Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
Value First, Technology Second: The AI Implementation Playbook
Technological revolutions come and go, but the fourth industrial revolution – powered by artificial intelligence – promises to transform business in ways we're only beginning to comprehend. In this thought-provoking conversation, we explore how organizations can harness AI's potential through value-based implementation strategies with Venkat Lakshminarayanan, author of "AI-Driven Value Management."
The discussion quickly moves beyond surface-level AI applications to explore what Venkat calls "meta-level thinking" – the ability to discover solutions to problems we don't yet know exist. This cognitive framework represents perhaps the most valuable skill in navigating technological disruption: "Knowledge of what you don't know is the ultimate knowledge."
For business leaders, the stakes couldn't be higher. As Ron points out, approximately 50% of businesses in the construction equipment channel disappear every 20 years. Those who fail to adapt – even while currently profitable – eventually become obsolete. The central question isn't whether to adopt AI but how to implement it in ways that deliver measurable value.
Venkat's approach begins with discovery – understanding customer challenges before proposing solutions. This value conversation connects business objectives directly to quantifiable outcomes like increased revenue, reduced costs, and mitigated risks. What once required "hundreds of millions of dollars" in consulting, research, and specialized tools can now be accomplished more efficiently through AI-powered systems.
The conversation takes a personal turn when discussing AI literacy as individual responsibility. Through the example of an overworked teacher, we see how AI can eliminate administrative burdens and create space for more meaningful work and family time. This represents the human side of technological advancement – not replacing people but liberating them from tasks that prevent them from realizing their potential.
Whether you're a business leader navigating industry transformation or an individual seeking to develop AI literacy, this conversation offers valuable insights for thriving in an age of unprecedented technological change. The path forward isn't about technology for technology's sake but about aligning innovation with genuine human needs and measurable business value.
Ready to transform your approach to AI implementation? Connect with us to learn how these principles can drive better outcomes in your organization.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation, again continuing our discussion about artificial intelligence and robotics and the fourth industrial revolution. Nick Maverick has introduced an incredibly talented young man. He smiles when I say young man Venky I'm not going to pronounce your last name, sir, but I can and we're just going to wander across the field talking about what artificial intelligence does for us, doesn't do for us, and the challenges that we have in life with the unbelievably rapid change in technological advances. So with that as an introduction, nick, good afternoon to you on the East Coast and Venky, good morning. You're still. Yeah, it's still before noon for you. Welcome aboard and let's have at it. So how about we start this way, nick? Why did you want to put Venky and I together?
Speaker 2:So thank you, ron, and it's always a blessing to be with you, Venky spontaneously me being one of the village idiots on the planet it finally I've been gifting Venky's book to whoever I can think of and number one person on that list should have been you and I've been doing it for months because when Venky you hear of people writing books and Venky is very humble and he downplayed his books like most humble people would but when I received and read his book called AI-Driven Value Management, it is an operating manual of how to deploy AI at scale within your enterprise.
Speaker 2:It goes from strategy all the way down to tactics. It covers multi-departments and I would never, I'm going to say through the grace of God. I know Venky. Venky is a past chief strategy officer for one of the divisions of a very large company called ServiceNow and he has been an advisor and a friend to me, but as an advisor to Build Data and on our advisory board, and I just felt you two would really benefit about as in, through your great work and learning without scars, build onto your vision and attach a very, very detailed operating manual about how OEMs, dealers and rental companies can just instead of just skimming the surface on AI can really transform their enterprise, which is your vision. So that's why I thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Oh, and I thank you for that. So Vinke Nick has told me about your book on the frame that it basically is a how to become AI literate and AI functional in business. Is that a reasonably fair characterization?
Speaker 3:It is Ron. Sorry, ron, it is Ron. I want to start by saying how excited I am to be in your company and Nick. I think I can say Nick and I debate about who's more fortunate to have met the other person. I think I can win that debate. I think I've been the receiving end of a lot of kindness and generosity from Nick and I promise to pass it on and give it back, and so I'm so excited to be in your company A very interesting topic that you brought up.
Speaker 3:So just to talk a little bit briefly about the book, in fact, before we started recording this conversation, you talked about an authentic conversation that involves listening, thinking and discovery. So I'll just zoom in on that term discovery. So much of conversation today seems to be about you know, seeking to be understood, rather than seeking to understand, and I think, when you bring it into the world of business, what it robs you of is the ability to you know, bring value to your customer, in the sense that first, you need to understand where your customer is at, and that involves listening. That doesn't involve hey, I need to know the following things from your customer is at, and that involves listening. That doesn't involve hey, I need to know the following things from your customer, starting with do you have the money to give me? Starting with, when can you buy my product? No, you want to listen with empathy and to discover what it is. That is an area that I can add value to and then see if your product or your solution or your offering fits into it. So what the book tries to do is help people have a value conversation, and what a value conversation means is to align the business objectives of an enterprise, the problems that they're trying to solve for the challenges that they are trying to solve, for the challenges that they are encountering in achieving their objectives with the product or the solution that you're offering, as perhaps a technology vendor or perhaps a capital equipment provider, and connect the two, which is here is the problem and here is the solution, or here is the opportunity and here is the solution, and it is worthwhile to have the conversation if the solution is going to help deliver some quantifiable outcomes.
Speaker 3:Business is all about quantifiable outcomes and those quantifiable outcomes are aligned to the objectives, and the objectives can be as simple as I want to increase revenue by X percent. I want to increase revenue by X percent. I want to reduce costs by X percent. I'm keeping it, ron. I love the term and it's a borrowed term jargon monoxide. I love it because I don't love it. I don't love using it, but therefore I'm going to try and stay away from jargon monoxide. Increase revenue, increase efficiencies in the business, reduce risk in the business.
Speaker 3:If your technology product or whatever product isn't doing any of these things to a business, it is not adding any value. So the book helps you forget about AI. The book helps you first understand how to speak that language, how to do that quantification, how to connect your product with the customer's objectives and problems. So that's the primary foundation of the book. And back to what you told us just before we started recording, which is the importance of discovery, which is the very first step. And you just talked about the highest form of discovery, which is blue sky, opening it up and being open to possibilities. Now, where does AI come into the picture?
Speaker 3:As it turns out, prior to the evolution of AI to the state that it is in today, this exercise of quantifying, communicating and helping your customers understand value takes hundreds of millions of dollars in an enterprise to do. It is not something that you put your product in front of the customer. Yeah, I get it. I can see how I can grow my business, protect my business and run my business with your product. So it takes intentional, proactive, heavy lifting a lot of tools, a lot of content, a lot of services, a lot of consultants, a lot of sellers, value selling, all through the customer lifecycle, all the way from the first step of marketing to the first step of sales, from the first step of marketing to the first step of sales, to the first step of implementation, to the first step of customer support and all the way to renewal. And you got to. This is called the value motion. It is not just the customer life cycle, it is not just the sales motion, but it is the value motion.
Speaker 3:And the book, uh, happened at the time when I was simply going to write you know and share. I'd spent 15 years doing this. So I was simply going to write you know and share. I'd spent 15 years doing this. So I was just going to write a book. My co-author and I, you know, my co-author is a gentleman called Craig LeBourin, who's the founder and CEO of a company called Mainstay, one of the early pioneers in the art and science of value management. I learned value management thanks to Mainstay and we wanted to write a book and say, hey, you know what, you guys can have it for free. This is how to do value management. And why even do value management? What is the benefit of quantifying and communicating the value of your product in terms of business outcomes to your customer? The benefit is that you double your pipeline, you double your revenue and you double your renewals.
Speaker 3:I mean it's obvious, right, it's intuitive.
Speaker 3:When the customer understands value, they buy more and they buy with more conviction and they go out into their company and convince the C-level and the board that this product is delivering this kind of value.
Speaker 3:I want to buy more. So we wanted to write a manual or book, a blueprint, a playbook for other people to say if you're a B2B player, if you are selling any product to another business, you will find something of use in this book and AI happened upon us and I realized that you know you don't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve these 2x 2x outcomes. You could do it with far less the research that it takes, the consulting work, that far less the research that it takes, the consulting work that it takes, the workflow that it takes, all of the heavy lifting, the content and the services and the tools that is involved in the practice of value management can now be done supercharged by AI and therefore it requires that you can do it bigger, better, faster, cheaper than before. That's the book. I'll stop there and I hope it wasn't a whole lot and I hope that made sense.
Speaker 1:It made a lot of sense and, nick, thank you, because, first of all, using the word value in what we're trying to provide or do changes the whole dynamic. One of the exercises that I used to do a lot of with companies was get all the employees that touch customers into a room with a flip card, a whiteboard, a laptop whatever, and just start whiteboard, a laptop, whatever and just start. What do you folks believe the customer's needs and wants are? And it takes a while to get people to talk because they don't really trust. Communications is not easy.
Speaker 1:Patrick Lencioni wrote a wonderful book called the Three Signs of a Miserable Job, and it starts with anonymity. The employees feel that nobody in the company knows who they are, whether they're married, children, sick, have a debt or whatever. And then it goes to irrelevance, meaning that they don't understand what their role is in the company and where it fits. Role is in the company and where it fits. And then, finally, to immeasurability. They don't know how to measure their performance every day, unless you're in a blue collar factory floor when you go home. How did I do today? So when we go through the buyer's needs and wants, it takes a while for people to open up. But once they do, they start, and I'd start scribbling on the whiteboard or whatever it is, and at the end of that it takes about an hour and a half or so. At the end of that we go back and we consolidate them. There's similar elements and we just make a list and I stop at 10. The following month I bring in half a dozen customers same audience, same people that touch the customers but in front of the room now are the customers and I asked them the same questions what do you folks need and want from us? And they start talking. And then we engage and I start writing and everything's good and everybody says thank you, we like each other, we're still friends and we separate the next one. So we're spending 60 days. It's relatively short, but long enough for people to think a little bit. And thinking is not something that a lot of us do anymore. We get into ruts. We just obediently follow whatever the heck we're supposed to. We don't look over the wall. So then we get together and I got these two lists now the customer list and our list. First order of business is what do we have in common? And many times there's out of 10, maybe there's three and there's maybe three. That my goodness, I never even dreamt about that. And all of a sudden we can start engaging in what the devil we're doing.
Speaker 1:My purpose in life is very simple. Number one I want to make people happy. That's kind of an easy one. But the principle one is I try and help you identify your individual, professional and personal potential. And that's nasty, because people don't really think about themselves that way.
Speaker 1:I was very lucky. At a young age I was a swimmer, and in swimming you learn very quickly. It doesn't matter what your position was. We can have eight people on a race and I finished last. But if the time I achieved was better than anything I'd ever had before, I won. So I learned very quickly. I don't have to compete with anybody other than me, which changes the whole dynamic on how I deal with people. And Nick's seen that and heard that.
Speaker 1:So then that's chapter A. Chapter B I view technology change from the lens of the steam engine in the 1880s. Here comes the electric engine. It's cheaper, it's faster, there's less maintenance. It got implemented right away, but they didn't change any of the processes for a whole generation. It took 20 years. And then I translate that into today's world 1950, roughly. Here comes the computer, 1960, here comes database, 1970, here comes the internet, 1980, here comes global positioning, 1990, here comes sensors. We have unbelievable technology and if we translate that to the steam engine, mankind, humankind, have become victims. They don't know what to do with all this stuff. They don't understand it. Worse the leadership, the executive, they don't understand it either. The leadership, the executive, they don't understand it either. They don't know what to do. So if your book opens the eyes of people and kind of gives them a roadmap, like you say, a playbook, what a wonderful start in a world that's really confusing today. Nick, what do you think?
Speaker 2:I think the I tell you I'm I feel so alive, I feel that we're blessed. You know, so many things happen in our, in our lives. One is the internet. Um, I was listening to something yesterday with uh and it was an interview with ben horowitz, from indreason horowitz who's may I tell you if I, you, I could have lunch or coffee with somebody like him, or Mark Andreessen. It's just that he's fun to listen to because he comes across as real and he talks about the Internet and how it was very expensive to monetize the Internet in the early days and that's why I think he mentioned evite and evite had a staff of 300 programmers and he said that's you know, in so many words, so many of these companies. That's why there was this bust in uh, the internet. Now, of course, we know, years later, it took quite a while to monetize the internet, speaking, as I understand it, with AI. He then shifts in AI and he talks about the monetization factor and the efficiencies.
Speaker 2:And, ron, a lot of what I've learned from you and your guests, your colleagues, people like Steve Clegg, jay Lucas and others are companies, know they have to change, they know their cheese is moving In the past when they're able. They've only been able to make incremental changes and I believe on the Jay Lucas podcast that you did. I believe, unless I'm imagining it, there was a notion of buying back distribution. Certainly, you and I've talked about that, and what's kind of cool is not to speak to the boogeyman. The boogeyman is here. There's no doubt about it in my mind. But there's a tremendous opportunity now to you have a lot of options other than just cutting costs and reorganizing your business, and I can give you a legitimate sort of. You can jump with. You know your hot sink jumping from the hot pot to spring water.
Speaker 2:So I think, with your vision, this industry can take very practical steps to increase its profitability, which really means providing for people and families, and you said helping people. Right, that's certainly. I know why you're here For me. I enjoy the helping people more than I do the business, so to speak, and I know Venky does. My wish is that you and Venky connect to break down the practical side about how to make AI approachable, how to take your knowledge and his experiences at companies like ServiceNow and break it down. These efficiencies don't have to be a heavy lift anymore. If you went back 10 years. Yeah, terenki said it very heavy, lift Lots of blood and guts that normally companies wouldn't pursue because effectively they're a turnaround.
Speaker 1:We've got and let me just come in and try and put some glue in there. One of the things that was interesting for me there was a gentleman in Canada by the name of Ian Sharp. He was British by heritage and birth and he started a company called IP Sharp Associates which was Internet-based. Xerox was one of their major clients and, coincident with that, one of Ian's best friends was a man by the name of Ken Iverson. Ken Iverson created APL. Name of Ken Iverson. Ken Iverson created APL. Ken Iverson was basically put into slavery by IBM. He couldn't work with anybody but IBM and he's the guy that created DOS, os, DB1, kix all the major software and he wasn't allowed to do it with anybody else. And that's fine. Ian and he were best friends and Ken had two sons. Ian hired those two boys and he created Sharp APL and it's instead of a binomial, zero-one type of programmation, it's an array. So if you're a mathematician and you like math, this is heaven and there's a lot to it. But what that also meant was he was on the internet in 1971. There was hardly anybody there World Bank, oecd, the government, stock markets, things of that nature and, interestingly, I was one of the people that he gave access to. That's how I started my consulting work, and when he sold it, he sold the business to Reuters. I think everybody on the planet knows what Reuters does and inside. What Reuters bought was a little piece of software that Reuters sold to Michael Bloomberg, and that was the Bloomberg 75,000, 125,000 terminal that allowed you to do financial analysis. It was amazing what things are done. So transition that now to data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1:A week before last, there was a very smart man who said 10 years from now, computers will be 10,000 times smarter than humankind. I have no doubt that's true, because they'll have access to every piece of data that has ever been published and put out there. However, our challenge now is going to be data is dirty. It's not clean. Md Anderson's digitizing every medical record in the United States from 2000 to 2020. Imagine what information that's going to do and what it's going to do for the development of cures for health.
Speaker 1:Elon Musk comes along and has a company called Neuralink which, with implanting things in your brain, can give people that are born blind sight. We're on the verge of things that are just unbelievably fantastic and leadership out there, and I love them to death and I'm one of them and a lot of the guys in the construction world are friends of mine and they're above my age. They don't know what to do. They've never made this much money. They don't know how come and and I chastise them saying you're putting profit ahead of customer service, you're putting profit ahead of people. And if you think about america in the last 20 years, everybody says loyalty has gone away, customer loyalty, our customers aren't loyal anymore. Well, we've worked awfully hard to make them disloyal. We don't answer the phone anymore, we go to voicemail. We don't have technical support. That's local, it's in India, it's in Europe, it's all over the darn place. Now we've got cybersecurity and it scares the devil out of people. I know a lot of people that lost a lot of money, got cybersecurity and it scares the devil out of people. I know a lot of people that lost a lot of money. And even with a playbook, it's hard like heck for me to get people to say yes, let's go forward, because they're so damn anxious, nervous, apprehensive, and it's true with every work.
Speaker 1:I call this the new era of slavery. It's just a new definition. There's a lot of people working paycheck to paycheck. Anything goes wrong. Boy. They're in trouble as a result of that. They keep their head down and they don't want to change much. They're okay, they understand it. I'm in Russia. One last tidbit in Moscow, maybe 15, 18 years ago, a man in his 50s, three children, married for 20 years Executive position, and I have a standard question If you could wave a wand, what would you change in your job to make your life easier? And the answer I got back was don't ask questions like that, just tell me what you want me to do. I felt so sorry for the man, but most people operate that way. That's a hell of a challenge to overcome that, venti.
Speaker 3:Well, ron, you gave me so many friends with what you just said Sorry, no, no valuable friends and I want to sort of use them as scaffolding to talk about a few thoughts. I want to go back to the industrial revolutions that you talked about all the way from, you know, hundreds of years ago to now, and it seems like every time there is a change of that nature which is disruptive and, you know, it sort of takes people to another orbit. You have two choices as individuals, and I'm not even talking business and professional being different. We have a choice to wait and be dragged into adoption, and sometimes that's okay, but sometimes it causes pain and damage and lost opportunities, and sometimes it leaves some people behind. Or you have an option to learn, and that, you know again, gives me another frame that you provided, which is what is the role of AI literacy? What is almost, I would say, a personal responsibility now of an individual, of an individual, maybe somebody in a household, a parent or as a friend? What can you do to promote and give yourself AI literacy? So, two options. The first option we talked about is not a good option Just wait and watch and be dragged into adoption. The second option we talked about is not a good option Just wait and watch and be dragged into adoption.
Speaker 3:The second option involves literacy, but that literacy could be in my thinking, it's of two types. One is the literacy about the topic itself. Let's just pick one of those evolutions from on-premise hardware and software to cloud computing or global positioning systems or mobility that we have now everything is on the smartphone, whatever. It involves learning about the technology, learning about the business and all of that, but cognitively, it involves moving a meta-level up to think in terms of possibilities that you haven't thought of before. It's about knowledge of what you don't know about, and I think the meta level thinking is a fundamental skill set that, uh, you know, all of us can work on all the time. You know we don't have to wait for the next disruption and no bigger challenge than this particular cycle of disruption that is going on in innovation, that's going on with ai, which we are not.
Speaker 3:The two applications for AI could be oh, how can we solve today's problems that I know about, that I have knowledge of better with AI? Fair question what is it that I do not know AI can solve for? And that is the meta-level thinking, and that kind of thinking is not just, you know, it is about exercising and building the muscle to think meta level. Um, and there are so many other frames that I, I kind of mentally noted in your conversation. Uh, I, um, you know, I was tempted to take my notebook and start writing because I don't want to forget them, because I want to hang my hat on a lot of those things. But one, it is a personal responsibility. And two, those business leaders coming to the world of business that are making a choice not to do anything because, you know, profits are coming, revenue is growing, it's great, are, you know, planting a time bomb on their own business? Because eventually, eventually, they're going to be disrupted one fine day. And there are so many examples of that.
Speaker 3:And guess what? I'll give you a short story that opened my eyes more than the person who was asking me for this question. I went to a conference and, you know, on the way back to the airport, you know, I called for an Uber and I was in the Uber going and this guy, you know, was asking me hey, why are you here? What brought you to this city, as it was a conference, and what is the conference all about. And eventually the topic of AI came about and I asked him. I chat with people in airports and cars, with drivers. Just love chatting with people to get to know Ron again. Another thing I want to hang my hat on is the magic wand question that you asked. I'm curious, without being overly curious, about. You know, tell me, give me a little slice of your life and let's see, you know, if we can make a connection.
Speaker 3:And so this person happened to be a, a school teacher in a public school, and his public school, uh, you know, short of funds, doesn't have enough teachers, and so this person works. First of all, drives a very long distance. I think he said something like you know over 50 miles to get to the school, starts at 6 am and ends at 6 pm and he teaches all the way from kindergarten to sixth grade, or something like that. And he said all the way from kindergarten to sixth grade or something like that. And he said so much of this is not about the teaching itself, it's about, you know, administration, the paperwork, and you know being like 100 things to the kids at the same time, and a lot of it is not fun to do. And then I asked like, why are you driving uber? And I kind of knew the answer to it, but I wanted to hear it from him. He said, um, you know I I'm not making enough money, so I'm doing this now.
Speaker 3:This was already evening that he was driving me to the airport and I said, like you know what kind of mental and physical fatigue you're in right now to be doing this? He said, yeah, I go, and then I don't get enough time with my family. And you know it comes back to this question of you know this is I'm sorry to use that term, but this is a form of slavery. Unfortunately, again, I'm hanging my hat on another thing that you told me. I'm glad I'm remembering without noting down. So, very good, I'm patting myself on the back.
Speaker 3:And then he asked me this question hey, you know, since you said AI, I asked him hey, have you ever used ChatGPT or Gemini or any of these things? You know, maybe they can help alleviate some of the pains and take some load off your shoulders as you're preparing for things? And I said you know what Looks like we've got another 15 minutes left. Let's brainstorm some areas where you could go home today. Just go to chat, gpt or whatever one of those things large language models and say help me come up with a course plan, help me come up with a question answers for whatever multiple choice quiz. And we were brainstorming all of those things. Then I just stopped and said meta level thinking uh, I got to exercise that muscle. I said you know what? Don't ask me for ideas. Go to chat GPT. Uh, say that you're a public school teacher. They'll chat you. You're totally stretched, you don't have any time to think.
Speaker 3:Another one I want to hang my hat on very strongly, which is I really believe that we don't think at all at work. We are like robots already Unfortunately not the kind of robots that will replace us. They're going to be advanced robots. So I asked him why don't you actually go to ChatGPT and ask here? So I asked him why don't you actually go to chat GPT and ask here is me, here is my situation, here is what I'm solving for. How can you be my assistant to help me get another five hours back in the days where I can spend time with my family and also be good in my school and maybe not ever need to drive Uber again? And that thought came to me even as I was trying to answer the question, that we should really be asking Chachi Pitti itself. And so you know, in that 20 minutes of conversation, I hope he took away some useful things, but I took away, you know, the fact that you know, oh, we've got to exercise this muscle so that.
Speaker 3:So the knowledge of what you don't know is, I think, the ultimate knowledge. I mean, you want to ask people, okay, here's my work, can you review it, can you correct it, whatever? But the most valuable question is always what am I missing? What is it that I do not know that needs to be here? So I feel, with every disruption, with every evolution of technology into a better orbit, into a bigger orbit, we've had that challenge, and the faster you give yourself the education and today there is no excuse to not give yourself the education, because you could go to a chat GPT again and say I don't know anything about AI.
Speaker 3:I'm in the construction equipment industry, I'm a dealer and you know what? I've got a small sales team and I always find it challenging to deploy them efficiently and effectively. Thousands of opportunities are out there, thousands of customers are out there. How do I deploy them on that 20% of the footprint. That is going to give me 80% of the results. I don't know how to do it. You know, use that as your question. That will educate yourself on how to do it. And, by the way, that's exactly what Nick is solving for. But anyway, I am sorry for the long answer, but I want to hang my hat on as many of your concepts as possible.
Speaker 1:No, it's perfect. And again I use an example that there's 100 of us, 150 of us, and we go to school for the first day and we're all 10 years old and currently the education system says you're 10 years old, there's the grade you go into. What I want to do and what we're doing with Learning Without Scars, is I want every child to take two or three hours worth of testing. I'm going to find out what their skills are, what their knowledge is, what their emotions are, what their desires are, and then they're going to go home. The following Monday is the first day of school and they come to school and we assign them a classroom from grade three to grade nine. We match the students' needs with a learning path. So we take and create assessments 90 to 180 questions, multiple choice for job functions I think we've got 24 job functions, which covers 90 to 95% of the labor hours of people touching customers, leading people or managing assets and we come up with a score. And so I get people that are 20 years in the job, 30 years in the job. They kind of boo-boo this. It's only 50 bucks, so it's not a big deal and they start out and they come back with a score of 40%. How can that be? Because, to the point, you made off the scaffold and what Nick looks at, charlie Munger and a lot of his work that we're playing with.
Speaker 1:They don't know what they don't know. Like you said, donald Rumsfeld was mocked when he was Secretary of Defense. When he says the problem with us in the military is we don't know what we don't know, well, that's the magic question. And you got to be prepared as a person to recognize your ignorance. In classes, I ask people I'm kind of weird, you know, it's kind of funny. As a teacher, I've been teaching my whole darn life and I talk too much. But one of the things I ask is at the very beginning of almost every class I've ever been in front of and this goes back to when I was teaching at university every class I've ever been in front of and this goes back to when I was teaching at university to doing consulting work what's the definition of ignorance? And nobody knows anybody. There's 20 people in the class, 100 people, whatever. So they're careful, they don't want to look like a fool. And I say well, it's pretty simple. Don't be shy. Ignorance is not knowing what to do. Oh, yeah, okay, I get that. That's pretty simple. I said, okay, what's the definition of stupidity? And now we've got some people that are understanding how this thing works and they don't feel bad if they make mistakes, and every now and again in a room, somebody comes up with it. Stupidity is knowing what to do but not doing it. That's pretty straightforward also.
Speaker 1:And then I add the third element, which is what is insanity? And I either use Mark Twain or Einstein, who said insanity is continuing to do what you've always done, expecting different results. And then I say to them in this classroom when you leave here, you're not going to be ignorant because I'm going to tell you what to do. So I'm leaving you the choice of being stupid or insane. And, looking around the room, I don't see a padded room in your future. So how many of you want to leave here and be stupid? And then we start the class and people don't really know. I put them off balance right off the bat, and that allows the real person to be exposed and that gives them confidence, because I'm not going to shoot them down and their peers aren't going to shoot them down. And then, last little thing and then I want to get Nick, to climb in Change is tough, but change at work is pretty easy.
Speaker 1:And what I say to everybody you married, you're living with somebody, yeah, okay. Well, I want you to go home tonight and tell your partner you're going to sleep on the other side of the bed and tomorrow, when you come back to work, I want you to tell me what the couch was like, because you don't get to choose. That my friend, somebody else, did. That is real change At work. It's easy, come on.
Speaker 2:Nick. You know as a bridge Ron, and I'm going to not omit some details just to save whatever Happy to tell you. But Vicki and I looked at something earlier today. It's an example. It was an enterprise software application that somebody reverse engineered. Keep in mind. These licenses cost about $2,000 a person. This company can make a healthy market at 80% less you and I let me say it in positive terms because I feel like I've been thinking too much from the bottom recently. There's a tremendous amount. This industry's margins can grow tremendously from the OEM and the dealers. We know that by getting them to become better team members because they're effectively not. That's what I've seen. You have much more experience than I do.
Speaker 1:No, you're right.
Speaker 2:Then they can extract. Why should this industry operate on such crazy low margins? Based on all the value meaning construction spending to the US economy is 4% of GDP. It's going to end the year about $2.2 trillion. Why not rip these? Engaged learning without scars, engage Benke in his book who to speak? And go in there and assess what processes you can absolutely rip out within months, expenses you can rip out with months and offer more value to the customer and your company won't have to go through these ridiculous cycles that are effectively boom and bust that are pushing many, not only dealers it's already happening but OEMs to becoming turnarounds. It's severe.
Speaker 1:We're having unbelievable difficulties. And let me just throw some statistics In the construction equipment world forestry, mining, on highway trucking, etc. About every 20 years the number of people in that channel, in that space, is reduced by 50%. So if in 1985, I had 100 dealers, in 2005, I've got 50, in 2025, I've got 25. And I talked to these leaders and Vinke does and you do, and as long as their revenue is going up, they're fine. And for the last couple of years or so I've been saying well, I expect your revenue to go up. The number of people you're competing with is down by half. What the heck.
Speaker 1:And they never considered that the men that are running and women that are running the business today they don't know how the business operates. Today. The person that's selling parts answers the phone, gives the customer a price, gives the customer availability, customer says thank you very much, hangs up, goes away. That's the end of the job. Last night, if there's a B2B type of internet-based inquiry, certain electronic catalogs and all the rest of the technology, and hardly any of the dealers use that or provide it. But the next morning I want to talk to everybody that looked at my site, check the price, check the availability. I want to ask the question did you order it? That's the job today. Nobody does that.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like you get married. Are you happy, sweetheart? What can I do to make you happier? What do you want? I used to ask people that work with me when I was working in dealerships about every three to six months I'd go out and say, okay, what do I do that you like that I do and you want me to continue? What do I do that you don't like I do and you want me to stop? And what do I do that doesn't matter to you? And the first order of business was what doesn't matter to you. Well, what the heck am I doing it for? Is that something somebody else should be doing? Give me some time back. If they liked what I was doing, well, I should give that to somebody else, because obviously they're comfortable with me. Let me get them comfortable with somebody else, a different vision, and the stuff that they don't like that I do. Is it my style or is it something else? And if it's a something else, venti, that's taking us to where you want to go, to the metal level. Why are we doing it this way? I I've always asked that question. I my parents, must've gone crazy. You know why do we do that.
Speaker 1:And and you know, there was an exam in Harvard for your MBA years ago. Everybody it was at MIT, I think. Everybody had to take philosophy to get an MBA. Oh Jesus, murphy, what is it? And the final exam was 100%. No classwork through the year. One question worth 50%.
Speaker 1:The question was simply why. Now it's philosophy and Nick's heard this before and I'm not going to do it to you but there were three answers, or there was one answer that was worth 100%, one answer worth 50% and everything else was zero. Well, if you got the zero, you didn't get your degree. If you got 50%, you better be damn good at everything else. If you got 50%, you better be damn good at everything else. The 100% answer to the question why is why not?
Speaker 1:And people need to look at life that way. If your child is pushing back, they're a little rebellious encourage it, don't sit on them. I want people that are going to. You know what's on the other side of that wall? There's so many. It's a wonderful world.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine living at any time better than this? So much going on. It's beautiful, but you got to read. There's some wonderful stuff between the covers of a book. I'm sure your book, when I read it, is going to be the same thing.
Speaker 1:Ikigai, the Japanese pursuit of happiness. Everybody needs to be happy in what they're doing. So I hope that this is going to be the first of many that we can many chats like this. We can have many candid conversations, because there's so much depth on this screen, in this conversation, that I want my audience to hear and I want my audience to be thinking about. And those of you that are still with us I hope you're scratching your head and maybe, like Venky, you've got a pad out and you're starting to write things down furiously so that you can think about it after we hang up and any of you that want to make comments, please send in emails, send texts, reach out, because this isn't a one-way, two-dimensional discussion. This is a geometric approach to life. There are no simple solutions. There's only intelligent choices, and the problem is we don't expose ourselves to all the options to make that choice. Sorry, nick, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Speaker 2:No, no, I apologize, I got excited and I was going to pipe in and, if it's appropriate for your guests, your network, to people who need access to knowledge, this is a good book and it's relatively insignificant. What I'm about to say is but if you had 100 people built data, will ship it to them on behalf of Learning Without Scars and free book, free knowledge. I will say this about, I know this about you, and I say this about Venky. If there are folks listening to them, first thing I would do is call Ron Slee. Second thing I would do is call Venky, and it may be tied for second, as Steve Clegg and Jay Lucas.
Speaker 2:Right, it's hard to establish a second place, but each of these individuals, starting with you, ron, is unbelievably accessible. So if somebody needs help in solving a problem, they should engage. Have you know any of these individuals? You, steve, jay Benke, there's others, I'm sure would welcome the opportunity to jump in to help somebody, no question. So if it's appropriate to you know, offer this book to folks. Just you send me, tell me where to ship them. And there's. You know why not? Why not learn today?
Speaker 1:We have such an exciting world. And let me in the construction equipment. Let me narrow it down to something that I've been in for almost 60 years. We've got Caterpillar, komatsu, john Deere, volvo, and I might find one other to put in there, but those are the big dogs. Then we come down a level and we look at people like Case and JCB and a whole bunch of others. And then we come down another level and we look at Mahindra and Kubota and Yanmar and people like that and there's hundreds of those dealers.
Speaker 1:They're mostly small businesses, maybe 20 to 30 employees, maybe 10 to 50 million max. And they've got somebody who has a passion for what he's doing or she's doing. Maybe it's a chef and they love to bake, maybe it's an accountant who likes to help people doing their taxes or planning their pensions. It doesn't matter what it is. Those people need to have access to education, the traditional education model. We got a curriculum of 300 classes and a couple of months ago there was a study and it came back that something in the range of low 30s of the degrees that were offered have the capacity to pay for the debt that they get into. So 70% they're not going to pay for themselves.
Speaker 1:Education, to me, has a responsibility of providing the tools to go into the workforce. They're failing miserably at that and business has, to me, the obligation of continuing to develop their people. These are not tools in a toolbox that you know your skills are. No, I'll get rid of you and I'll bring somebody else into the next toolbox. We've got to completely reorder. It's got to be disruptive. As you're calling it Venky, I call it revolutionary reformers and that's why I call the company Learning Without Scars. I've got enough scars on my backside from going out before anybody else got there that other people don't have to suffer them anymore. I can tell you how to avoid the problems. I can tell you some things to do that are based on my experience, and my experience relative to today's workforce is very shallow. You know, I'm almost 80 years old and people that are 30 can run circles around me. My grandkids master's degree. My grandson in the nuclear navy one of the toughest places to get into. He's a nerd. He's 20 years old, astrophysics and nuclear engineering degrees already, but he goes to school 8 o'clock in the morning to 5 at night, 5 days a week and does 4 hours of homework on the weekend.
Speaker 1:The people I work with in Asia. The parents are really anal about helping their children have a better life. That's what we used to be like. Look at India. My goodness the opportunities. The guy that does my social media work is in Bangladesh. I can't send him a check because my check isn't passable in Bangladesh. I have to go through with a third or fourth or fifth partner. I use a transcription service out of Austria called Whisper Transcribe that I'll take something like this and digitize it. Then I go to ChatGPT or I go to Copilot or Gemini or all these. My goodness, what's out there. It's amazing. And yet people are struggling to live. They don't give themselves time to help themselves and their kids because both parents are working. They're the big losers. This is not a nice picture, but it's easy to change and easy to fix. We just need more apostles out there, more people passing along the message. Like you Venky, like you Nick. It's so much fun if people just give themselves the freedom to make mistakes.
Speaker 2:Well, it is a great time to be alive. Ron, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. When I get one of your podcast downloads, all I want to do is run through it quickly and then replay it a few times. So thank you for being a blessing to the industry. Thank you. Thank you for you, ron.
Speaker 1:this should arrive to you today, according to my uh, you just wanted to give me something to do this weekend.
Speaker 2:I know how you work well I'm curious how you think this book overlays with the one that mined at plague.
Speaker 3:So my debt of gratitude is growing and I'm excited that I will now have opportunity to give back and pass it on. And, ron, there are so many other frames and sort of placeholders for conversation there. I'll just say one thing Start, stop, continue is in every organization, and you just added another thing to it that may be the most important thing, which is start, stop doesn't matter, and continue. And also, I think everything that you spoke about today calls for a certain amount of self-awareness in individuals. Yes, sir, and if you have the gift of self-awareness in individuals, yes, sir, and if you have the gift of self-awareness, there are various ways to develop and cultivate that capability. But if you have it, great. If you don't have it, you suggested an alternative, which is great, which is go and ask somebody else Start, stop, doesn't matter, continue is one of them.
Speaker 3:And you're really beautiful, tying together of ignorance, stupidity and insanity. And then there are two levels of ignorance, right, which is I don't know about this topic, but there is a higher level of ignorance, which is I don't know what. I don't know about this topic, but there is a higher level of ignorance, which is I don't know what I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's just beautiful. I mean, there is so much to talk about with you, ross.
Speaker 1:I think I'm going to wrap it up now because I'm worried a little bit about the smoke coming out of the ears of the people that are listening. Sir, I hope everybody has enjoyed this discussion because I'm going to have more of them If these two gentlemen will agree. I'm trying in everything I do to provoke thought. I want you to evaluate anything and everything that you're doing and just think about my metaphor of a swimmer. I finished last, but I beat my best time. I'm not competing with anybody but myself, and think about society. In order to get ahead, we look around the room and I got to beat that guy, I got to beat that girl, I got to be better than that's wrong. Don't even think about that. Think about yourself. So, to everybody listening, thank you, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you wrote some notes and, nick and Venky, I'm forever in your debt. Thank you very much. I'm going to close the recording now and I'm going to say Mahalo, and I look forward to having everybody back with us at another Candid Conversation. Mahalo.
