Executive Function in the Age of AI: Margin, Meaning, and Machines

01As a society, we should be a lot smarter considering that we carry the sum total of human knowledge around in our pockets all day long. What took me 10 years will take you four, if you commit to it. part of the critical thinking process is being willing to be wrong and being humble enough about what you believe, right? Because what you believe today may change in 10 years and you have to be open enough to pivot. feel like that opening line for every one of them is... Well, good morning, Veer. What's happening? Hey, Jim. Nothing much, it's another day. Well, this is podcast one. So the pilot episode of functional executives, and I'm really excited. I'm really excited about being able to do this, not just because I'm excited about the topic, but I'm also getting to do it with somebody that I like quite a bit. Yeah, right. mean, being able to- That's you. ⁓ okay. I know there's someone else in the room with you. ⁓ yeah, to everyone listening, right? There's a welcome to functional executives.

02⁓ Jim and I are both functional executives, we think, on good days. Yeah, and we try to use our executive function. mean, there's all sorts of, I mean, we play in functions. We like IT quite a bit. Both of us, you're better at it than me. But we should probably tell them a little bit about ourselves, maybe take a second to do that. And then also just a little bit about the podcast. just the podcast overall, I think there's really two primary goals that we really hope that everyone can achieve with this podcast. And one is that you learn a little bit more about the practical side of a lot of things that are going on that you hear about in the news right now with automation, AI, just technological advancements are crazy, crazy fast right now. And I don't think everybody's really ⁓ got a firm grasp on exactly how to use some of that today. And then we also hope to give you a little bit of clarity and some structure around some what can be confusing topics.

03trying to cut through some of that ⁓ hype cycle that we're seeing with a lot of the things where ⁓ there are some really interesting things that we're doing with technology. And at the same time, all of us have got ⁓ day jobs. We have boards that we report to that expect ⁓ us to bring value. so ⁓ we're here at this intersection where how do we create value using these products and tools and these advances? Yeah, in real live business, not, Claude just broke the internet, you know, type of stuff that you see in a lot of places on YouTube. So, Veer, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself, what's your background, that way everybody knows who's talking to them. Well, yeah, I'm Veer Hossain, and if you find me online or around, I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. And so that's why I sound the way I do.

04And I've spent 25 years doing CIO work, working up to being a CIO and then doing consulting and management consulting and working for mid cap private equity companies going in as a, sometimes as a troubleshooter, sometimes as a MacGyver, sometimes just trying to get them ready for their. ⁓ next transaction, ⁓ you know, lot of that's just wrangling, ⁓ people, ⁓ as well as processes. ⁓ and then sometimes it's the technology piece, but, ⁓ and then Jim, you've had like a long career. Yeah, I've done about the same amount of time, know, 20, 25 years, pretty much in ⁓ a lot of different areas, but mainly in finance. So finance and CFO type work have been like the through line through the whole process. But it's mainly a lot of the things that you talk about, ⁓ mid market, high growth companies. I jump in usually when it's chaotic. ⁓ A lot of times it's around again, processes and controls in my world, just making sure that there's a lot of predictable, repeatable things that happen in a business that make it more valuable.

05And so, I tend to get involved when things are a bit messy and we need a new ERP. We don't have solid cashflow forecasting, things like that. That's a... that's the primary job, but it is all done through people. And if you check out any of my LinkedIn or anything like that, I always say the best team wins. If you don't have a good team of people working with you, then you're not going to accomplish a lot of those goals. Well, and as we accomplish those goals, a lot of the times, you know, like, you know, I find myself kind of, you know, when I describe what I do sometimes, sometimes what you do, right, we kind of parachute in sometimes and fix things. And then it's time to look for the next mission. And, you know, you recently got a phone call from a recruiter, you know, who, executive recruiter looking, you doing some type of like a retained search, looking for somebody to come in and help them. And, You're kind of telling me how that conversation had a unique dynamic to it.

06Yeah, I think this is so going back to like the core of what we're trying to do that which is, you know, bring a little bit of like, here's how you can actually use some of these new AI tools in practice. Anytime you jump on one of those recruiter calls, they're always recording you. Now, I mean, like, that's just the way it is they're doing interviews. ⁓ There's a there's a few stories in there, but they're they're recording everything. And so, you know, I'm I see they're recording, so I'm recording as well. And I just want to make sure that what I'm saying is landing and that I completely understand the dynamic. And so I was on this call, got off the call, and then I was using Plod. So ⁓ you might want to explain what Plod is a little. Well, you know, and maybe that's one of the things we put in our notes is we'll mention some products, ⁓ not because we're shelling it, but because these are tools that both of us use on a daily basis. ⁓ Plod makes ⁓ AI powered note takers.

07They're small and inconspicuous, just so that they don't feel like you're throwing a tape deck out on the table when you're in a meeting. ⁓ But gets all the voices, separates out transcripts, does Um, really interesting detailed analysis of both. I told somebody just yesterday that, uh, you know, we are way past. I need a meeting summary. And I think that's kind of where you're getting at is that you're able to take the transcript from it and go much further past. Oh, I just wanted my to-do list and, what, what, what were the commitments that came out of that call? Yeah. So I'm using that little plot device that you showed. So thanks for the explanation. So I use that and recorded with their desktop app. And then I used this, they have a bunch of different like programmed or I guess just set up prompts that are already in the hopper ready to go. So you literally click a button. There's one called power dynamics, which I think you and I both think is pretty darned interesting.

08There's some other ones too about nuances and conversations and like what's the real message and just really incredible stuff that it can do with just voice and transcription. In this particular case, the power dynamics were really clear. They were like, hey, it started off this way and that's the recruiter sizing you up. And then it became apparent pretty quickly that you were on the same wavelength as the recruiter. So I kind of proved out my bona fides. And then once that happened, the conversation shifted. And that's exactly what Plod, I mean, like that's what Plod told me. was like, hey, they're selling you at this point. You are now, ⁓ you've changed the whole conversation and they want to figure out how they can get. you in seat, or at least that recruiter did. Obviously that doesn't mean, ⁓ yeah, I've got the job, but it means, on this gate, you pass this gate. And I just thought it was wild that that is something that I would have done.

09Like as a human person, I would have tried to suss all that out and gone back through my handwritten notes and said, okay, what were they really thinking? I would have thought about my audience and all of the different things, right? Just using my critical thinking. And it did it in about, I don't know, 30 seconds, a minute after a 30 minute call. Well, and we talked about the fact that there's a thoughtfulness in the response that it gives you. So, you know, when we do try to decode that with our little orphan Annie of decoder ring using our notes at the, know, there's this moment at night, right? Where you're lying in bed, the anxiety hits you of like, I read that right? Did I, did I really understand what happened? And, and you question your own judgment sometimes and, and here you know, having the benefit of kind of a somewhat neutral third party that says, no, this is how that that conversation really went down. Yeah, and well, you can certainly make it as neutral and as unbiased as you want.

10mean, you can also make it to where it blows smoke ⁓ at you all day long. But in this particular case, I think it was pretty neutral and unbiased. That's the way the props set up. And it just gives you the straight bull. Yeah, well, and I think so the there's a healthy, but there is a tension here about if we can, if we don't have to trust our gut, then kind of what's left for us, right? I mean, if AI is doing that heavy lifting, like in this case, this is post conversation, but there are products and tools. when we've done ⁓ call center type projects, we can do ⁓ in kind of that intent and ⁓ the analysis ⁓ live in real time. We can interject that into ⁓ somebody's ear or escalate a call. ⁓ You know, if we start hearing a customer start swearing. ⁓ no, I think here, part of it was knowing how that call went, reinforcing behavior. But this is a professional development conversation to some degree. Yeah, but I mean, it's really, it recognized patterns that I would have recognized, but I would have recognized it with a lot of thought, right?

11I would have sat down and kind of dissected the call just like I would after, you you mentioned boards. It's like you sit down as a management team and you dissect an entire board meeting. Now, you know, I mean, there's all sorts of issues with recording some of those types of things and Nobody's really recording board meetings, at least no companies I've worked for. So you still have to do some of that heavy lifting. But in environments where you can do this, it recognizes the patterns. ⁓ I guess I just feel like what's left for me? What am I supposed to do in this situation anymore? Because now I have this. I mean, guess I can act on the information. Well, it reinforces behavior, right? It's either I did well on that call and next call I'm going to follow my instincts and my instincts are good. Or it's coaching by saying, hey, you lost control or lost influence during the course of the call. So remember that. ⁓ that could be the thing, right? It's not just a white page of like, how do I develop myself? It's... Here's two things that I may have been able to do better.

12Got it. I'll internalize that. I'll move on to my next thing. ⁓ Because at the end of the day, what I'm hoping I get out of using these tools is margin, right? I only have X amount of time. You only have X amount of time. We're busy. We have families. You know, this is the, you know, I work in. healthcare and we talk about how this Gen X specifically is the sandwich generation. We're raising children, we're looking after aging parents and ⁓ so it all comes down to margin because we're also in this place where we're trying to carve out a nugget for ourselves and our kids for the future. Yeah, but I guess for me, it's just, okay, it can do that in a minute and 30 seconds. So now, you know, do I do that every single time? You know, am I, I'm, am I over, I mean, is it always right? And I mean, am I relying on it too much or am I relying on it too little? Like what is the sweet spot? I'm still struggling. I have to tell you, like I have to slow myself down and say, Hey, look, you know, this is This is probably too much. I'm using this ⁓ to outsource some of my thinking.

13I mean, I know that there's tons of articles about this, but I really struggle with that. Like in real life, did I, I mean, like, should I have thought through this more? Would that have, you know, solidified the pathways in my brain so that I could be better in the next call? So I'm just, I think not just me, I think a lot of people are looking for ⁓ what is the what's the Goldilocks zone? Like you don't want to not use it because of the margin that you talked about, but you don't want to use it too much where your skills start to dull. ⁓ So, yeah, I don't know. I don't I don't know where the line is. Well, and I don't think it's just a line, right? I mean, I think that's where, you know, whether we get into like, you know, social constructs and other stuff, right? We could try to look at a lot of decisions, like Goldilocks, right? It's binary, right? The bed's too hard, the bed's too soft, right? And so it's either one or the other, or it's in the middle and it's just right. But you know, what if...

14Goldilocks had scoliosis and you know, there was something about, there were other factors affecting her decision about that bed. and, so there was more to it, right? There's more chess involved in too hard, too soft. And so the Goldilocks zone for us is also maybe something that's multifactored with, you know, you've always prized yourself, prided yourself on being able to read the room. Like being able to kind of, you know, just be just emotionally in touch with folks that are around you. And so, ⁓ the skill is already there, right? I mean, you're just augmenting that skill. You're honing that one, right? And we, ⁓ yeah, now I'm going to forget who wrote the, the, you know, kind of the book about, Like we're, we're, better off, right? Investing into our strengths, right? Then trying to like, become like well-rounded and invest into our weaknesses, right? We're going to get quantum gain if we invest into those strengths. So. You know, there is some self discovery piece, right? This isn't just, ⁓ right.

15We'll pull every kid out of Vandy's MBA school here in Nashville and tell them just, just use this and it'll, you you're going to be great at your job because they won't, right? They won't know. They won't have the 25 years of, okay, this was my superpower and I got better at it. You got better at it. So now it's just honing your superpower, making you faster, letting you reclaim margin. When you think about a moment that really kind of solidified for you, hey, I am finding more margin or I'm losing a little bit of focus. What is a moment? Can you point back to one specific thing where you're like, ⁓ yeah, this I gained a lot of margin, but this I wasted a lot of time. with AI and using these tools. I think, I don't know if there's one moment, I know that, you know, as I've been working with a client lately, prepping to go engage with them in a meaningful way and, you know, I mean, working to close the deal, get the deal in place, get ready to go and engage, that's a lot of work. ⁓ I look at that and now I know I have these tools at my disposal.

16I can produce what I need to go and engage quickly. ⁓ But I think maybe the mistake that I'm making right now is that like, I will immediately get greedy and chew up all that margin, right? Now I saved myself three hours of time, but what am I going to go do? I'm going to go online and look at ⁓ OpenClaw and I'm going to go look at ⁓ you know, the, pet project that I have going of, of building my own Ironman Jarvis to try to, ⁓ do some of my, ⁓ kind of, you know, personal, ⁓ better than personal assistant type, you know, life manager work. So that shoot it up, right? I didn't go, I mean, I mean, if I'm, if I'm being honest and transparent, right. I could have gone and grab my seven year old and read her a book, but I didn't, ⁓ But the margin was there. I think there's a little bit of me getting a little bit ⁓ more intentional about ⁓ when I create margin, picking where I use it. So there's a couple things that I wanted to ask you then. one is, that is being talked about right now is, well, it's really two sides of a continuum.

17There's a bunch of people that say, hey, AI is gonna, and large language models really specifically, it's gonna eliminate a ton of jobs. And it's coming for white collar jobs first. And so that's one side. And then on the other side, you got a bunch of people that are saying, hey, it's not actually gonna eliminate. a lot of these jobs, it's just gonna put a whole lot of pressure on the one or two people that are doing the jobs at that particular company ⁓ to do even more. So there's like an expansion of productivity. Is that kind of what you're drilling into? Is you feel like your work is expanding? It's changing. Maybe it's expanding, but again, right. trying to take on more. taking on more, I think, I mean, I feel like this therapy at this point, right? Am I taking on more because I want to? mean, I work for myself, right? I don't have somebody standing over me telling me to go, you know, deliver more.

18⁓ I'm taking on more because, you know, maybe I'm a little bit distracted by the shiny object syndrome, but also, you know, we talk about the fact and why we're doing this podcast is because we see people asking, how do I use these tools and how do I get past the hype that I see when I'm scrolling. ⁓ And so I'm looking at, right, like do I use this in a meaningful way? And I think when you and I talk, there's never a gap of, here's one more idea of something we could do, right? We talked about building end of day reporting, right? We talked about building tools for small and medium businesses. We talked about uh... you know coming up with ways to engage with clients faster Yeah. I mean, there's no shortage of ideas. So to me, and you talked about this the other day, because you received something from an executive coach and it was, you know, a series of questions that you needed to, you know, ask yourself to really reflect on how you work. And, and I thought that was interesting.

19You dropped that into a large language model and you said, Hey, How is it that you think I would answer these questions? And what was the output? mean, you don't have to, I know this feels like therapy, you already said that. So I mean, I'm not trying to dig too deep here and make you cry, but like, what did it say? And does that line up with what you just said about your work maybe not expanding too much? Well, I mean, I think it did cut a little bit, right? I mean, that's what I was telling you as I ⁓ did this, right? It was about people in executive roles and what keeps you up at night and what are you anxious about? you asked if- Yeah, I asked if there was a trust fall at the end of the exercise. what it came back with, right? And so I've used, know, specifically I've used one of the primary tools for the past year, deeply used ChatGPT across all facets of my life. And I've used it for ⁓ work material, I've used it for ⁓ things to prep for my children, planning family vacations.

20⁓ And I share a lot about those things, you know, so that there's context as I ask it to help me with different types of questions. So it knows about my family, knows about, you know, my faith, it knows about how, you know, some of the different like problems that I'm trying to solve. And it came back with a pretty, ⁓ you know, detailed like, ⁓ yeah, this is, this is what keeps you up at night. And it pointed out that not only, ⁓ you're working on a lot of things. ⁓ It was pretty pointed in like, perhaps you should pick a lane, Veer. Yeah. And I was like, I have to say, you know, mean, kind of a character flaw ish thing for me is not necessarily accepting feedback from just anybody. I think that's the thing, right? Like, you know, if anybody off the street said you're a jerk, I'm like, I don't care, right? If my wife said it, or I've got these three buddies I grew up with from when I was in 10th grade and I you know, talk to them every day now.

21And if they said I was being a jerk, I'd sit up and, ⁓ now chat GPT was telling me like, ⁓ you, you should maybe consider a little self-reflection and pick a lane. And I'm like, Yeah, is it dangerous to listen to this LLM when it says this stuff? Well, you know, the question there is what, I question motive, right? When I'm talking with friends or other folks, what does this large language model have to gain from steering me in one direction or the other, right? mean, like, you know, when we question, it has no motive, right? There's no get that it gets from me. Well, let's, okay. So that's a, that's kind of interesting. So is there really no motive? I mean, I think it does. I don't know. I'm completely speculating now, but like, what are the values that these, you know, guys in Silicon Valley have basically given this thing? And so by telling you to pick a lane, I mean, did it know?

22based on what you've done that by saying that it would increase the amount of time you spend in the product, because I would be shocked if they weren't trying to increase our amount of time spent in the product. So how did it know, I mean, like, did it know that about you? You maybe, but I mean, like, so that's a good question, right? Like if, if, if there was an ulterior motive that that that's a clearly a pretty clear one, right? Like, ⁓ well, stay sticky, right? Engage with the product. But telling me to pick a lane wasn't, ⁓ separated from my interaction with it, right? It was just like, ⁓ you're doing this healthcare work. You're, you're building these personal projects. You're, know, it was more about like focused. what you're going to do, but I mean, I would assume. Yeah, but what if it thought that you wanted to hear focus? Like what if it just inferred just from the simple fact that you were asking the question that, ⁓ yeah, this person wants me to tell them to focus. Maybe. I mean, maybe, right?

23mean, like you're kind of going like four steps up in the chest thing, right? Of like, ⁓ here's an executive coaching document. Right? mean, the McKinsey consultants come in and tell every business to reduce cost and increase revenue. What does the executive coach tell people to do? They come in and tell people, you should pick some focus. yeah. I that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't think these things. you know, and that's, that's kind of like the next thing that I wanted to ask you about was really just like, where does this, what do humans have left? We kind of touched on it earlier, but what is intelligence? mean, like these things are statistical models that are basically saying, Hey, here's the next best letter or token, you know, that I need to like serve up. based on everything that's out there in the ether already. And then every time we talk to it, there's more ether. Yeah, but I mean, ⁓ there's a lot there. mean, because we talked a couple of weeks ago, I think, right, we talked about what was first principles, right?

24⁓ That's, think Elon talks about that some, but I that's Aristotle, right? Talked about breaking things down to first principles. What is the most finite component here? And so if it's intelligence, is it intelligent? And is intelligence, again, kind of getting back to this, like, is the bed too hard or is the bed too soft? Is it binary? Is it? A quotient, you know, is it IQ? Cause we'd argue that it's not right. mean, it's, it's, ⁓ is a pattern recognition. maybe, but, ⁓ you know, we, we all know those people who are, ⁓ you know, super in tune with people's, ⁓ emotions and, and, ⁓ there's a lot of value in that, you know, and, and, ⁓ so. I mean, and, and, ⁓ and right now, right. I mean, these models don't necessarily see me. Right. I'm not doing voice and multimodal, you know, chat all the time with these things. So it's not reading, picking up on body language and stuff like that. ⁓ so I mean, one could argue that it'll get better, right. Once these like, you know, robots start coming out and hanging out with us and sitting here in the room with me.

25Yeah, I'd be lying if I didn't say I walk around the house with chat GPT and camera mode and ask it how to fix things. You know, if I get really stuck on something, a lot of times I'll shut off or continue the conversation. I should say from my desktop to my phone so I can use the camera and then show it what I'm seeing live on my computer. I don't know if you do that at all, but you know, since you can use your camera to show it the world, I, I definitely do that. So I think it's, I think it's getting better. Yeah, that it still feels a little gimmicky. But but again, the more you do it, maybe I was ⁓ at the liquor store ⁓ last week, ⁓ picking up a bottle for a friend's birthday. You know, I'm standing there in the ⁓ tequila aisle with the kid with with with the camera on being like, you know, hey, you know, right, here's a couple of tequilas I really like. And ⁓ I don't want to just buy that, like help me pick out something that maybe matches the flavor profile of these tequilas.

26And it's looking and it's drawing circles on the screen and saying like, here's one. And that comes in at a great price point. mean, there's, it's an interesting kind of thing to engage that way with the, like having a buddy next to you. Yeah. mean, and it's starting to feel, so I read an article the other day. It was, I think it was the Harvard Gazette and I don't remember the professor, but he talked about the Greek God of wisdom, Athena. Think I said that right? Cause I'm not, it's been a long time since I learned all my Greek gods, but she was always depicted with an owl on her shoulder. know, owls are wise. that type of thing. ⁓ I guess for me, the, the, the one thing that he said that was really poignant was, you know, we're still humans and we have to remember that the owl is on our shoulder with this AI stuff and not the other way around. So like we still bring a lot of wisdom and it is a helper to us right now.

27But like you just said, I mean, there's a whole lot of like just meaning That tends to be like for me, that tends to be how I make a lot of decisions is emotionally and with a whole lot more context than a large language model. And I think and I don't know if that's right or wrong in business, but I think thinking critically about, know, what I what the output is from the large language model. I think I think that's my role right now is kind of like sifting through. everything that it throws out and trying to do the next, the next right thing in my opinion, because I still have a ton more context than it does. That's for me. For me, that's where I think the difference is between humans and whatever we got with these large language models, right. I mean right now, mean, you the people who are like hyping it are like, you know, we're about to have, you ⁓ you know, these self-aware, you know, sentient. ⁓ I don't think we're quite there, but cutting through the hype piece for guys like us and men and women that do what we do, I this is just making us better, right?

28I mean, it's making us... faster and stronger at the things that we already have invested in and built competency in. ⁓ you