So What...? AI Won't Fix a Broken Process

Foreign. So welcome to this week's episode of so what? Or is it so what? Or is it so what? I don't know. But this week, so what is going to be all about adaptability, a subject that you've chosen, Mike. Yeah. So I thought it'd be really interesting to sort of dig in a little bit to some of the conversations we've been having, like within the Gen CFO community, but more broadly around sort of what we always talking about AI at the moment. But I wanted to sort of link it to adaptability and how we need to look at not just the tools that we use, but also the processes that we operate and how. How we work as people and think about that and how. How that can be empowered by AI rather than just leaping to things like technology, solution, technological solutions. All right, And I think it's so what as well. It. It's so what. Was that. Was that with a question mark? Was that with. Yes, it was with a question. It was with. Okay, we're all good. I suppose we should explain what. What so what is. So what we're going to do. This is a pilot, so don't hold us to it. But what we're going to do is that every other week we are going to have an episode like this where we talk about a subject and, you know, be great to get people to suggest. Suggest subjects, but we're going to talk about subjects that we've chosen. People can then comment on them, people can get in contact with us about those subjects and we are posing the question about so what? So what about this subject? So what about the. The relevance for leaders and leaders leadership podcast, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we're going to do. It's going to be a little bit different. We're going to stop saying we're doing a special this week. We can just call it a so what? There may be other people involved in this. Who knows, because this is a pilot. So adaptability. So if I go back like a long time ago, Mike, when we first met, I was talking quite a lot about agility and it was quite confusing because people didn't know whether I was talking about agile process or talking about, you know, the delivery methodology in it and all this sort of stuff. And then. Or yoga. Yes. Can I touch my toes? Which I can, by the way. Yeah. Um, and then. But then as it evolved, you know, it did turn into this word sort of adaptability, and I think that is the right word for it nowadays. And I've got to Update my content. But it's good because it begins with a. So I've still got my aaa, if you remember what that is. Agility, Times, times, analytics plus automation. You struggle to remember. It's. It's been a while. Um, but I, but it's interesting that you like this. Everyone's talking about AI, you know, and AI won't fix everything. Actually, adaptability will and I completely agree with you. So what's your sort of take on it? I suppose a really high level. One of the things that I've been sort of reflecting on, around, around artificial intelligence and particularly where people are using large language models to like make do things faster is all that really is, is things that we would, we were doing before with tools just as Mega'd made much, much quicker. Um, so if a process is broken, so if, if, basically if something isn't working already, all you're doing is pouring petrol on it and making it not work faster. And, and I think that there's just something under. Underpinning in there. The real problem with AI in this, in this space is if you've got a broken process, what AI will do is fill in the gaps, but fill in the gaps by making stuff up potentially. And I think that, that, that for me is that the thing that I wanted to sort of call out is whereas in the past we would do automation or we would put in place macros or things to sort of like speed things up, you could see if they were broken, you could see if that Excel formula wasn't working. Now, the problem with the way that the AI LLMs are working is you can't see that you have to be really, really attentive. So it makes it in my mind even more important that you've got your foundations right because you won't be able to spot the problems until it's cataclysmically bad. So what, so are you saying, and did you use the word mega in the middle of that? I might have done mega. Okay. I hadn't come across that before, but. Well, I, I'm quite often making up words. I, I think data refi is one that I've used a few times. Mega and data refined. So are you saying that, that, you know, increased adaptability is, is a, is a sort of solution to AI then because we didn't have this problem before because we could fix everything as we go? Well, no, I'd say I think the opposite actually. I think we did have this problem before, but we kind of papered over the cracks by, by sort of like Bodge fixing things because. Oh, that's not working. Oh, that's not quite right. We'll just tweak it. So I think actually when we had in the past where we had processes that weren't working, we would, we would manage and cope. Whereas now, because you won't see that the processes aren't working, you're just introducing errors potentially into the work that you're. And I think that that for me is the thing. So actually the reason adaptability is, the answer is in my mind is we need to look at how we're working, adapt our processes, our approaches to things to make them work properly and then apply an AI layer to that rather than just leaping to. Let's just chuck AI over all of our stuff. Okay, so, so adaptability is, is about fixing problems from your perspective in a, in a way. Yeah, I mean I quite often talk about process re. Engineering, so I've done a process re eng. Engineering course back in the day. But you know, that's, that's, you know, yet more jargon but, but in effect that's all about, you've got your operating processes within an organization, what are the techniques that you apply to that to. And to make it more efficient, more effective, you know, lean Sigma approaches, all of that kind of stuff. That's all still critical. And you know, just by applying a, this mega, mega delayer won't fix your fundamental issues. And I think, you know, we talked in gen CFO context with lots of finance leaders about applying a large language model to an accounts process that's not working. Your accounts process will still not be working. Yeah, no, I get it and I think so. Where I sort of see this sometimes falls down is that we kind of, you know, we talk about AI coming and it's going to fix everything and then we, we focus on sort of winning hearts and minds and you know, get the people ready for the change. And it's a sort of change management conversation and people mistake that as, as adaptability. They, you know, willingness to, you know, engage in a subject is not the same as being ready to adopt something or being able to respond to change as it comes along. And I, and I think that's the, and I remember actually debating this with you quite a lot when we were, you know, going through the sort of the AAA formula and stuff like that. And at the time, I think I even remember this conversation at the time I said automation is the, the multiplier. And you actually said no. What I was calling agility at the time is the multiplier. And I was like, interesting, because so I fell, even I fell into the trap. Right. I was thinking about this from a sort of tool technology speed perspective, but actually, you're absolutely right and I have changed it. I can credit you for that as well. Is that the. It's the agility, adaptability that is the real multiplier. Because what I see in my work is that if, if you're not looking for issues, if you're not looking for problems, if you're not looking, you know, to, to make change, then you're, you're not actually offering much value at all. You, you know, things that you have to be on the front foot of, like issues management, I think, to really offer value to any organization. Now, if you're just doing a job, then, you know, I think that's, that's a very risky position just to be in. Well, I agree, absolutely. And we've had conversations off camera, as it were, around how we're using large language models in our work now where we weren't a year ago. And I think that when we've talked, both of us have said that we're using that technology in a way which supports our existing processes and speeds them up and makes them more effective. So, for example, in my work, I quite often use Gemini or Claude to help me do some research into something. I, I mentioned I've been doing some legislation research for a piece of work that I'm doing at the moment, which, you know, I've done lots of that over my career. I've gone into like, legislation.gov.uk and typed through and found a bit of legislation, searched and found the right bit. Well, now I can use Gemini to do that, to find the bit of legislation I'm looking for so much quicker. So actually all it's done is it's sped up a process that I've already got. I understand what I'm trying to do, I know why I'm trying to do it and I can use the large language model to help me do that. What I'm not doing is going to Gemini and saying, this is my problem, fix it. It's that, that, that process step is so important. I think in. And when people were talking, you know, a couple of years ago about, you know, everyone's going to be a prompt engineer and it sounded like, you know, it was a really kind of jargony shitty term, but in reality there's some truth in that. Everybody needs to know what their processes are in order to be able to use some of the tooling in an effective, like an AI tooling in an effective way within their process. So you need to be able to A, understand what your process is and then B, understand where, where something like that can accelerate it. Yeah, it's a, it's a good example. It's a real simple example, but actually it highlights the, the challenges that people have right now, which is which I think, you know, people are buying AI tools or they're asking what AI tool buy, or they're getting a license for it and appearing on their desktop or whatever. But actually the real question is, you know, can. Can we actually adapt fast enough to benefit from that tool? And in that little example, it's like, well, I've learned that there is a repository of information there. The data is there, the legislation is there. I can trust it. You know, I could, I can ask a question or prompt engineering, whatever, you know, and, and then I, and it's valuable to me. But that actually itself is. Is the adaptability journey. Right, right. Exactly, exactly. It sounds really simple. It's just like, oh, we just ask it a question as if it's WhatsApp. But actually it's not. It's more than that. It's trust in the tool. It's the behavioral change towards the tool. It's not just buying a tool. And I think that that's what, that, that's why I introduced prompt engineering into the conversation, because that's what I think. Again, it's a bit of jargon that everybody, I mean, I don't know if everybody hates it, but I certainly hate it as a term. But what it is, if you unpick what it is. What it is, is you need to understand a. Your process and the processes. So you need to be adaptable. Understand and be adaptable to understand, to be able to type all that stuff out to then get the thing to do the thing you want it to do. I think it's. That it's. There's something about adapting your process to fit in with the fit to the tool as well. But you, but even before you get to that right, you have to, you know, there's an, there's an adage in, in education generally, you've got to unfreeze to change people's thinking, to then rephrase it to the new state kind of thing. And I think what, what you're actually skipping over is that sort of the unfreeze part. So if people who aren't being adaptable, you know, people who are just doing the job and they're doing a good job. And it's, it's as, as it says on the tin, they're in that frozen state. A lot of people in, you know, my area, I would say, are in that mold because that's actually drilled into them, you know, to stand, standardize, simplify, follow the rules, you know, but we, we actually need to sort of be open to, you know, the unfreeze stage before you even get to that. Right. Well, I suppose that's a question back. Back at you then. Really, really around, around that mindset thing. So do, do you think what we're describing in terms of adaptability as a mindset, is that something that is inherent in somebody or is it so. I mean, you use the words drilled in, it's drilled into us. I just wondered, does that mean we need to kind of, whatever the opposite of drilling is, bat out of people to give them that kind of space to be more adaptable? So I think behaviors learn, you know, it's, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but I do believe that behaviors learned. And I think your environment has a lot to do with it as well. And it sets the norms and, you know, it gives you safety, you know, knowing the boundaries and the norms. And it's certainly in the accounting finance space, you know, our norms are to be sort of fixed and have a, have a fairly fixed mindset about what we do and to standardize everything and to be very structured around everything and, you know, the, to be accurate and the, the, you know, to enter into the vagaries of things, you know, and, and to sort of even create an unstable state, to, to make change is completely against the environment that we've created. I'm just going to, I want to dig at that because. So one of the things of reflecting on, from working with you is you've got obviously a community of people that come together to talk and generally what the commonality is. What One, finance, Accounting and finance, but also two, they're people that are actively interested in transformation and transformation within finance. So my question is almost. Is that almost an echo chamber straight away around adaptability in that in order to be interested in accounting and finance and transformation, you must by definition already be adaptable. So therefore what you're talking about is the people I'm getting at is the people that aren't part of that community. They're the people that you're describing rather than the people that are in the community. Do you see what I mean? I do, I do. Because it's like that, you know, you could argue they're the early adopters, right? They're the ones searching for adaptability. But I, but I think even within the early adopters, you know, there's a tension between their current reality and their future reality. Right? It's. It's like, how do I, you know, I, I believe in this vision of the future, but how do I get there? And, you know, how do I. I've changed, but how do I get my team to change? And how do I, you know, create that kind of the journey for people that, that they feel is super abstract and really difficult to kind of, you know, maneuver? And actually one of the biggest things that, that I hear, you know, from the leaders is that, you know, most of the team are stuck. That, you know, some of them want to do it, some of them have got sort of AI skills, but most of them are stuck, and it's hard to actually get them to move forward. That's really, that's really interesting because I think it goes back to something that, I mean, if, probably, if you go back to some of our really early podcasts, we were talking about the people process technology in that. In that order, and the fact that quite often transformations and change programs start with the technology, then update the processes and think about the people last, if ever. And I think what you've just described there is the same thing. It's, it's like quite often the barrier, and maybe this is where we should be thinking about adaptability is I start, I started and launched into it around processes. But actually what it should, maybe what it is is about how do we help people be adaptable. And then you can start thinking about the processes and then you work out how the tools get deploy. Yeah. And, you know, I'd love to hear like, the environments that you work in, you know, how, how it sort of manifests itself. Because I'm, I'm basically saying that we're, you know, by definition, we are managing a lot of transactional processes, legislation, you know, governance, you know, all the, all the fun stuff, you know, but you have to get it right. If things go wrong, then there are consequences. And I think what, what is the real blocker behind it all is they're not, not just social or traditional norms in our industry, but actually there are consequences of getting it wrong. You know, and you've. People talk about psychological safety and change. It's all well and good saying, you know, my, my boss allows me to fail, but if you, if you pay a supplier twice because you haven't, you know, followed the right process or, you know, you were trying to do five things and one of them was with an AI that failed. You know, that feels. That feels really uncertain. This podcast is sponsored by Generation cfo, the community for progressive accounting and finance leadership in a changing business world. Want to level up your career? Gen CFO membership gives you exclusive access to expert insights, events and a thriving community of finance leaders just like you. Search Generation CFO today and be part of the future of finance. That feels unsafe. So I think we've got to reduce the social risk of change. You know, we've got to make it okay to fail small, you know, but at the same time get a lot of the regulatory stuff right as well. And that's a very tricky situation. But what's it like, you know, in the environments that you work in, which are they as structured? Well, it's really interesting actually that you asked the question like that because you. I only half listened to what you were just saying because I'm immediately thinking about that. I was immediately thinking about it because it's like, yeah, that's, that's a good question. That is interesting. But. Well, so I think that the answer. The answer. So I've said this a couple of times in the last week. It's only in the last sort of three or four years I've really worked out what it is that I do when I'm at work. So I've got my expertise area. So I talk about copyright and data licensing and data sharing and more recently data standards. But actually the thing that I've done throughout my career is understand where people are at and bring them on a journey to the place where I need them to be. In effect, to be that whether it's going around waste sites and regulating them following their license, or whether it's now implementing a set of data standards and trying to get software suppliers to implement them into their software systems. It's the same process of bringing people on that journey. And similarly, when I was in Ethiopia and we were developing a data sharing policy, it was about getting people who inherently don't want to share data to the place where it's like, oh, actually I can see the benefits of this. So all the time, in every single circumstance, it's about, how do you bring people on that journey? And then focusing in on that. So, and I think that that's where I've been successful and where people see me being successful is like, oh, you've got all those people that weren't agreeing to agree. How have you done that? And the answer is you're open, you're honest, you're transparent, you tell people the path, you understand the differences. You don't try and shoehorn people into thinking that they don't have you and try and focus on the commonalities and you move towards the common goal in, in a, in a kind of structured way. All of that is the people stuff. It's about being adapt by personal adaptability with the people to get to that point that how much of that is. Because that's a two way street. Right. You don't have the magic wand, you know, saying we all agree on everything anymore. Well, you know, if you have, then double your rates. But I mean, how much of that is people changing their attitude, their identity before the change? Right. It's because I feel that there's a sort of two way street there, there's like, look, okay, I am going to shift my perspective. I am going to try to understand, I am going to, you know, it's bring in the adaptable behavior. Yeah. So how much of it is actually changing identity before you actually bring people through the process stuff that you're talking about? So do you mean personally changing identity or, or the people that people kind of acknowledging that, that they, that, that they actually have to do something different? You know, I, so I think there's two, there's a few bits in that, but the, so the, the first bit is in the work that I do around data sharing with, you know, which is government and private sector companies, non nonprofits, academics. The first thing is acknowledging that everybody's different and literally say, okay, so I'm a government organization, I have policy outcomes I'm trying to achieve. That's my goal. I'm a commercial organization, I'm working in data, but I'm trying to make a profit. I'm an academic, I'm working with data. I want to further human knowledge. And fundamentally accepting that those are different goals is the first step. And, but within that, within that it's like, okay, so what's within that is the commonality. And the commonality is that in my work, the data is the thing that everybody wants to have access and use for those different purposes. So some people want to use it to achieve policy goals, some people want to use it to make money, some people want to use it to do research. Okay, so let's work around that. Let's take that. We're starting off from the point of sharing. So I think in any example that I've got, the first step is not identifying differences and Trying to mold people to change, to. To agree with me, it's much more the opposite. It's like, well, where's the common ground and finding the common ground? So to play that back to you. And, and so I think what you're saying is, and we know this, right. You can't force people to change. You can't force people to, you know, unfreeze their minds. I think what you're actually doing is you're creating curiosity. Yes. About other people, about other things. You know, almost like it says this sort of distraction technique almost is like, let's all be curious about what this could be and then lead them towards something, you know, a little bit more sort of certain, a little bit more goal. Goal oriented, you know, but you've got to have. You've got to create the curiosity beforehand. Right. So. So you remember Matt Buck from journalism early, early on in the podcast. So Matt did. When I left government back in the day, he, he was. He did a, like a piece of artwork basically of Mike's quotes. And one of. One of the quotes that he did was sell, not tell. And I think that that underpins what you're, what you're getting out there. It's like you've got to sell the change, you've got to sell the transformation, you've got to sell the benefits. Almost like peak that curiosity, get people wanting to buy rather than tell them you will change, tell them you will do it differently. And I think that definitely working in government environments, that's where the work that I've done sometimes seems like, well, you know, blow my own trumpet sometimes seems a little bit like magic. It's. Because suddenly people that have been arguing for years like, oh, no, no, no, we, we get this and we're on that. On that path. And they're like, well, you know, you see people going, hang on, these are our biggest, like, problems. And they're working with you. Yeah, yeah. But it's because. Exactly. That their curiosity has been piqued. They see the benefits from their perspective to the work, to the world that we do. I'm not just trying to tell them what to do. And I think it's that. Yeah, I didn't realize this conversation was going to go in this direction. And that's what that. But that. I think. Sorry, just a tangent. I think that's the beauty of this format that we're trying here, which is actually there's so much in some of these things that we talk about really briefly on the podcast. Yeah. It's well worth Digging into. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good. I hope everyone's enjoying it and we'll, we'll no doubt, you know, be in contact, you know, with questions and you know, try and find more themes. I, I just, I want to. You just made me think about another angle to this. So the sell not tell, I think is a really interesting one because I like the ring of it. But I mean selling anything, you know, is a treacherous thing. Right. So what I think you're doing is that you're, you're creating curiosity and you're creating curiosity that allows people to maneuver a bit more. Yes. Because it's just an idea, it's just, you know, a conversation. And I think badly, it's a really strong play because you're giving people permission to change if they choose to. Yes. And, but what, what you do is you kind of, I can see you jumping on that and going, right, that's it that we've got to the point where we need to get to now. So, and we're all on the same page and you, you're comfortable with this and you're curious and you've got permission, so you're unfrozen now let's make the change. But it's, but it's a really treacherous thing. Right. Because I'm sure it can backfire. This is why it's so hard as well because you've got to get a lot of people to open the door a bit. Right. So, so, so I'm not necessarily sure. I think, I agree that it might backfire. I can't think of why it would backfire. But I actually think the hardest thing to do is get people to understand this is an important step. So one of the things that, that talked about before is like transformation projects. Get given a budget and when you get given a budget, what you then end up having to do is report on spend. And quite often when you're reporting on spend, you end up with like some kind of flat profile of spend of like, okay, in order to spend this budget that you've been given, you've got to be spending whatever it is, 10,000 pound a month, whatever. And part of the problem is that this, this step that I'm talking about here actually is relatively low in terms of budget, budgetary cost, but quite high in terms of cap human capital. You need to get people in a room, spend time talking to them. You're not spending time on building things, you're not spending time on capex. You're literally getting involved in, you know, understanding people to so then when you do start spending the money, you're spending it on the right things rather than just spending it on your assumptions. And I think that that for me is where quite often the risk is, is you ignore this stage of understanding who you're trying to work with to transform. You leap into. Perhaps even where I started was in this conversation was incorrect. You leap into the process and tooling bit, you miss the people bit. So therefore you're already working off the. The wrong thing. Yeah, I totally get that. And it's. And I think it's one of the biggest failures actually of any kind of transformation program that they do not invest enough time, Literally time. It's time. It's time to allow, but it's not necessarily doing. It's allowing people to absorb the message, explore. So you know how many times when we've spoken to like transformation leaders, Got to bring people on the journey. You got to bring people on the journey. And in my mind, yeah, okay, the first question is like, where do people want to get to? Let's ask them where they want to get to and let's work out where we're all heading rather than let's leap to. Actually, what we need is an AI solution. It's like, well, no, maybe, maybe what we need is something different. Maybe what we need is more training for our people to help them do that thing, not this thing over here. And I think that, that, that is. I realize I've jumped into that rabbit hole. But the fundamental agreement is it's about time. And that comes back to my point about when a transformation project gets given budget, it's given budget and no time. It's given budget to start spending now, not actually take six months to really get hone in. Take that time and then start spending the budget hard on what you need to do to change. But I'd see playing devil's advocate and I've seen it both ways. You know, there is a, there is a devil on my shoulder saying, just get on with it. Right. The other one is saying, look, we need time to help people on the journey to be adaptable, to actually be adaptable, to absorb the message, to become curious, you know, to change their behavior, to find a sort of safe way forward to, to adapt. There's the other one, which is just change the effing policy and get on with it. Right? Yeah. So in the, so the Gen CFO Summit last week, I was facilitating event, probably one of those ones where you are having a, you know, a coffee break. Coffee and a classic Coffee. I really appreciate those breaks. It's a great, great coffee break. So, so I was facilitating a conversation about transformation and the first question asked that we, that asked was, you know, define it. Define what transformation is. And I think actually that's probably quite an important linking to what you were just saying. That's quite an important point. So in terms, I think it was Baron that said it, that transformation is a radical change. It's almost like a breaking change. You're making a change that is going to fundamentally change some, you know, alter the system. So it's not incremental development. You know, it like just, you know, get on with tweaking that policy, go for it. It's actually what is the fundamental thing that you're doing that you're going to do differently? How are you radically changing the organization or the organizational processes? And it's almost like def. So I definitely agree for little incremental changes that should be happening all the time. It should be just, just get on and do. What I'm really getting at is the radical type changes. So for example, my Ethiopia example, it was implementing a data sharing policy that never existed before in a culture where inherently people held on to data for lots and lots of reasons, they didn't want to share data. So that's a radical change to that system that we were implementing. So you had to bring people on that journey. You couldn't just, just get on and do it because what you would have done is you'd have written a policy document that nobody bought into and it would have just ignored, which I've definitely seen as well in the past. And then people start asking for exceptions and this doesn't belong, this doesn't belong to my area. And they. The best example, the best example of that, and you'll laugh at this, is, so I work, work a lot in data governance and going into an organization and you say, okay, so we're looking to implement an organizational data governance policy. Yeah, yeah, it's a great idea, It's a great idea. But I work with statistical data and that's different. So I don't have to follow this policy. It's like, what? Yeah, but I work in finance, so I've got financial data that doesn't have to go with this. Hang on, I'm dealing with investigation. So I've got investigative data that doesn't. It's like, no, no, no, you're looking at this the wrong way around. You know, this is all data. It all has to comply with the broad principles of the policy. And then you might have additional requirements, not the other way around where you just have a carve out. And I think it's. The carve out for me is people not being on the journey of transformation. Yeah, totally, totally. And I've got similar examples. But what I kind of put it down to is they, you know, you can say it's a change management issue, like with they. But they haven't adapted and they haven't. And somewhere along the way they kind of lost confidence in it all. You know, it's like, this isn't, this isn't for me. So, you know, you're going to, you're going to love this then. Because I know what your view of this is in, Is there. But this is where the change curve for me is really useful because what you're describing is the first step of the change curve where you basically end up with. So I don't think there's one change curve for an organization. I think every person, every team is on the change curve. So you're describing people that are in that denial phase. Okay, so something's coming along. Here's a transformation. Does not compute. I'm just going to stay in denial and I'll be in denial forever. Whereas actually, if you, if you're looking at bringing the whole everybody in the organization through their own individual change curves, you need to get them away from denial quickly and into. Through that kind of like denial. And what's the next one? Morning. Okay, it's not morning, but. And then you end up going, oh, okay, I can see the opportunity now. I'm starting. You need to get people to start to see their opportunities. I don't have anything against the change capture. I, what I, It's a very, it's a very helpful model. But in the real world, it is a spaghetti of change. And that's exactly what. Well, I think so. And, and to my point, I agree is that, you know, you could, you could take someone all the way up to like implementation day, but they can still lose confidence at that point. They can still opt out at that point because you, because there's, you know, they haven't actually engaged with it. They've said all the right things. So it's kind of like, it's just, it's a, it's a Spaghett spaghetti, which I think, you know, it, it's, it's a great model. But I mean, so, so I would, so I could. So what I've described about the change curve overlaying is exactly, I exactly agree. It's a spaghetti because everybody's at a different place. So you've got all of these tangled kind of in my head. So I can see that visually. You did just say, though, just to be a pedantic son of a. Which is my role in life. You did just say that you can get people all the way to the point of change and then they will get backtrack. Well, that means that they've stayed in denial for the whole, the whole time. That's effectively what you've literally just said is they've been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's denial. That's not, that's. No, that's not what they said. They basically can, they could be like, they could be like, oh, yeah, this is great, this is great. Keep going. Yeah, it's not for me or you know, I'm in denial. Yeah. But actually, no, I can see this is right. What's right? And then also there could be an external kind of change that comes in. There could be, you know, the wind might blow the wrong way, you know, they might be busy on something else. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, I don't have that. You know, so I'm hearing the, the subsequent episode of so what? Which is change curve. So what? Yeah, I mean, I think so what I'm taking away from this adaptability. It's not about chaos, it's not about changing things just for the sake of it. It's, you know, it's confidence in change. It's. It's being able to understand your role in change. I think definitely for me, I see a, I see a very hands on role actually for most sort of leaders nowadays to implement adaptability. It's not just a sort of, you know, a passive thing that we recruit for or we somehow create through culture. You know, it's actually no, you need to be very hands on with this stuff. That's kind of my takeaway. Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, I mean, this conversation is brilliant because I've, you know, explored my own thinking as we've gone through the conversation. But I think, I think there's open mindedness. So adaptability is about open mindedness to some degree and being open minded to things not always staying the same. But then it's also structure. And I think that this, this is a. And what made me think that is you said it's not chaos. And I think it's more than it's not chaos. It's actually there are steps that you can take There are approaches that you can take to sort of navigate through some of this. They're not always identical. They're not always the same. Even in applying the structure, you need to be adaptable. But it's actually understanding what are those key steps, you know, from that kind of initial, what I was describing, that initial negotiation around what the change itself actually is and what it means to people all the way through to how it's implemented, all of that. There is a structure, but you need to be adaptable within the structure as well. Love it. Love it. And talking of being adaptable in structures, this is a change to our normal format. It is a pilot and we will probably be doing another one and we may be introducing other speakers into this as well. So, Mike, you chose this one. This week we've been having a chat offline, and next time we are going to talk about our favorite subject. I was gonna say a common subject for the podcast. It comes up in every episode. Yeah, a link to interest. Now we're going to talk about LinkedIn. We're going to talk about LinkedIn. So if you have questions or comments or anything like that, then get in contact with podcastenerationcfo.com we'll be going through it. But it'd also be good to get your views on that as well. So look out for the next one. If this passes the producer's test, then we will definitely be having another one. But brilliant. And what do I say now? And remember, so what.