I very first started and working with, uh, you know, different enterprise accounts and financial services and, and, and healthcare and life sciences, and talking about this. This creation that occurred called, called AWS Marketplace, and even folks within AWS didn’t really know what that meant or how to talk about it or sell it. [00:04:38] George Maroulakos: So there was this creation of a infield based business development function to help supplement the account teams and the value and the importance of marketplace as a part of a customer’s AWS journey. And when I first started the, the, the highest, uh, or most frequently subscribed to products that existed were. [00:04:57] George Maroulakos: Uh, Amazon machine images a amis and it’s very specifically open source amis. So think of Bantu or Cintas as the predominant things that were being subscribed out of marketplace. So, um, by definition, not really revenue generating. You’re, these are not the a hundred million dollar transactions or the billion dollar club that we talk about today. [00:05:19] George Maroulakos: It was very much helping. The builders go again, go back 10 years, uh, who are just getting started with the cloud and how could they find partner solutions that they trusted or that they felt were secure and helping them to start to build out and migrate their workloads into, into AWS. Um, so I existed before the. [00:05:39] George Maroulakos: Very first private offer was transacted. Nice. Um, there’s actually a, a gentleman towards the back, uh, who helped with one of our very first private offers. I see you back there, Joe. Nice, nice. Um, so we, we worked on, uh, uh, uh, really big transaction with, uh, with, at the time AppDynamics, uh, and, and helping to get. [00:05:58] George Maroulakos: You know, a customer really up and running with their implementation that, so watching over the 10 years from, you know, the builder mentality of, of getting started with the cloud to really embracing all kinds of partner based, um, solutions that go along with AWS. It’s really been, uh, you know, a, a rocket ship you referenced earlier, moving to the top right quadrant, if we want to use the, the Gartner analogy, and I think we’re at another. [00:06:24] George Maroulakos: Inflection point because with what’s going on with Ag agentic solutions, the way that our customers are finding and discovering different partner solutions is better than ever I would think. And I think it gives much more of a equal opportunity in playing field for all partners of all shapes and sizes because you’re not driving your presence based on SEO or whether or not you have the best Google search results. [00:06:53] George Maroulakos: With AgTech and how you differentiate your solutions, you’re gonna be able to really get yourself in front of more customers more quickly. And as Matt talked about earlier, the, the, the really big penetration that we’ve seen thus far is real, is on the discovery piece, the, the research area, the pre-purchase activity, so validate what’s available. [00:07:13] George Maroulakos: So I think marketplace has really evolved over the 10 year, nine and a half years-ish that I’ve been there. And I think it’s gonna continue to change here in the coming months ahead. Yeah. [00:07:23] Vince Menzione: Any predictions? [00:07:25] George Maroulakos: Yeah, I, I think, you know, the, I, the, the importance of marketplaces is only going to continue to grow. [00:07:32] George Maroulakos: Uh, and I think we’re going to see, you know, even more innovation and expectation from our customers on being able to find the right solutions and being able to procure and deploy them as quickly as possible. [00:07:44] Vince Menzione: Nice. Arif, from your side. Partner transformation. So, you know, embedding resources with the partners. [00:07:51] Vince Menzione: Right. So you basically help kickstart a lot of the, the efforts, right? George? George is looking at it from the customer side, and then you’re kick-starting it on the partner side. [00:08:00] Arif Razvi: Yeah. Either kickstarting it, uh, on the initial stages with a strategic partner. Yeah. Or accelerating their adoption of something that’s already there. [00:08:07] Arif Razvi: Right. So what we’re seeing, what I’m seeing a lot of more recently is partners who say, I didn’t know you had capabilities for us to sell into Korea or Japan, or we just, we just launched India. Yep. Matt alluded to this easier, uh, earlier that we’re making it easier for partners to expand globally. And now partners are realizing, wait a minute, I can match my. [00:08:26] Arif Razvi: Uh, my business processes on marketplace, so revenue recognition, tax collection, locally, local invoices, and now they’re starting to set up multiple entities outside the US to meet those buyers, uh, where they are. [00:08:41] Vince Menzione: Nice. And you mentioned having these resources. How do you determine who gets resources and who? [00:08:47] Arif Razvi: Well, there’s, uh, staging and there’s, uh, there’s qualification mechanisms we use. We work with the PDMs for the partners. So any PDM, uh, any pd DM managed partner can be nominated for, uh, what, what we call a compensation. [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: So you’re overlaying that organization sense. [00:09:00] Arif Razvi: We’re overlaying the PDs. We’re not replacing, we’re only doing time bound sprints to unlock very specific activities. [00:09:05] Arif Razvi: Very [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: cool. So it’s not a poll. Yeah. Cool. You’re not, you’re not there forever. [00:09:08] Arif Razvi: No. [00:09:08] Vince Menzione: You’re there to get the job done. We [00:09:09] Arif Razvi: did that before. Uh, yeah, we’re, we’re doing short sprints now. [00:09:12] Vince Menzione: Yep. Let’s talk about how the buyers are using marketplace. You’ve done some really in, we talked about this earlier with Matt, but we’ve talked about some of the innovative things you’ve done. [00:09:21] Vince Menzione: You know, being, being able to embed into a website and in the storefronts. All these things seem to be unique to AWS. Talk to us about how the buyers are using the marketplace today. And [00:09:31] George Maroulakos: yeah, I think, you know, Matt talked about earlier the. Pre the, the preconception around why customers use marketplaces for the financial incentives, the, the financial benefits that go along with it, whether it’s direct incentives that are associated with the individual product that’s out there, or the Association of Marketplace to our private pricing agreements and the ability for. [00:09:55] George Maroulakos: Transactions that occur in marketplace to count towards those commits. Um, I’m gonna amplify a, a particular point that Matt made, uh, in his talk that, you know, we have many more customers who do not have PPAs with AWS than those that do. And the volume of transactions that take place in marketplace. [00:10:11] George Maroulakos: Dwarf, uh, in volume from those that, uh, are occur from our PPA customers. So yes, there are very large transactions that occur and there is Ben financial benefit that goes along with it. But there’s many other value points that our customers find from discovery. From ease of use, from consolidated billing, from post-purchase, um, you know, management and governance that goes along with it, and reconciliation that’s available, that’s, that exists. [00:10:36] George Maroulakos: Um, you mentioned storefronts. I’m really excited. That was one of the most exciting launches. That’s why I reminded him when he was talking about it, uh, around, you know, what that means. And it’s both a presence for, um, our partners and being able to create their own storefronts on behalf of, of customers or within their own property, but also for our buyers directly too. [00:10:54] George Maroulakos: Take that next generation of something that was previously, you know, our private marketplace and curate a catalog that is very specific and intentional for the things that they’re interested to innovate with and the partners that they’re interested in using. And so I think meeting our customers where they’re at. [00:11:10] George Maroulakos: And being, you know, marketplace anywhere and everywhere is I think really important for our customers. And then the other aspect, you know, in terms of how our customers use marketplace, there’s more than one persona at our customer that we need to be, be, be aligning with. Right. Interesting. We typically talk about procurement and the value points that procurement find in marketplace, but just as important as, as the technologists. [00:11:32] George Maroulakos: It’s the Cloud centers of Excellence. It’s the innovators who are looking for those business applications or those infrastructure solutions that exist and making sure that we have the right things from the right partners available to them. So we see value all over the place with our customers and how they inter interface with [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: more. [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: You brought up something really interesting, insightful, is the fact that all the different personas in the organization that are touching the marketplace, right? [00:11:54] George Maroulakos: And it’s at different points of the journey, right? Yeah. So while there may be early discovery and research and experimentation going on from, you know, the technologists or, or, or the, or the, the, the business application owners, um, as it progresses through the, the, the. [00:12:09] George Maroulakos: The opportunity lifecycle procurement and sourcing and legal, and the shared services then become a more important part of, of making sure that we get those opportunities closed and launched. [00:12:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah, and that was one of the things we were talking about earlier is the fact that how, how, uh, it, it, the work arduous it could be. [00:12:25] Vince Menzione: To go through that whole process at a customer side. Right? ’cause they have to. [00:12:29] George Maroulakos: It is, and and you know, I think when Cloud first got started, it was quite scary for procurement, right? It became another version of Shadow it. And we were seeing things that were getting purchased on P cards because they could quickly stand up infrastructure versus waiting for the IT team to do it. [00:12:44] George Maroulakos: And so now you introduce all of these other things that. Procurement kept near and dear to their heart, and here comes another wave of, is this truly positive disruption? Is it going to affect what’s, what I’m doing affect really my goals and objectives of supporting the company. And as you, you know, you continue to express the value of marketplace, they start to see, hey, this is actually very complimentary and helped me can get better control and governance in a way that I. [00:13:11] George Maroulakos: Perhaps didn’t have before with what was going on inside the cloud. [00:13:15] Vince Menzione: So this is a question for both of you actually, but I was thinking about these partners in the room and what did they get wrong? Like what are they doing? Like what are the things we always talk about, things that they’re doing right? [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: We’re having the happy talk about all the great success that’s been going on, but what is your advice to partners that maybe are not getting it right? Like what, what, what are the things you see that. The easy stumbling blocks that could be fixed. [00:13:38] Arif Razvi: Yeah. Well, probably the easiest is, uh, waiting to talk about marketplace at the last minute and not making it part of the full commercial journey [00:13:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:45] Arif Razvi: That the sellers will go through. Right. So, um, but that includes being able to have those internal conversations from the executive level, getting that executive sponsorship from marketplace upfront. That filters down through the rest of the organization. So you’ve gotta get rev ops teams, finance, legal, you know, the marketplace terms, the, the standard, uh, contract that goes into your listing has to be approved by legal. [00:14:08] Arif Razvi: Uh, and then you get down to the sales teams, making sure that you’re not penalizing sales teams for doing transactions on marketplace, which will create friction, then meeting buyers where they are, right? So local entities, local currency, um, having all that wired up. Uh, I met with a, a partner yesterday at Summit who is literally wiring up 10 new regions, 10 new entities in 10 new locations on marketplace in advance of what they know is a pipeline that’s going to be building into those regions. [00:14:37] Arif Razvi: So they’re getting ready and not waiting for the last minute for marketplace. [00:14:40] Vince Menzione: I love it. And the internal, go ahead. [00:14:43] George Maroulakos: Yeah, I, I echo definitely what Arif was saying and I think the, the other aspect of that is that our customers shouldn’t feel like it’s more painful. To use marketplace versus they would any other way. [00:14:54] George Maroulakos: And so whether that shows up in pricing, it shows up in awareness of what marketplace is and isn’t, or what it can or cannot do. Um, whether it’s introducing it naturally or it’s this, oh, by the way, on the end, like the, the more. Integrated marketplace is as a part of your co-sell motion, whether you’re doing it directly on your own or through a reseller or with AWS or all of the above. [00:15:17] George Maroulakos: Um, it’s, it should be a natural extension and a value point that you’re bringing to your respective customers, not some. Interrupt driven or, or exception based activity that goes along with selling your, your, your, your solution. [00:15:31] Vince Menzione: Why do you think customer, some customers or some partners are held back or what, what, what is, is it a mindset? [00:15:38] Vince Menzione: I mean, I talk about the principles, you know that, but like, is it mindset? What is it? Is it, [00:15:42] Arif Razvi: it’s, it’s internal. Friction. Yeah. A a a lot of what I see, especially in these, in, in embedded engagements is the amount of, you know, I have a lot of empathy for this room, right? Because you are the ones that have to go internally and navigate all of these stakeholders to be able to convince them that marketplace is the route to market. [00:16:01] Arif Razvi: It’s the preferred route to market, and it’s the way that a AWS wants to co-sell. With its partners. And that’s a hard thing to do if you don’t speak the same language that the tax legal, rev ops, finance, accounting, because everything changes. When you start doing transactions on marketplace, your revenue is booked differently, right? [00:16:20] Arif Razvi: It’s booked as a w from AWS and not from the, you know, from the, so things change and having that conversation is often challenging. Uh, we are working on some tools that will help make that conversation easier. Um, and we’ve already written blogs, and again, there are mechanisms that your partner managers have internally that they can request support and guidance. [00:16:43] Arif Razvi: Uh, and we’re happy to provide that. [00:16:45] Vince Menzione: What needs to change so that marketplace becomes a true go to market engine. [00:16:49] Arif Razvi: Top down, top down, top down where, where I’ve seen the most success. From a partner is where they’ve gotten strategic alignment at the executive level. That marketplace is the way we are going to, uh, sell globally. [00:17:02] Arif Razvi: Right? Then that starts to filter down, as I mentioned earlier, into the different teams and yes, it is a journey and you may start with the US or if you’re EMEA based. Partner, you may start with just amea, but eventually you will start to expand your, you’ll want to expand your business. Um, and marketplace is a great place to do that because we have all of those mechanisms globally to help you scale without adding incremental resources to handle the tax or the compliance or the invoicing and collection and all that stuff. [00:17:30] George Maroulakos: Yeah. I’ll add to that because I’m gonna steal a second thing you said, Allison, about centering around a customer. I, I loved a lot of Allison. Come on now. I’ll be your hype guy. I absolutely, but, but, but the but demand will drive supply. And I think to what you were talking about, Arif, when are customers, when. [00:17:46] George Maroulakos: Our customers come to you about wanting to use marketplace. Yeah. How are you ready to adapt to that? How are you ready to respond to it? And if it becomes a disjointed, not centered around a customer, bespoke based, independently based interaction with the customer, everybody loses. Versus if you’re ready to embrace what that means and how to make that as good of an experience, if not better, versus how they might have traditionally procured your solution and deployed it. [00:18:13] George Maroulakos: Um, now we have a much better together story. So I think understanding that customers more and more are going to use marketplaces, particularly AWS marketplace, and want to make use of partner solutions that embrace marketplace as a part of their way to procure and deploy. You have a much better chance of being successful with them. [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: You know, it made me think about this. Is there a seminal event? Like I think about, I think back to COVID changing buying behavior, right? I’m, we’ll use AWS, an example, three boxes show up in my house every day, right? That didn’t happen before. We used to go to the store. Is there a seminal event we’re waiting to happen? [00:18:50] Vince Menzione: I, I know that the millennial buyer, we talked about this earlier with Matt, is the new buying persona. Over 50% of buyers are millennial and they’re used to doing comfortable with phones and trust Is all there. Is there something else we’re missing or what do, what do you think’s gonna happen? [00:19:03] George Maroulakos: I really think it’s what in front of us right now. [00:19:05] George Maroulakos: Yeah. Vince, I think what. Agen solutions, what Agen SaaS offers, what the power of information and research that’s now directly available to customers versus maybe indirectly available through consultancies or deeper research. Um, the velocity of what our customers are going to be able to do and with partners that they may not have even heard of right before. [00:19:32] George Maroulakos: You know, they started their journey. I, I think this is a present day. Inflection point. Yeah. Um, going back, you know, over the past several years, the advent of supporting private offers I think was a pretty big milestone for marketplace. It allowed for our partners to be able to. Work through customized terms and conditions and commercials that were important for a particular opportunity in a customer. [00:19:54] George Maroulakos: But today, the here and now I think becomes the next inflection point for the success of marketplace. [00:19:59] Arif Razvi: That would [00:19:59] Vince Menzione: Go ahead. [00:20:00] Arif Razvi: I was just gonna add on top of that, but partners need to be ready for that. Right? And if they’re not ready to accelerate a deal and get it closed in days versus stalling it for weeks to negotiate. [00:20:11] Arif Razvi: Yes. Like they’re not gonna stand. Customers are not gonna stand for that. So partners need to be ready to move quickly. If you think about all the innovations that Matt is delivering for Marketplace and Partner Central. They’re about accelerating co-sell. They’re about accelerating deal velocity. They’re about, we know f from, from the Forrester studies and others that we presented, that we’ve made public that the deal value goes up when you’re dealing with marketplace and co-selling with AWS. [00:20:36] Arif Razvi: So how can we just accelerate that? Yeah. Partners need to be ready for that and move quickly. [00:20:40] Vince Menzione: And you use partners in sort of a, you know, plural sense, but I think about those organizations as so many multifaceted. We talked about finance, we talked about all of different functions in the organization. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: What are you doing to help that? I mean, we talked about you’re doing a lot of readiness work, but I do feel like there’s a lot of evangelism still to be done internally with those organizations. How do you think about [00:21:02] Arif Razvi: that? Yeah, we, um, obviously events like this are fantastic mechanisms to at least get the conversation started and get your head thinking about what you need to think about. [00:21:10] Arif Razvi: But we have other activities. We have, uh, rev Ops squads, right? So revenue operations teams, and we bring them together, uh, around the world op, uh, ops squad, which is operational teams, so deal desks and others that help them, uh, understand the capabilities that marketplace can bring to accelerate deal velocity. [00:21:28] Arif Razvi: And then we have, like, obviously other events like the, the, uh, marketplace Seller Conference in September where we bring marketplace sellers together and give them, you know. Guidance. And so there are ways to get this information beyond just like getting somebody from my team, of which there are very few as you, you know, as we start to, to consolidate down. [00:21:47] Arif Razvi: But um, but they are available and there’s other mechanisms and we’re happy to share those out. [00:21:50] Vince Menzione: Nice, nice. Well coming here doing this and we’ll make a podcast episode out of this as well. Can you hear. I hear us all, uh, because I do think it’s important to get in front of, especially the Chief Finance Officer and operations and all those different departmental heads who aren’t really embedded into, like, they don’t come to these events. [00:22:07] Arif Razvi: Yeah. And they also don’t log into Partner Central. That’s right. So how do they get this information right? Yeah. So we have to one to one it with them. Yeah. But that doesn’t scale when you think about what’s gonna happen now with this next wave of GSIs and sis and, and others coming onto Marketplace who hadn’t been there. [00:22:22] Arif Razvi: Yes, they’re gonna need the same guidance. Yeah. So we have to start thinking about what we’re building is AI tooling to help with those conversations. [00:22:28] George Maroulakos: Well, and, and you know, if, when I think about it from, from our buyer’s perspective, even just yesterday we held a, a couple of round table discussions with some procurement leaders that were, we’re here for the summit and, you know, we do a lot of enablement and, and awareness. [00:22:42] George Maroulakos: With alliance leaders at our partners, and that’s certainly a, the tip of the spear of getting the conversation started, but it’s not enough. And one of the things that we hear from our customers is. Well, you may have a great partnership with particular partner A, but the individual experience that I had with that sales rep doesn’t match that. [00:23:02] George Maroulakos: And so yeah, the evangelism and the awareness, yes, and the understanding of marketplace has to go beyond just the alliance team. You guys are the amplifier to it. But the folks that not only are in the back office and all the, the, the operational teams, but on the front lines and field sales need to also understand and embrace, not understand all the features and capabilities of marketplace. [00:23:25] George Maroulakos: AWS needs to handle that, but understand how marketplace fits into the co-sell strategy in what’s going on for that particular customer is very, very important to make sure our customers get the right experience. [00:23:37] Vince Menzione: Well, I think Arif, you mentioned this earlier about compensation models. And that’s a, that’s a factor too. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: ’cause people, people, um, they’re fearful of change. They’re fear, fearful of compensation changing. Especially, especially sellers. I, um, again, that’s a coaching area. [00:23:54] Arif Razvi: Yeah, it’s a coaching area. Um, it, it, it is, um. It’s probably one of the easier ones to solve. Um, and, and, and, you know, we have these conversations with partners about net, uh, cost neutral or uh, seller neutrality and things like that. [00:24:06] Arif Razvi: Once you show them the economics of how AWS can increase their deal value, those economics sort of, they go away. The problems go away, but they, you have to get in front of those. Uh, you know, senior leaders, the CROs and the CFOs, to have that conversation to then go, okay, I get what’s going on here. I get why I’m paying. [00:24:23] Arif Razvi: The listing fee is, is about funding all of these marketing activities that we do for our partners, right? [00:24:29] George Maroulakos: Well, and then you use the word neutrality. The other end of that neutrality problem or, or, or challenge is the pricing that goes along with the opportunities that are made available to customers. [00:24:38] George Maroulakos: And so to one of your earlier questions on points of friction or what, what stops it from taking off further? When, when partners and our customers have a disconnect on. What they’re expecting to pay when they use marketplace, or if there is a unnatural cost that goes along with procuring that solution through marketplace. [00:24:57] George Maroulakos: That also tends to bring a, a pretty bad experience, not only for that opportunity in front of them, but for respective opportunities that may, may be in play thereafter. So thinking about not, you know, having an a, an unnatural experience for our customers relative to pricing as well as compensation and, and everything else is, is also very important. [00:25:17] Vince Menzione: So we’ve got a few minutes left, and we haven’t really touched on ag agentic AI and agen AI solutions. A little bit different than the SaaS solutions per se. How, how are these solutions brought and sold differently than SaaS? [00:25:30] Arif Razvi: Uh, well, as Matt said, the SaaS apocalypse is not real. [00:25:34] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:34] Arif Razvi: Um, he doesn’t, I’m glad to hear that, nor nor do I. [00:25:37] Arif Razvi: Um, I, I think what, you know, where, where SaaS has been very user seat based, you’re moving now to a world that’s gonna be more consumption based or outcome-based pricing. And so that’s really changing the dynamic and I think partners need to think about what does an outcome-based, uh, pricing model look for My particular. [00:25:55] Arif Razvi: Um, product, uh, Zendesk is a good example of, Matt published a blog, uh, earlier this week, I think it was, where we, we referenced Zendesk pricing on closed tickets or, or resolutions to tickets, right? For, for outcome-based pricing. So I think we need to think about on the pricing side, how to reprice, how to think about pricing. [00:26:13] Arif Razvi: But on the discovery side, thinking about what your, what your listing looks like, it’s no longer about marketing copy. It’s about, it’s almost, I was talking yesterday about being an API contract. ’cause the agent needs to have all the details that a person doesn’t necessarily need to have in order to make a recommendation that your product is the best fit based on the technology that’s underlying that, where it’s gonna fit in the infrastructure. [00:26:37] Vince Menzione: So three and a half minutes left lightning round. Um, but seriously, what, what if I’m in the room or even any, any partner that’s listening today, what do I need to change in the next 30 days? [00:26:50] George Maroulakos: From my perspective, think about marketplace as a why not as opposed to a why. And if you change your mindset around marketplace can be better together in helping to accelerate and expand your opportunities with our mutual customers. [00:27:03] George Maroulakos: You’ll get a whole lot more value out of it. You’ll get away from the fud in the system or some of the traditional roadblocks that you either have been or could be encountering when you think about marketplace, uh, together with your, with your solution. So think about the why not think about the value that the, the, the total solution can bring to our mutual customers and integrate it much more naturally into your total sales motion. [00:27:26] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:27:27] Arif Razvi: I would say maybe three things. One, um, don’t just sell globally. Operate locally. Think about how your buyers wanna buy and then meet them there, right? As a partner, even if you’re doing CPPO transactions, um, you know, meet them in the location. Number two, top down, go get that executive alignment so the problems start to disappear, or at least are easier to manage when you’ve got that executive alignment. [00:27:51] Arif Razvi: And the third was, uh, don’t wait till the last minute to introduce marketplace. Work with your sales teams to make sure it’s part of the early conversation versus no procurement leader wants to know at the end of the day, oh wait, it’s coming. I gotta deal with this marketplace thing. They don’t wanna deal with it on the buyer side. [00:28:06] Vince Menzione: No, absolutely. Alright, we’ve got time for like one question in the back. Is that Eric? Yeah, that’s [00:28:12] Guest: me. [00:28:13] Vince Menzione: Hey. [00:28:14] Guest: Hi, Eric Rosenstein, um, with Cornerstone Strategy XAWS. So George, you talked about, uh, tools around that customers can use to research for self discovery. So what guidance, uh, first of all, like what capabilities are these tools gonna bring and what guidance would you give an industry specific ISV? [00:28:36] Guest: So someone that’s focused on law enforcement or private equity. That solution may be Angen solution, or it may be something more SaaS related. What guidance would you give an ISV to think about how to best leverage those tools? Is it metadata? Is it like. The outcome that your solution’s gonna drive, how would you tell ’em to best utilize those coming tools? [00:28:58] George Maroulakos: Yeah, excellent question and, and I think this is gonna, going to continue to emerge in the days, literally in weeks, weeks ahead. But recently, I, I’d say over the last six months, the advent of agent mode I think has been a game changer and the ability for our customers to use marketplace directly to research. [00:29:18] George Maroulakos: Efficiently what’s in our catalog. Prior to that, we had a category based. Old school based, search based category, click through way, which became very buried beyond the first page for any solution that was out there. Now with natural language query and the ability to propose, what am I specifically looking for, it gives partners that were on the first page or the last page in equal opportunity to be surfaced. [00:29:48] George Maroulakos: So then for a partner being able to do many of the things you just enumerated. Better metadata, better keywords, better description and differentiation for what your solution offers allows for the Ag agent search, whether it’s natively within AWS or outside of AWS through Claude Chat, GBT Crock Pick your, your, your agent of choice. [00:30:10] George Maroulakos: To be able to identify and know that your solution’s available. [00:30:13] Arif Razvi: And from a partner side to your question, I would say, uh, rich metadata, uh, both so that agent mode can find it. Yeah. Use cases, problems, it solves, you know, uh, technical specifications, pricing where you can, right. So that agents can really understand the solution, uh, that the buyer is, um, is looking for. [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: GEO is. [00:30:37] Guest: Perspective should be like as detailed as saying, so this agent is gonna act on these various data sources. [00:30:44] Arif Razvi: Yes. [00:30:45] Guest: Bringing it all together to drive that outcome that you want the agent [00:30:48] Arif Razvi: drive, if you can include what it needs to connect to in order to deliver that outcome as part of the listing. [00:30:53] Arif Razvi: Absolutely. ’cause the agent will want to know. For sure. [00:30:57] Guest: Thanks. [00:30:58] Vince Menzione: Alright, we are at time and this was a great session. [00:31:01] Arif Razvi: Thank you Vince. [00:31:01] Vince Menzione: Great to see you, George. George and I grew up, uh, five miles away from each other and went to the same college. I love it. Great to, great to spend some [00:31:09] Arif Razvi: time with you, George. [00:31:11] Vince Menzione: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode, and if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

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Welcome to Season 5 of the Braving Business podcast.In this season premiere, co-hosts PJ Benoit and Tal Zlotnitsky dive into a challenge that quietly undermines almost every organization: how to lead effectively through human difference. Rather than treating differences in background, communication styles, generations, or perspectives as obstacles to manage or suppress, what if leaders treated them as dormant capital waiting to be mined?Joining the show are two co-authors of the book All the Difference: How Great Leaders Create Value From Diversity: Lt. Gen. Leslie C. Smith (Ret.), former 66th Inspector General of the U.S. Army, and Stuart Kliman, founding partner at Vantage Partners and alumnus of the Harvard Negotiation Project.From combat operations to Fortune 500 boardrooms and high-growth tech startups, Gen. Smith and Stu share why navigating difference is not an HR checklist or standard DEI policy—it is a core leadership capability called Difference Intelligence.Inside the EpisodeDifference as an Asset: Why modern teams are more difference-filled than ever, and how viewing friction as "dormant capital" creates real competitive advantage.Leadership Through Love (Agape): Gen. Smith shares why true military leadership is rooted in love, care, setting the conditions for success, and serving those you lead.The 6 Target Actions: An inside look at the actionable framework from All the Difference, including Knowing Yourself, Returning to Respect, Activating Honesty, Seeing the Full Story, Igniting Togetherness, and Committing to Action.The 4 Leadership Landmines: How default certainty, inconsistency, reactivity, and justification derail even well-intentioned leaders.The Living Case Study: How three distinct co-authors (a 3-star general, a corporate strategy expert, and an executive coach) lived through their own friction, debates, and diverse perspectives to write this book.Preparing the Battlefield for Decisive Action: How investing in trust and transparency ahead of time makes tough, decisive leadership choices stick when the stakes are highest.Notable Quotes"Difference is gravity. It's part of the human condition. Poorly managed, it undermines your success; well managed, it becomes a source of tremendous value." — Stuart Kliman"Those who lead must first serve. Leadership is about taking people not only to where they want to go, but beyond where they think they have the ability to go." — Lt. Gen. Leslie C. SmithResources & LinksGet the book: All the Difference (available wherever books are sold)Learn more about our hosts and upcoming episodes: Braving BusinessCheck out Cara Tanamachi's new novel Kiss, Marry, Kill at Cara the AuthorCatch PJ on The Blackhawks Daily on YouTube and major podcast platformsConnect with Braving BusinessWebsite: bravingbusiness.comFollow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTubeDon't forget to follow, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!

Technology keeps trying to “fix” every small inconvenience in our lives, which has rendered us completely unable to endure basic hurdles such as sitting in silence, navigating unfamiliar social social interactions, and doing any kind of creative thinking. To reverse this, Kathryn Jezer Morton, writer of The Cut's “Brooding” column and author of the new book The Story of Your Life, proposes we “friction-maxx.” On today's encore episode, Kathryn joins host Kate Lindsay to figure out how to rebuild our tolerance for the very things that, it turns out, make us human.This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Vic Whitley-Berry, and Kate Lindsay. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Technology keeps trying to “fix” every small inconvenience in our lives, which has rendered us completely unable to endure basic hurdles such as sitting in silence, navigating unfamiliar social social interactions, and doing any kind of creative thinking. To reverse this, Kathryn Jezer Morton, writer of The Cut's “Brooding” column and author of the new book The Story of Your Life, proposes we “friction-maxx.” On today's encore episode, Kathryn joins host Kate Lindsay to figure out how to rebuild our tolerance for the very things that, it turns out, make us human.This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Vic Whitley-Berry, and Kate Lindsay. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do friction, struggle, and silence make you fully human?   AI can generate an answer, but it cannot suffer with you, worship, love a neighbor, or become wise. Host Curtis Chang and Andy Crouch, the partner for theology and culture at Praxis, explore how AI may weaken our minds, distort relationships, and tempt us to outsource the very experiences that form wisdom, wonder, and sacrificial love. From chatbot "companionship" and AI-assisted grief to medicine, spiritual counsel, and the loss of silence, Curtis and Andy ask whether convenience is quietly creating a kind of cognitive metabolic syndrome and what we can do about it.   00:01:22 - Introduction to AI's Impact on Our Minds. 00:04:35 - Lessons from Social Media's Evolution 00:08:26 - Cognitive Metabolic Syndrome 00:18:45 - What Is the Purpose of the Human Mind? 00:25:23 - Wonder vs. Power 00:26:49 - Love Requires Suffering and Friction 00:34:38 - The Limits of AI in Healthcare 00:40:53 - The Danger of Outsourcing Life's Hardships 00:51:23 - The Loss of Silence 00:58:11 - The AI Forced Conversation on Being Human 01:01:03 - Practical Ways to Protect Our Humanity   To give to Good Faith: https://goodfaith.org/donate   Mentioned in This Episode: Andrew Briggs and Roger Wagner's The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions Thomas Fuchs' In Defence of the Human Being  Victor Hugo's Les Misérables Tristan Harris on How AI Worsens Ills Caused by Social Media (The Economist) Explore the work of The Future of Life Institute Emma Pearson's I'd Rather Risk Cancer Than See AI Move This Fast (The Atlantic)   Scriptures: Mark 12:30–31 (ESV) Matthew 22:37–39 (ESV) Deuteronomy 6:5 (ESV) Luke 10:27 (ESV)   More From Andy Crouch: Check out Andy's website Check out Andy's work at Praxis Read Andy's book: The Life We're Looking For Read Andy's book The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place    Follow Us: Good Faith on Instagram Good Faith on X (formerly Twitter) Good Faith on Facebook   The Good Faith Podcast is a production of a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan organization that does not engage in any political campaign activity to support or oppose any candidate for public office. Any views and opinions expressed by any guests on this program are solely those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Good Faith.