Supercharging Product Management with the OODA Loop: Expert Insights from Chris Butler | Ep 15

Chris Butler is a renowned product manager, writer, and speaker, with over 20 years of expertise in Agile methodologies, product management, and complex problem-solving. He has been a product leader at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cognizant, KAYAK, and Waze and has created techniques like Empathy Mapping for the Machine, Animistic Design Mapping, and Confusion Mapping to create cross-team alignment while building AI products. He is currently a Lead Product Manager at Google's Core Machine Learning team. Chris is an avid speaker and writer and regularly shares his knowledge and insights through talks, articles, and workshops.

Chapters found in this episode:

• Product Managers as Decision Facilitators 
• Why Alignment is Costly 
• Product Strategy, Org Charts and Agile 
• Product Playbooks? 
• A Discourse on Product Management 
• The Power of Narrative 
• Provo-typing? 
• The BS or Term Paper Economy 

Be sure to use the Chapters Feature on Apple and Spotify to quickly browse and navigate to segments of this episode.

Chris Butler on LinkedIn
Chris Butler on Medium
Product School 

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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:

The No Bell Podcast Episode 24
Acta Non Verba – with Marc...

Chapters

• 7:30 Product Managers as Decision Facilitators
• 12:14 Leader’s Intent vs Decision Facilitation
• 17:42 Understanding the External Environment
• 25:12 Why Alignment is Costly
• 28:36 Product Strategy, Org Charts and Agile
• 32:21 Product Playbooks?
• 33:51 A Discourse on Product Management
• 38:43 Are Executives Product Managers?
• 40:47 PM Apprenticeship Model
• 42:31 PM Tools and Techniques
• 43:56 The Power of Narrative
• 47:21 Provo-typing?
• 51:05 PM Lessons from Christopher Alexander
• 56:21 Drop the Workshop Introductions
• 57:27 On AI/ML Product Management
• 59:42 John R. Boyd, Product Manager
• 1:01:43 The BS or Term Paper Economy
• 1:06:31 Thoughts on Wardley Mapping
• 1:13:56 Decision-Making
• 1:21:31 Christ Butler Visits Boyd’s Archives

Transcript

Transcripts are machine generated and are NOT edited for grammar or spelling.

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;13;14
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Welcome to the show. Chris Butler I need to ask Chris a question about why he is interested in John Boyd's inner loop and how his background in product management brought him to this show. So, Chris, walk us through that, please.

00;00;14;06 - 00;00;17;08
Chris Butler
Yeah, absolutely. I guess where I first got introduced to.

00;00;17;08 - 00;00;19;05
Chris Butler
John Boyd and the concepts around.

00;00;19;22 - 00;00;22;25
Chris Butler
Kind of not just the but but a.

00;00;22;25 - 00;00;27;23
Chris Butler
Lot of the other things he talks about was through this book Tempo, which is by Venkatesh Rao.

00;00;27;25 - 00;00;31;16
Chris Butler
And Venkatesh is probably like, I guess a second.

00;00;31;17 - 00;00;35;25
Chris Butler
Generation acolyte of John Boyd. I guess we're still calling them that.

00;00;36;22 - 00;00;38;25
Chris Butler
And that whole book is really just about this.

00;00;38;25 - 00;00;51;10
Chris Butler
Idea of like narrative. It is as decision making, but it's very much related to the idea of how do you now make decisions in a certain way that you can get to some type of action, maybe not faster, but like in a better way. And so.

00;00;51;22 - 00;00;53;26
Chris Butler
I think this is very much related to things.

00;00;53;26 - 00;00;57;09
Chris Butler
Like orientation is really about the narrative we tell ourselves a lot of the time.

00;00;57;15 - 00;00;59;12
Chris Butler
And so and that being probably.

00;00;59;12 - 00;01;13;05
Chris Butler
The most important part of the UW app, I think is, is like one where I spend a lot of time in a lot of the time that I spend as far as a product manager is really about asking like I guess at the very basic level asking why are we doing something?

00;01;14;02 - 00;01;16;00
Chris Butler
And maybe that gets to his his kind.

00;01;16;00 - 00;01;46;19
Chris Butler
Of break out of the moral, physical and mental as well is like the moral stuff usually backs up. The reason why we're willing to like expend energy or do something at a very deep level is because of that kind of like belief about something. And so project management, though, is really all about like loops, right? And John Cutler, who is another kind of product, he's a product person that is, you know, I think getting more well-known has a really great newsletter called This Beautiful Mess, I think is what the newsletter is called.

00;01;46;19 - 00;01;56;07
Chris Butler
So I definitely recommend that. But what he'll talk about a lot is he has this kind of spreadsheet of just like different types of loops that product people have to deal with.

00;01;56;23 - 00;01;57;11
Chris Butler
The U2 loop.

00;01;57;11 - 00;02;10;21
Chris Butler
Is on there. Design thinking is on there, right, guys, print is on there, build, measure, learn is on there. Like there's all these loops about the way that we end up, like understanding something about the environment, taking action on it, and then learning from that action.

00;02;11;09 - 00;02;15;21
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
But Chris, aren't these loops? Chris Auntie's loops pretty much the same thing though. They are.

00;02;15;27 - 00;02;23;24
Chris Butler
They're all the same thing, right? Like, yeah, like I think this is the thing that's so interesting to me is the fact that what we're really talking about is like the way that we.

00;02;23;24 - 00;02;28;23
Chris Butler
Experience the world and the way that we constantly adjust and learn from the world. And so that's why.

00;02;28;23 - 00;02;33;03
Chris Butler
I think kind of John Boyd being, you know, almost like I guess I would call.

00;02;33;03 - 00;02;46;03
Chris Butler
Him kind of a polymath in the way that a lot of his books that he really got into was was this idea of like interdisciplinary thought. And so I pull an awful lot from that as well. I think like great product managers, it's more of a generalizable skill.

00;02;46;03 - 00;02;47;02
Chris Butler
But it's also a skill.

00;02;47;02 - 00;03;00;15
Chris Butler
That I think requires you to look across domain like I think people that are too much in one particular domain, they tend to focus on the problems that are there today rather than kind of new solutions or new reframing right of the way that we're thinking about things. And so.

00;03;00;21 - 00;03;01;17
Chris Butler
I think there's like a high.

00;03;01;17 - 00;03;18;18
Chris Butler
Overlap in the way that John Boyd talks about kind of an orientation. And I think of it as reframing and I can think about it from the standpoint of very like high level of abstractions, like here's our strategy, here's the systemic way that we do things down to very, very low abstraction level, which is like, here's a task we're going to work on.

00;03;18;27 - 00;03;20;10
Chris Butler
And there's a bunch of things in between.

00;03;20;10 - 00;03;26;03
Chris Butler
That need to be connected and we need to be able to like reframe and probably something in there about like complexity and kind of emergence as well.

00;03;26;16 - 00;03;31;21
Chris Butler
Maybe, but I think maybe so. So yeah, that's, that's cool. You might maybe my spiel about why I think.

00;03;31;21 - 00;03;35;07
Chris Butler
Like product managers should read up on John Boyd and that's why I think about it a.

00;03;35;07 - 00;03;55;00
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Lot. So one of the challenging aspects of my coaching world is coaching project management, right? It's I'm not one I'd ever been one. Or maybe I can say I've never been one, but there's a lot of folks in the industry that really profess that they know how to coach them and generally they have a two day certificate, they get 35 questions right on an exam, and now they're coaching a project.

00;03;55;06 - 00;04;05;22
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You know what I'm talking about? So help us help product managers and product owners become better through understand the OODA loop, if you don't mind.

00;04;06;14 - 00;04;09;08
Chris Butler
Yeah. I mean I think the the way that we.

00;04;09;08 - 00;04;11;07
Chris Butler
Make product managers be better at.

00;04;11;07 - 00;04;12;12
Chris Butler
Things is.

00;04;13;00 - 00;04;14;22
Chris Butler
I think a very hard topic as well.

00;04;14;22 - 00;04;17;12
Chris Butler
So, so another thing and I'll get to I'm going to have like a.

00;04;17;12 - 00;04;46;14
Chris Butler
Little bit of a detour for a second about kind of how product managers learn in general. And so I've, you know, been looking into an awful lot like the work that Gary Klein has done in naturalistic decision making and the way that kind of product managers, at least when I was at Microsoft, when I first got started there a long time ago, we used to say that for the first two years of like a program manager's life, they were not worth very much and was because they would kind of use the rote kind of processes that were given to them.

00;04;46;14 - 00;05;18;09
Chris Butler
They wouldn't really have a lot of the intuition that a more kind of senior product manager or a program manager would have. And that the reason why was because they had not built the tacit knowledge required to be able to understand and discern basically information from noise inside of the environment. And so what that brings me to is that, you know, I've started to look at things like decision force and cases I've started writing and using decision force in cases, which is something that the Marine Corps uses more, more moderately, basically, like tactical decision games, but they're based on a historical example.

00;05;18;10 - 00;05;22;19
Chris Butler
Right? And so it's trying to write those from the standpoint of like a product manager to be able to learn that.

00;05;22;28 - 00;05;24;20
Chris Butler
And almost every single one of.

00;05;24;20 - 00;05;29;23
Chris Butler
These cases, what they end up having is really this loop of where you observe some.

00;05;29;23 - 00;05;31;07
Chris Butler
Type of thing within.

00;05;31;07 - 00;05;41;21
Chris Butler
The environment, right? There's some context that's set with the DFC usually where it's like, here's kind of the historical context. Here's how the world works today, here's who this person.

00;05;41;21 - 00;05;44;08
Chris Butler
Is, here's. And then that leads into.

00;05;44;08 - 00;06;06;24
Chris Butler
This idea of like, once you understand kind of what is going on, like what does this mean for the way you should be making a decision, which is really to me that orientation, right? When we talk about all the context setting that goes into orientation, I think product managers need to be very aware, not only kind of like, you know, we use terms like data informed or data led types of product managers that that's the observation side.

00;06;06;24 - 00;06;26;14
Chris Butler
And I would I would include quality, quantity, a qualitative type of thing things in there as well. And so that could be, you know, narrative inquiry, that could be, you know, actual interviewing of people. But that's the observation side. You go into your kind of orientation side, that's where you start to apply, like, what do we want from the world as far as a strategy?

00;06;26;21 - 00;06;28;05
Chris Butler
What are the hard decisions we need to make.

00;06;28;12 - 00;06;34;10
Chris Butler
That leads to that decision which to me is like to decide something. I think what this is like.

00;06;34;10 - 00;06;44;20
Chris Butler
Another like little detour. But I think a lot of product managers make a lot of mistakes when they're trying to decide something with their team. Like I see product managers actually as decision facilitators rather than decision makers.

00;06;45;00 - 00;06;46;11
Chris Butler
And so they're there to kind of like.

00;06;46;12 - 00;06;50;03
Chris Butler
Force the decision through there to make sure that the right people are helping make the decision.

00;06;50;17 - 00;06;51;25
Chris Butler
But I think we waste.

00;06;51;25 - 00;07;01;00
Chris Butler
A lot of time like inside of Google, for example. We basically believe a lot in consensus driven decision making, which is very slow. And so I think.

00;07;01;00 - 00;07;01;23
Chris Butler
That it ends up.

00;07;01;23 - 00;07;05;15
Chris Butler
Causing us a lot of problems to try to, you know.

00;07;05;22 - 00;07;08;06
Chris Butler
Basically deciding how to decide is, I think, something that maybe.

00;07;08;07 - 00;07;17;17
Chris Butler
Happens in the orientation stage a lot of the time. Yeah, but I think is really important when it comes to decision. And then of course the action which is like we're going to start working on something, we're going to start executing on something.

00;07;18;02 - 00;07;19;19
Chris Butler
But there's like loops of within loops.

00;07;19;19 - 00;07;25;20
Chris Butler
Here that we, we always like to talk about. But that's, that's kind of how I map how product managers do their job to the loop.

00;07;25;20 - 00;07;46;06
Mark McGrath 4
For example, when you interact with people in decisions, do they see decisions in the buoyed sense that a decision is a hypothesis of what we think is going to happen? That could be something that we're going to have to adjust at a later time. Or do they think it something more, you know, as you say, consensus or maybe something that came down from high or were set in stone?

00;07;47;12 - 00;07;49;07
Mark McGrath 4
Do they look at it in the buoyed sense or. No.

00;07;49;19 - 00;07;53;17
Chris Butler
No. I mean, I think the a lot of I mean, I would say that really.

00;07;53;27 - 00;07;56;19
Chris Butler
Like, you know, agile with a small a or what we you know.

00;07;57;00 - 00;07;58;08
Chris Butler
Teams that that end up.

00;07;58;08 - 00;08;13;03
Chris Butler
Thinking about it that we don't know actually the truth of the world and we need to in some way interact with it to learn something. I think they tend to think about that. We're going to do something that's like slightly imperfect now to get out in front of a customer, I think there's like the idea that you if you're proud, I.

00;08;13;03 - 00;08;13;20
Chris Butler
Think it was.

00;08;14;05 - 00;08;19;13
Chris Butler
The founder of like LinkedIn said that if you're proud of your first version of your product, you probably released it too late. Right?

00;08;20;03 - 00;08;22;06
Chris Butler
And so that idea of like getting into the.

00;08;22;06 - 00;08;27;12
Chris Butler
Environment, seeing how things work through actual execution and engagement with that environment.

00;08;28;03 - 00;08;28;26
Chris Butler
Is basically.

00;08;29;00 - 00;08;33;00
Chris Butler
You know, again, MVP is like an overwrought term inside of the world of like development.

00;08;33;05 - 00;08;34;07
Chris Butler
It doesn't mean anything anymore.

00;08;34;07 - 00;08;38;07
Chris Butler
Basically, it's like a negotiation between leaders and the people that are building things at that point.

00;08;38;20 - 00;08;40;04
Chris Butler
But but the idea of like, how do we.

00;08;40;04 - 00;08;43;02
Chris Butler
Make the smallest experiments possible to be able to understand something?

00;08;44;02 - 00;08;44;19
Chris Butler
I think I would have.

00;08;44;19 - 00;08;54;09
Chris Butler
Like another framework in here though too is like Kent backs three X model, which is not long an S-curve, right? Like you have explore, expand and exploit or extract you change naming recently.

00;08;55;01 - 00;08;57;02
Chris Butler
That in the export case you're like how many cheap.

00;08;57;02 - 00;09;15;06
Chris Butler
Fast experiments can I make? Right? And so you need to be in the environment. Doing this is also very similar to like if you're dealing with a lot of people, it's the complex domain in my opinion of like, you know, canevin and the idea of kind of since, you know, accents respond type of thing and so so I probe sense respond.

00;09;15;20 - 00;09;21;14
Chris Butler
And I try to like yeah, I just saw I don't I don't want to make that mistake.

00;09;22;02 - 00;09;23;22
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I'm not sorry you went right to chaos.

00;09;23;28 - 00;09;25;16
Chris Butler
I don't want to make that mistake on this.

00;09;25;16 - 00;09;26;17
Chris Butler
Podcast in particular.

00;09;26;25 - 00;09;36;21
Chris Butler
But like, yeah. And now I'm seeing like a three domain connection. I don't know. I feel like I just there's a lot of interesting things going on, but but my point is, is that, like, you should as.

00;09;36;28 - 00;09;43;01
Chris Butler
A product person, I guess our motto should really be like, we are wrong. We just don't know how right.

00;09;43;01 - 00;09;46;11
Chris Butler
And that's just the truth of the world because of the fact that.

00;09;46;19 - 00;09;52;26
Chris Butler
We have assumptions that we go into building something. And maybe getting back to your question, right, is that.

00;09;53;08 - 00;09;54;13
Chris Butler
I think there is like a.

00;09;54;13 - 00;10;06;14
Chris Butler
Need for certainty in a lot of different roles within the product that the product managers work with. Right. Like I thought of the idea of like product managers, researchers that do really generative use of research like problem focused research.

00;10;06;24 - 00;10;07;21
Chris Butler
Business development.

00;10;07;21 - 00;10;08;14
Chris Butler
Experts.

00;10;08;14 - 00;10;08;27
Chris Butler
They tend.

00;10;08;27 - 00;10;23;05
Chris Butler
To be on the the scale, the side of the scale of like uncertainty. Right? We don't know what's going on. We need to go figure this out. There's other people that are much more on the certainty side of the world. So like an engineer needs to ship a line of code that exists in an environment where it executes.

00;10;23;10 - 00;10;45;16
Chris Butler
A designer has to ship a design or a salesperson has to get like a signature on a document somewhere. There's like finality or like a, like an a punctuated kind of point in time that has to happen where there's a lot of certainty. Now, the thing is, is like, how do those groups work together is really the interesting thing, because it's not about reducing uncertainty, it's not about increasing uncertainty all the time.

00;10;45;16 - 00;10;57;08
Chris Butler
It's about finding a balance between those things. And so product managers I see as being the wranglers of uncertainty for the team, or if not wranglers, at least like interpreters of uncertainty for the team.

00;10;57;26 - 00;11;14;14
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You brought up a decision facilitator. I want to go back to that for a moment. And when you're looking at Boyd's work and I'm assuming you're familiar with Mission Command. Yes. Can you make a connection there between the role of the product owner and a mission command or commander? So, yes.

00;11;15;00 - 00;11;17;21
Chris Butler
That's interesting. Like the commander's intent to me.

00;11;18;15 - 00;11;23;05
Chris Butler
At least the way, you know, I've never been in the military, but I've read a lot of John Boyd. Well.

00;11;23;16 - 00;11;27;04
Chris Butler
I've I've seen the presentations of John Boyd. I've read a singer's book.

00;11;27;04 - 00;11;36;05
Chris Butler
I've done a bunch of like reading about that type of thing. And I've, I've talked to a lot of people that are in the military. Usually, the more the Marine Corps, just because of the way that they end up focusing, you.

00;11;36;05 - 00;11;37;07
Chris Butler
Know, again, I don't know.

00;11;37;07 - 00;11;39;10
Chris Butler
If we would call ourselves Minerva Maneuvers.

00;11;39;10 - 00;11;44;12
Chris Butler
Or anything like that. I realize that's a a topic that I think is heated sometimes.

00;11;44;12 - 00;11;51;01
Mark McGrath 4
We Marines allow others to use that word. We're actually proud when we're very happy when non Marines use that term.

00;11;51;01 - 00;11;54;13
Chris Butler
So fair enough. So I've read that from like.

00;11;55;13 - 00;11;57;28
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You remember the Department of the Navy, right?

00;11;58;17 - 00;12;00;09
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah, that's right. We're naval. Naval and.

00;12;00;20 - 00;12;01;18
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
That's right. That's right.

00;12;01;27 - 00;12;06;10
Chris Butler
All I'm saying is like I actually proposed, I think to the it wasn't the Gazette that.

00;12;06;12 - 00;12;09;28
Chris Butler
They were trying to rebrand, but it was some blog that was trying to rebrand. And I, I.

00;12;09;28 - 00;12;10;28
Chris Butler
Thought that like, you know.

00;12;10;28 - 00;12;22;08
Chris Butler
Liminal spaces would be like a really great term to use for something out of the Marine Corps because of the fact that it's usually about those places between. Right. And so that's very interesting to me in some way.

00;12;22;19 - 00;12;24;21
Chris Butler
But so like getting back to your question about like a.

00;12;24;22 - 00;12;26;06
Chris Butler
Commander's intent and everything like.

00;12;27;13 - 00;12;31;05
Chris Butler
Decision facilitation, I think I would say it's slightly.

00;12;31;05 - 00;12;32;21
Chris Butler
Different than the commander's intent because.

00;12;32;21 - 00;12;35;08
Chris Butler
The commander's intent is like I have this like kind of.

00;12;35;08 - 00;12;43;01
Chris Butler
Overall objective that I want everybody to be aware of because they're then going to take this objective and adapt it to the way that they do their work at that like.

00;12;43;07 - 00;12;44;09
Chris Butler
That level.

00;12;44;09 - 00;12;52;00
Chris Butler
Of abstraction. Right? So if we're talking about an entire like theater versus a battlefield versus like a squad and where they are in that.

00;12;52;00 - 00;12;54;07
Chris Butler
Battlefield, I think you're trying to adapt.

00;12;54;16 - 00;12;58;08
Chris Butler
Those higher level abstractions to that. But I think there is a linkage between those.

00;12;58;08 - 00;12;59;21
Chris Butler
Right. I just did a.

00;12;59;21 - 00;13;14;29
Chris Butler
Talk at Product World about what I call the product spine, which is really this idea of like alignment in a very temporal way where strategy, roadmap and tasks need to be in alignment today. Otherwise you end up having misalignment that causes a lot of problems. And so.

00;13;15;11 - 00;13;15;18
Chris Butler
I think.

00;13;15;18 - 00;13;17;18
Chris Butler
Commander's intent is very much about kind.

00;13;17;18 - 00;13;19;00
Chris Butler
Of almost strategy.

00;13;19;00 - 00;13;24;24
Chris Butler
Right. And what is the thing we're trying to do and people are aware of that so they can apply it to their day to day decision making.

00;13;25;01 - 00;13;25;22
Chris Butler
I would say decision.

00;13;25;22 - 00;13;27;28
Chris Butler
Facilitation is slightly different because.

00;13;28;28 - 00;13;30;16
Chris Butler
To me it's about like at this.

00;13;30;16 - 00;13;43;06
Chris Butler
Level of abstraction, we've realized that a decision needs to be made where it's going to not only impact me, right? So like we make lots and lots of decisions and we want to start talking about like how large language models work and the craziness that's starting to ensue because of that. Like.

00;13;43;14 - 00;13;44;02
Chris Butler
That's just like a.

00;13;44;02 - 00;13;50;29
Chris Butler
Prediction of what the next word is. So there's like a decision being made every time I say the next word inside my brain about what I should say. Right.

00;13;51;05 - 00;13;52;06
Chris Butler
But that's not a decision making.

00;13;52;06 - 00;14;02;24
Chris Butler
Process that probably we should all care about. It's just something I do right? Or when an engineer is writing a line of code, they probably don't care as much about like what is happening in that line of code. What you do care about, though, is that.

00;14;03;04 - 00;14;03;25
Chris Butler
If a if an.

00;14;03;25 - 00;14;12;27
Chris Butler
Engineer needs to make a decision where it will impact another team that is dependent on this API right. That is where then decision making needs to require some type of like.

00;14;13;09 - 00;14;17;04
Chris Butler
Almost like rule setting, right? And almost kind of like there's discourse.

00;14;17;04 - 00;14;22;11
Chris Butler
And I think there's some really interesting research I've started to read around how like humans are argumentative with each other.

00;14;22;14 - 00;14;24;29
Chris Butler
Because of the fact that it helps overcome.

00;14;24;29 - 00;14;28;20
Chris Butler
The individual cognitive biases that we have. Yeah. And that's really.

00;14;28;20 - 00;14;38;08
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Interesting, right? Yeah. Well, so I want to scale this up a little bit, so yeah. So I'm going to use product owner and product manager. I know there's a difference. In fact, why don't you go through the differences?

00;14;38;08 - 00;14;42;27
Chris Butler
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that the pro as a term should just it's like we should.

00;14;43;00 - 00;14;50;11
Chris Butler
Declare bankruptcy at this point on it because it means something in every different place. I mean, something different. It's usually not helpful. Right. And, and so.

00;14;50;11 - 00;14;50;26
Chris Butler
I would just say.

00;14;50;26 - 00;15;05;15
Chris Butler
That like, yeah, there are going to be people that are very project manager focused, right? They're about reducing risk, not making the same mistake twice, getting more certainty in how we execute. Right. That's that's the project manager. Technical product manager is sometimes.

00;15;05;15 - 00;15;08;12
Chris Butler
Called that program management is kind of in that range.

00;15;08;12 - 00;15;21;23
Chris Butler
PMO is usually the management team that does that right. Product management is about that uncertainty about how do we like innovate, how do we do objective thinking towards something bigger than what we're doing right now when we have very little evidence.

00;15;22;05 - 00;15;23;02
Chris Butler
And that's again, on a.

00;15;23;02 - 00;15;27;08
Chris Butler
Spectrum where there's not one side or the other, it's about both of them working together. And so to.

00;15;27;08 - 00;15;30;05
Chris Butler
Me, the peo especially in the traditional, that.

00;15;30;07 - 00;15;31;10
Chris Butler
Kind of definition.

00;15;31;16 - 00;15;34;03
Chris Butler
Put it somewhere in the middle. And that was like when I was a.

00;15;34;03 - 00;15;50;10
Chris Butler
Program manager at Microsoft where I had to create Gantt charts and get estimates of work with estimates with the engineering team. But then I also had to think about like, what is this next thing we're going to do for this customer? And I don't think that you actually have valuable tension between those roles unless they're different people, right?

00;15;50;18 - 00;15;51;26
Chris Butler
And so that's what I would argue.

00;15;51;26 - 00;16;07;08
Chris Butler
I think PEO is like a term that will probably go away over time. Hopefully, because we'll talk about project managers that are really focused on how do we again make sure we don't make the same mistake twice and product managers and how we like embrace innovation.

00;16;07;09 - 00;16;09;18
Chris Butler
So that's that's how I would define those terms.

00;16;09;18 - 00;16;13;19
Chris Butler
I realize that everybody has a different definition, though, too. So that's maybe.

00;16;14;10 - 00;16;28;16
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Well, if you just search the Internet for these terms or look for any agile term out there, you'll find 40 different definitions. Right. So I'm with you. I think for us it's all about clarity. What are you trying to do? You know, and we'll help you. Yeah. Help you understand your context so you can apply the right method.

00;16;30;08 - 00;16;41;17
Commercial
You are listening to No Way Out, sponsored by Atlas. Now let's get back to building your confidence in complexity.

00;16;41;17 - 00;16;46;01
Chris Butler
I mean, maybe we should talk about like what is competitiveness mean actually inside of the product management world because.

00;16;46;01 - 00;16;49;00
Chris Butler
Sure, I don't think it's simple. Yeah, I don't think it's as simple.

00;16;49;00 - 00;16;49;28
Chris Butler
Right. As like.

00;16;49;29 - 00;16;50;12
Chris Butler
It's very.

00;16;50;12 - 00;17;03;27
Chris Butler
Rare that there are like circumstances like Uber versus left, right, where you're in the same market, you're offering the very same service. You're just a different app that people have to choose between. Right. It's very rare. It's like.

00;17;03;27 - 00;17;05;00
Chris Butler
That. I mean, most of the time.

00;17;05;00 - 00;17;09;13
Chris Butler
It's that people just don't even care about your product, right? Like they don't even care that you exist in some way.

00;17;10;03 - 00;17;10;25
Chris Butler
And then there's the other.

00;17;10;25 - 00;17;14;04
Chris Butler
Extreme, which is like, you know, for very large companies that exist today.

00;17;15;02 - 00;17;18;26
Chris Butler
They may they will overlap in a lot of different ways. But then it ends up being.

00;17;18;26 - 00;17;19;28
Chris Butler
About proxy wars.

00;17;20;02 - 00;17;23;24
Chris Butler
Feminism being about like actual head on type of stuff. Now I think.

00;17;23;24 - 00;17;34;27
Chris Butler
More recently the whole chat chip thing integration with Bing and Google is a very interesting circumstance of like where, you know, the CEO of Microsoft very specifically called out Google.

00;17;35;24 - 00;17;36;11
Chris Butler
But I think.

00;17;36;11 - 00;17;37;12
Chris Butler
There's some interesting stuff.

00;17;37;12 - 00;17;38;26
Chris Butler
About that. So to me, I guess like.

00;17;38;26 - 00;17;40;26
Chris Butler
When we talk about competitive understanding.

00;17;41;10 - 00;17;42;05
Chris Butler
I think what's.

00;17;42;05 - 00;17;45;20
Chris Butler
More important is actually around landscape or environment understanding.

00;17;46;06 - 00;17;47;06
Chris Butler
Because what's more likely.

00;17;47;06 - 00;18;00;03
Chris Butler
To actually kill you, right? If we're using like Simon Wardley as an example where we're talking about, say, the like the pioneer settler town planner model, right? The more likely thing to you was actually the environment rather than someone else. And so.

00;18;00;11 - 00;18;01;11
Chris Butler
I think to me that's.

00;18;01;13 - 00;18;02;20
Chris Butler
Actually what's more interesting, but.

00;18;02;20 - 00;18;04;07
Chris Butler
I would say that it's not in.

00;18;04;07 - 00;18;14;28
Chris Butler
The same way that people think about environment. Like I see a lot of times inside of product organizations where what we mean by competitive analysis is, one, doing a SWOT analysis, which I'm not a believer in too.

00;18;15;02 - 00;18;18;10
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You don't believe in one, right? Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

00;18;18;16 - 00;18;20;13
Chris Butler
I'm just preaching to the choir. That would never.

00;18;20;13 - 00;18;21;02
Mark McGrath 4
Do the job in.

00;18;21;02 - 00;18;21;18
Chris Butler
Corporate.

00;18;22;06 - 00;18;28;00
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yes. Yeah, I'm with you. It's always funny to see people trying to what? Continue. Sorry.

00;18;28;11 - 00;18;38;20
Chris Butler
Yeah, I know. And totally. I mean, it's like you're. You're going to be so biased about your own, like, all of the stuff, like your strengths and weaknesses. For example, you're going to be biased about that. And so I would say like SWOT is.

00;18;38;20 - 00;18;40;01
Chris Butler
One of the first things I see people do.

00;18;40;08 - 00;18;42;03
Chris Butler
Or like the competitive checklist.

00;18;42;11 - 00;18;44;02
Chris Butler
Matrix where it's like, here's all the.

00;18;44;02 - 00;18;47;19
Chris Butler
Features we have and we pick features in such a way that like, you know.

00;18;47;19 - 00;19;06;12
Chris Butler
It's not that we have the most features out of someone else that we care about. And so that's not actually what you should care about. We should care about is actually the way that those people are making decisions. Right, which I think gets us back to maybe point, which is I would much rather do the analysis of like where are they hiring, right, where they're open headcount, how are they deciding to spend money?

00;19;06;12 - 00;19;16;03
Chris Butler
What does the M&A activity look like? How does the CEO actually talk about things publicly? Right. Like what types of talks, if at all, are are other people randomly doing out in the world?

00;19;16;03 - 00;19;17;00
Chris Butler
And this gets back down to.

00;19;17;00 - 00;19;22;28
Chris Butler
Like regular intelligence. But like I would much rather what is their decision making kind of process in some way.

00;19;23;19 - 00;19;27;01
Chris Butler
Maybe to get into their inside of their loop. But it's actually it's always.

00;19;27;01 - 00;19;27;15
Chris Butler
That, right?

00;19;27;15 - 00;19;32;07
Chris Butler
It's more just like, what is the thing that they believe about the world that may give them an.

00;19;32;07 - 00;19;38;12
Chris Butler
Advantage in how they're targeting their customers are working with them versus the way we believe things about the world and somebody.

00;19;38;19 - 00;19;42;08
Mark McGrath 4
Do you. So you've read the biography too, right? By Robert Quam.

00;19;42;24 - 00;19;43;27
Chris Butler
Yeah, a very long time ago.

00;19;43;27 - 00;20;08;01
Mark McGrath 4
Though. So this part where he was training Marines at Quantico at Amphibious Warfare School, which is now called Expeditionary Warfare School. And he, Boyd, said that beachhead is looming larger and larger, right. You know, stop fighting the terrain. You have to fight the enemy. And what you're what you're talking about there reminded me of that how, you know, you're talking about getting inside somebody's head, getting inside their loop.

00;20;08;01 - 00;20;28;09
Mark McGrath 4
You have to you have to attack that not not the physical aspects of it. Back to what you said, but beginning, you know, we break down moral, mental and physical aspects of war. I find that in business it's been so much of focus on the physical at the expense of the mental and moral, to the point where the moral is almost not even a not even a topic, and then you're guaranteed to lose at some point.

00;20;29;06 - 00;20;31;10
Chris Butler
Yeah, and that's I think that's why like.

00;20;31;23 - 00;20;43;16
Chris Butler
If you just look at everything that's been said so far and again, it's all public information. But like people are saying that Google, Google search is done because chat is now going to do everything you want in that, right?

00;20;43;16 - 00;20;46;08
Chris Butler
Like that's that's kind of a I would classify.

00;20;46;08 - 00;20;47;26
Chris Butler
That as a small moral victory.

00;20;48;09 - 00;20;51;12
Chris Butler
For for that group. Right. But I also.

00;20;51;19 - 00;20;57;25
Chris Butler
Remember the idea of like a shape of your your force and how feints work.

00;20;58;08 - 00;21;01;00
Chris Butler
And so, you know, I think there's something.

00;21;01;00 - 00;21;05;01
Chris Butler
Very interesting about the way that it's gotten Google to react the way it has.

00;21;05;01 - 00;21;26;17
Mark McGrath 4
Unpack unpack that a little more, though. So go back to what you're saying about the moral question there in this exact situation, because I'm guessing from your LinkedIn profile, we're of similar age and we remember when Google wasn't even a thing and you went to Harvard Catalog or whatever. So yeah, so we've been in these scenarios before where there is a world altering technology on the horizon.

00;21;26;17 - 00;21;29;20
Mark McGrath 4
So just unpack that a little more than about the moral aspect of it.

00;21;30;07 - 00;21;33;23
Chris Butler
Yeah, I guess the thing is, is that there, there's a lot about perception.

00;21;33;23 - 00;21;34;19
Chris Butler
I think also.

00;21;34;19 - 00;21;35;29
Chris Butler
When even just when.

00;21;35;29 - 00;21;45;03
Chris Butler
Product managers are doing their job, it's like how do they help the team feel more confident in certain ways? And this idea of moral victory, what I talk about is, is the idea.

00;21;45;03 - 00;21;46;17
Chris Butler
Of I guess I'm thinking of.

00;21;46;17 - 00;21;48;05
Chris Butler
Moral in this particular case, is that.

00;21;49;10 - 00;21;50;08
Chris Butler
The fact that there's so much.

00;21;50;08 - 00;21;50;28
Chris Butler
Discussion.

00;21;51;04 - 00;21;55;20
Chris Butler
About the the reality of that there's still so much.

00;21;55;20 - 00;22;08;26
Chris Butler
That is going on when it comes to search versus what is going on when it comes to chat. Like like when you look at chatbots, right? They're referencing that it's the fastest service to ever get to X number of people. Right.

00;22;09;10 - 00;22;10;20
Chris Butler
And so the fact that that.

00;22;11;04 - 00;22;21;09
Chris Butler
You know, press bloggers, people on Twitter are all talking about this in a certain way. I think I see that as kind of moral victory, like from the standpoint of winning hearts and minds.

00;22;22;03 - 00;22;22;24
Chris Butler
I think you could.

00;22;22;24 - 00;22;26;01
Chris Butler
Probably classify some of this stuff as mental as well. But I.

00;22;26;18 - 00;22;27;19
Chris Butler
The reason why I talk about it as.

00;22;27;19 - 00;22;30;08
Chris Butler
Moral is because I think it changes.

00;22;30;23 - 00;22;34;21
Chris Butler
The way we believe, the way we believe.

00;22;34;21 - 00;22;45;04
Chris Butler
What we are doing is either good or bad in some way. And I think, you know, a lot of companies can be very reactionary when people are inside of their their world. And again, I probably.

00;22;45;04 - 00;22;46;05
Chris Butler
Am I think there's like an.

00;22;46;05 - 00;22;49;13
Chris Butler
Overlap between mental and moral in this case. But that's that's what I think of.

00;22;50;09 - 00;23;08;25
Mark McGrath 4
And that that word right there that you just used reactionary. How much of the culture is set up in most companies that they can only be reactionary because they've punished all their innovators, they've punished all the proactive thinkers. Anybody that had an imagination or creativity was thrown out the door and disregarded long ago.

00;23;08;25 - 00;23;10;16
Chris Butler
And now they're where they started to hide.

00;23;11;00 - 00;23;17;22
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, yeah. But they replaced that with big signs on the walls and say Innovation room. Right. So that's okay.

00;23;18;05 - 00;23;27;17
Chris Butler
Well, and I think this is very important to you because I mean, this gets back to I think, you know, it's not that we should be like failure is not what.

00;23;27;17 - 00;23;28;25
Chris Butler
We should be celebrating.

00;23;28;25 - 00;23;30;18
Chris Butler
Necessarily. Like we want failure.

00;23;30;25 - 00;23;34;28
Chris Butler
We want to learn from failure because we assume that to learn we have to make.

00;23;34;28 - 00;23;37;18
Chris Butler
Like some like again, objective.

00;23;37;18 - 00;23;42;12
Chris Butler
Leap somewhere. And that objective leap is wrong in some way, but we learn information. And so.

00;23;43;03 - 00;23;45;18
Chris Butler
I do think that the problem will be.

00;23;45;18 - 00;24;06;04
Chris Butler
That inside of large organizations, there's always this like, you know, there's a slide deck that you can find that's about slime mold and organizational headwinds and shows that once you start involving more and more people, once decision making starts getting more spread out right, I think that's part of the problem is that things start to slow down as far as how rapidly you can actually then make those decisions.

00;24;06;12 - 00;24;10;04
Chris Butler
And that means that you're less likely to then take a chance on something.

00;24;10;12 - 00;24;13;00
Chris Butler
That is riskier because the things.

00;24;13;00 - 00;24;16;12
Chris Butler
That are risky now are really big rather than the risky things are really small.

00;24;17;04 - 00;24;19;11
Chris Butler
And so that's why, you know, I almost feel like.

00;24;19;28 - 00;24;25;09
Chris Butler
The concept around alignment inside of an organization, it is a very costly thing and you should do it as readily as possible.

00;24;26;04 - 00;24;29;20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And so walk us through this. This is awesome. Yeah, I love this.

00;24;29;20 - 00;24;37;16
Chris Butler
So it's like it's like the idea of, you know, you should always be looking to find the way that the.

00;24;37;16 - 00;24;44;20
Chris Butler
Particular team, like the cross-functional team in our case would be like PM engineering design, maybe PMO research, a couple other groups, right?

00;24;45;06 - 00;24;46;23
Chris Butler
You want to be able to allow them.

00;24;46;23 - 00;24;55;11
Chris Butler
To learn as quickly as possible in the situation that they're in because are going to be closest to the customer. Ideally, they're going to be building things that are most valuable to that customer.

00;24;55;20 - 00;24;56;21
Chris Butler
When the moment that they then.

00;24;56;21 - 00;25;01;05
Chris Butler
Have to build a dependency with another team, the moment they have to like align with another team.

00;25;01;07 - 00;25;02;21
Chris Butler
Right? That's when you start to.

00;25;02;21 - 00;25;12;14
Chris Butler
Get problems about slowing down. Now there are other problems that start show up. So like I just did a, a tweet about like what I'll call like roadmap gerrymandering.

00;25;12;29 - 00;25;14;11
Chris Butler
That's basically where.

00;25;15;00 - 00;25;24;05
Chris Butler
Individual teams will like create features. They're on the same company or org, but the key features, so there's not like direct overlap, but like strategically they are in direct overlap.

00;25;24;12 - 00;25;28;16
Chris Butler
With each other. And so it's like this idea of, oh, well, we're going to cut up the.

00;25;28;16 - 00;25;29;22
Chris Butler
Customer or segment.

00;25;29;22 - 00;25;32;24
Chris Butler
In this way and you're going to cut up this way and we're going to products.

00;25;32;24 - 00;25;36;28
Chris Butler
So everybody's service, right? No one loses their jobs or one has to change teams.

00;25;37;04 - 00;25;37;25
Chris Butler
But we're going to like.

00;25;38;08 - 00;25;39;11
Chris Butler
Make sure that we're in.

00;25;39;11 - 00;25;40;25
Chris Butler
Like not like there's still.

00;25;40;25 - 00;25;42;09
Chris Butler
Strategic overlap in some way.

00;25;42;12 - 00;25;47;10
Chris Butler
And so I guess that's the thing is like you should be allowing for people.

00;25;47;10 - 00;25;51;18
Chris Butler
That are close to the customer, right? That can learn the fastest to basically do these things.

00;25;51;18 - 00;25;54;14
Chris Butler
And so the only times you should be doing.

00;25;54;14 - 00;25;56;27
Chris Butler
This type of strategic alignment, though, is really when.

00;25;57;11 - 00;25;59;14
Chris Butler
Like at a strategic level that ends up being kind.

00;25;59;14 - 00;26;04;27
Chris Butler
Of governing constraints where you're saying that we will do this and not this right, but it tends to be more like guidelines.

00;26;05;05 - 00;26;06;13
Chris Butler
I like building.

00;26;06;13 - 00;26;08;28
Chris Butler
Things as like this over that statement because I feel like.

00;26;09;06 - 00;26;13;27
Chris Butler
You get a couple of those things like this even over. That is a great way to say like between these two good.

00;26;13;27 - 00;26;14;24
Chris Butler
Options, right?

00;26;15;04 - 00;26;18;27
Chris Butler
We want you to do more. We want you to do this usually over that. And the Agile Like.

00;26;18;28 - 00;26;23;22
Chris Butler
Manifesto is the first time that this really comes about with like people over processes, for example.

00;26;23;26 - 00;26;27;01
Chris Butler
It doesn't mean that processes are bad, processes are good. And we can talk about like.

00;26;27;01 - 00;26;32;21
Chris Butler
How, you know, generally we should be we should going between this like limited ality, between complex and complicated.

00;26;32;28 - 00;26;42;11
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Hey, could you could you imagine if John Boyd was in in Utah, what were the what would the manifesto say? I know this sounds kind of funny, but.

00;26;43;07 - 00;26;48;17
Chris Butler
No, I don't think it would be really that different. Okay. Like, I think that I think a lot of what the Agile.

00;26;48;17 - 00;26;51;23
Chris Butler
Manifesto was saying is is very similar to what he.

00;26;51;27 - 00;26;54;11
Chris Butler
I mean, I think I'm trying to think, yeah, it's a really.

00;26;54;11 - 00;26;57;19
Chris Butler
Good question. What would be different about that strange question?

00;26;57;19 - 00;27;03;04
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I know. I think people, ideas and things in that order. That's that's number one, right? Yeah. Where we go. Any questions? Yeah.

00;27;04;05 - 00;27;07;16
Chris Butler
Pretty simple. And I think it gets at that. There's like people that.

00;27;07;16 - 00;27;21;15
Chris Butler
Believe you should be learning from the world as you build things and there's people that believe you should just like put something into the world and then figure out how it fits afterwards. Right? And like a very like certainty, uncertainty, perfection versus imperfection type of thing.

00;27;22;08 - 00;27;41;16
Mark McGrath 4
But that's sort of you said it a few times, the term strategic overlap, you know, and it goes back to that right away. I think a good definition of strategy is a mental tapestry. And if there's if there's overlap in ideas on teams and people that are coming together and they're being creative, you have a mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts.

00;27;41;16 - 00;27;48;03
Mark McGrath 4
And that's I mean, that's about as good of a definition of strategy to operate out of complexity as I could think of.

00;27;48;17 - 00;27;50;17
Chris Butler
Yeah. And I mean, I like his other.

00;27;50;17 - 00;27;52;23
Chris Butler
Definition, which is really, you know, that it's.

00;27;53;18 - 00;27;56;16
Chris Butler
The ability to continue to I am going to.

00;27;56;16 - 00;28;03;19
Chris Butler
Butcher the quote exactly. But it's like having options available to you to continue on and to survive on your own terms. Right.

00;28;04;00 - 00;28;07;11
Chris Butler
And I think, yeah, yeah. And so like that concept is also.

00;28;07;11 - 00;28;11;05
Chris Butler
Interesting from the standpoint of like multiple teams within an organization, right? This is why.

00;28;11;07 - 00;28;12;29
Chris Butler
Put like the political.

00;28;12;29 - 00;28;17;21
Chris Butler
Game that starts to happen inside of organizations where people don't want to leave the team with the product they're working on.

00;28;18;04 - 00;28;19;28
Chris Butler
Ends up slowing down things.

00;28;19;28 - 00;28;24;25
Chris Butler
In some ways because it stops this idea of like Conway's Law, where, you know, we.

00;28;24;29 - 00;28;25;29
Chris Butler
Conway's laws about you.

00;28;25;29 - 00;28;31;22
Chris Butler
Ship your org chart out to the customer. But the other part of it is like whenever you change your strategy, you should also like reorganize your team.

00;28;32;05 - 00;28;40;19
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And that nailed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's and that's why we get into mapping to like what? Yeah. So what are you trying to deliver? Let's build around that. And I think that's what you're saying, right?

00;28;40;28 - 00;28;42;27
Chris Butler
Yeah, exactly. So whatever that is.

00;28;42;27 - 00;28;44;28
Chris Butler
Right. Like from an organizational standpoint.

00;28;45;07 - 00;28;48;07
Chris Butler
You should be making you should have your org chart.

00;28;48;07 - 00;28;48;21
Chris Butler
Look at that.

00;28;48;21 - 00;28;51;26
Chris Butler
And again, I'm not I don't I don't necessarily think the like things.

00;28;51;26 - 00;28;57;05
Chris Butler
Like Holacracy are able to work at least in today's world, based on things like market trends and things like that.

00;28;57;05 - 00;28;58;12
Chris Butler
But I mean, I do think.

00;28;58;12 - 00;29;02;26
Chris Butler
There's something to be said for this idea of like more self-governing and more self-organization.

00;29;03;04 - 00;29;03;27
Chris Butler
But you still need.

00;29;03;27 - 00;29;06;23
Chris Butler
To operate within certain types of like hierarchies. And so.

00;29;07;13 - 00;29;08;11
Chris Butler
That's the problem too, is that.

00;29;08;11 - 00;29;14;18
Chris Butler
Like part of the reason why that happens is because of like concerns not only like power structures pushing governance down.

00;29;15;04 - 00;29;16;29
Chris Butler
There's like dump dominant.

00;29;16;29 - 00;29;19;02
Chris Butler
Logic is a really interesting theory.

00;29;19;16 - 00;29;20;07
Chris Butler
Rich badass.

00;29;21;04 - 00;29;22;24
Chris Butler
From like an eighties management science.

00;29;23;21 - 00;29;24;00
Chris Butler
Like.

00;29;25;12 - 00;29;28;00
Chris Butler
Article from a long time ago talks a lot about this idea.

00;29;28;00 - 00;29;31;12
Chris Butler
That as you become successful, you start to keep using.

00;29;31;12 - 00;29;35;10
Chris Butler
These mental models that you have in future situations that made you successful.

00;29;35;15 - 00;29;38;09
Chris Butler
Problem is, is that as you change context, that.

00;29;38;09 - 00;29;42;02
Chris Butler
May not be the best mental model or the best decision making strategy to use.

00;29;42;02 - 00;29;44;08
Chris Butler
And so he kind of called it the gilded.

00;29;44;08 - 00;29;53;29
Chris Butler
Cage where you start to get in this realm of like agile certification. Yeah, right. Or safe or something like that, where you become so rigid around like, what is this thing you get?

00;29;54;00 - 00;29;55;15
Chris Butler
And even Christopher Alexander.

00;29;55;15 - 00;30;12;21
Chris Butler
Likes, he's another person that I've read a bit about, like Chris Felix Inter, talking about the idea of like, you know, architects joining all of these like groups where they start to like establish very rigid ways of doing their practice when the reality is like what architecture was supposed to be about is like exactly.

00;30;12;21 - 00;30;14;21
Chris Butler
And I love notes on the synthesis.

00;30;14;21 - 00;30;19;12
Chris Butler
Of form is probably like the most foundational thing for me around like context and form.

00;30;19;28 - 00;30;22;03
Chris Butler
Right? And, and context and form is a lot.

00;30;22;03 - 00;30;22;14
Chris Butler
About like.

00;30;22;15 - 00;30;23;27
Chris Butler
Shape and, and.

00;30;24;01 - 00;30;26;00
Chris Butler
Shape of like the way that you end up.

00;30;26;22 - 00;30;29;10
Chris Butler
Seeing the battlefield. I mean, we'll even talk about like.

00;30;29;16 - 00;30;44;27
Chris Butler
Like Colonel Blotto as like a game theoretic thing, right? And if you're familiar with that, it's about this idea of like there's a bunch of battlefields, there's two sides, and they have X and Y number of people. They choose to distribute people over those battlefields. Whoever is more in that battlefield wins. Okay.

00;30;45;13 - 00;30;46;09
Chris Butler
Well, there's very small.

00;30;46;09 - 00;30;47;14
Chris Butler
Battlefields, right?

00;30;47;14 - 00;30;48;10
Chris Butler
The likelihood of.

00;30;48;10 - 00;30;52;12
Chris Butler
Someone with a smaller force winning over someone with a larger force gets less and less.

00;30;52;12 - 00;30;53;14
Chris Butler
But when you expand.

00;30;53;14 - 00;30;56;29
Chris Butler
The number of possible battlefields to be in an finite number of battlefields.

00;30;57;11 - 00;30;58;28
Chris Butler
Then suddenly the tides.

00;30;58;28 - 00;31;01;17
Chris Butler
Are turned and you may be able to win as a smaller force.

00;31;01;17 - 00;31;03;25
Chris Butler
And so this is literally game theoretic.

00;31;03;25 - 00;31;06;04
Chris Butler
Like proof, I would say, for guerrilla warfare.

00;31;06;12 - 00;31;14;03
Mark McGrath 4
That's the that's the disadvantage of going back to what you were saying when somebody had a model that worked in the past. And I mean.

00;31;14;18 - 00;31;17;02
Chris Butler
That's also the last war, right? The last war.

00;31;17;19 - 00;31;19;24
Mark McGrath 4
Well, I had or I have a hammer and everything's a nail.

00;31;20;02 - 00;31;23;24
Chris Butler
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so this where like I think product management.

00;31;23;24 - 00;31;33;08
Chris Butler
Is really interesting from the standpoint that like I am constantly trying to learn about new techniques, new processes, new theories about the way the world works, about other kind of.

00;31;33;08 - 00;31;39;11
Chris Butler
Disciplines and how they do things right. Because I just know that there's no playbook.

00;31;39;11 - 00;31;41;05
Chris Butler
For me to use, right?

00;31;41;05 - 00;31;42;15
Chris Butler
Like I.

00;31;43;04 - 00;31;46;12
Chris Butler
Every product leader, once they get to a certain seniority, there's.

00;31;46;12 - 00;31;47;10
Chris Butler
Two things they have to do.

00;31;47;11 - 00;31;53;03
Chris Butler
When they join an organization. One is they have to write a playbook about how to do product management here, and they always fail at it.

00;31;53;03 - 00;31;54;12
Chris Butler
I've tried to do it twice now.

00;31;54;13 - 00;31;56;00
Chris Butler
Because I just didn't learn from the first time.

00;31;56;20 - 00;32;02;11
Chris Butler
And you fail because it's like what goes in this book? It's like everything and it doesn't make any sense, right? The second one is you have to build the.

00;32;02;11 - 00;32;02;25
Chris Butler
Canvas.

00;32;03;02 - 00;32;05;20
Chris Butler
Because at some point you realize.

00;32;05;20 - 00;32;11;11
Chris Butler
That the work that you do should be functionalized in some way, that people with almost zero contacts should be able to pick it up.

00;32;11;11 - 00;32;12;17
Chris Butler
And what you find is, again.

00;32;12;24 - 00;32;29;17
Chris Butler
With mastery, with this idea of understanding and tacit knowledge, is that this is only a starting point. Right. The shoe, Harry kind of thing of the world where, yes, there are cases where these types of things are worthwhile because using the rules will get you a slightly better result than just doing anything.

00;32;29;17 - 00;32;34;11
Chris Butler
But then there's after that it's like, how do you move past that thing? And that's why, you know, again, like Europe has been.

00;32;35;03 - 00;32;37;19
Chris Butler
Reduced down to basically build, measure, learn.

00;32;38;14 - 00;32;41;13
Chris Butler
As like a diagram when the reality is like the stuff.

00;32;41;13 - 00;32;52;18
Chris Butler
That goes inside of Orient I think is the part it I keep going diving into is like really how do we understand? And dominant logic is one of those things that I think is both a benefit and like a a pain inside of that orientation.

00;32;53;08 - 00;32;55;18
Chris Butler
But that's why I like maybe just really quickly, the reason.

00;32;55;18 - 00;33;14;03
Chris Butler
Why dominant logic is a problem is because people that are in much more senior positions inside the organization, because of those models, they end up filtering out more innovative ideas that don't fit their patterns of understanding anymore. And so the variants that you end up getting from the rest of the organization gets lower and lower as you get further up almost.

00;33;14;07 - 00;33;16;25
Chris Butler
And that's why it's almost it's like the reason.

00;33;16;25 - 00;33;18;04
Chris Butler
Why leaders get paid.

00;33;18;04 - 00;33;19;04
Chris Butler
The big bucks.

00;33;19;04 - 00;33;20;29
Chris Butler
Is because they should be making the hard decisions.

00;33;21;03 - 00;33;29;28
Chris Butler
When the reality is like they they don't say this or that. They say, let's just do both. You know what I mean? And so that's the problem that we end up having. So there's a lot of like conflicts.

00;33;29;28 - 00;33;40;20
Chris Butler
That end up happening inside of these organizational structures that are, again, I think are more of a possible harm to us doing something that is really amazing and beneficial than it is like a competitor.

00;33;41;00 - 00;33;55;19
Mark McGrath 4
Something we also have this predisposition of thinking that there's one all powerful leader at the top making decisions for everybody, and that, as we know, is a massively vulnerable position to be in. That's right. It's a it's an unbelievable single point of failure.

00;33;56;04 - 00;33;57;19
Chris Butler
And it simplifies all that thinking.

00;33;57;19 - 00;33;58;24
Chris Butler
Down to one person.

00;33;59;04 - 00;34;00;12
Chris Butler
Right. When what we really.

00;34;00;12 - 00;34;09;11
Chris Butler
Want is we want like the whole problem with cognitive kind of biases is that it's one person. And using mental shortcuts to come to a decision.

00;34;09;22 - 00;34;11;11
Chris Butler
When the reality is like I just.

00;34;11;11 - 00;34;29;04
Chris Butler
Was referencing this the other day, there was a research study where they would show like people for cards or you'd have to guess this rule about when will this card have like it's like an even number or a vowel and they have four cards and they say, which of these how many, how many these cards do you turn over to choose whether this rule is valid or not?

00;34;29;04 - 00;34;36;04
Chris Butler
Right. And so people that are individuals, they end up, you know, they'll say like one or all or something like that.

00;34;36;04 - 00;34;38;22
Chris Butler
But but most of the time, like only one out of five.

00;34;38;23 - 00;34;39;27
Chris Butler
Times do people get it right.

00;34;40;11 - 00;34;41;23
Chris Butler
Okay. So like 20% of the time.

00;34;41;23 - 00;34;42;25
Chris Butler
Individually they get it right.

00;34;43;05 - 00;34;44;09
Chris Butler
You put them in a group of like.

00;34;44;09 - 00;34;47;26
Chris Butler
Five people total that can have a discourse beforehand. You get up to 80%. Right.

00;34;48;06 - 00;34;51;20
Chris Butler
And so if anything, what that shows me is that this idea of like simplification.

00;34;51;20 - 00;34;57;18
Chris Butler
To one person, right, when it comes to at least the discourse around decision making, that's potentially bad.

00;34;57;21 - 00;35;10;28
Mark McGrath 4
And you're not you're not saying it. You're not saying, like, what's a democracy? So five of us said so then the one of the six of us, the one person that you're not saying that you're saying that the discourse, the idea sharing the yeah.

00;35;11;06 - 00;35;12;09
Chris Butler
The argument. Right.

00;35;12;09 - 00;35;13;26
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;35;13;28 - 00;35;20;00
Chris Butler
That's yeah. So the like the blade sharpens like the steel sharpens steel type of thing. Like you, you need to bounce ideas.

00;35;20;00 - 00;35;20;13
Chris Butler
Off of each.

00;35;20;13 - 00;35;22;16
Chris Butler
Other. And there's a lot of kind of with some.

00;35;22;16 - 00;35;29;02
Chris Butler
Theories or hypotheses around the way that humans are so good at what we do is because of language and discourse between each other.

00;35;29;13 - 00;35;43;24
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah, I read about the, the Raiders, you know, the term gung ho. I mean, that was what they were doing was, was they would finish something, they would debrief it, they would learn from each other. And the hierarchy was removed and they became more adaptable. I mean, it's just. It's exactly what you're saying.

00;35;44;05 - 00;35;46;21
Chris Butler
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Because and that's why I think.

00;35;46;21 - 00;35;55;10
Chris Butler
DFC is are so interesting just from the standpoint of like, you know, I did one where it was a range of different product people that were like fairly new to fairly senior.

00;35;55;22 - 00;35;57;10
Chris Butler
And just having like one of the.

00;35;57;10 - 00;36;05;05
Chris Butler
Things we had them do during this meeting is like in 5 minutes they have to create an introductory slide to this offsite that is hypothetically happening the next day.

00;36;05;05 - 00;36;06;26
Chris Butler
And so seeing the difference.

00;36;06;26 - 00;36;17;14
Chris Butler
Between all these things was really valuable because you see kind of people that were more junior were more focused on the pros and cons, whereas the people who were more senior were asking like, Here's the two questions I have for everybody that we need to discuss. Right?

00;36;17;22 - 00;36;19;28
Chris Butler
And it was really amazing because then those.

00;36;19;28 - 00;36;24;03
Chris Butler
People that are more junior, they could see the way the more senior people do this. Right. And that's why DFC is.

00;36;24;12 - 00;36;26;16
Chris Butler
Generally of how like whenever they've been.

00;36;26;16 - 00;36;33;23
Chris Butler
Run, they tend to include very senior people inside the organization because you can't learn from how they would make those decisions right.

00;36;33;23 - 00;36;35;27
Chris Butler
So I think that's like that that idea of.

00;36;35;27 - 00;36;51;27
Chris Butler
Discourse is not just from the standpoint of like, yeah, we're going to bring all of our ideas together and see how much better we can make them. But it's also the fact that there are just some people that are probably no more in this circumstance. And so learning from them or learning vicariously through their the way they make decisions is actually really helpful in that case.

00;36;51;27 - 00;36;52;17
Chris Butler
To right.

00;36;52;25 - 00;36;59;03
Mark McGrath 4
How do you see humility as a characteristic that people would would display in those sorts of situations?

00;37;00;19 - 00;37;02;21
Chris Butler
I guess I would say that there.

00;37;04;08 - 00;37;08;08
Chris Butler
There's a problem with humility when it comes to very senior people. And the reason.

00;37;08;08 - 00;37;10;15
Chris Butler
Why is because like I know servant.

00;37;10;15 - 00;37;14;28
Chris Butler
Leadership was this thing for a little while where we were trying to like make make all that work.

00;37;16;10 - 00;37;18;00
Chris Butler
There is a real issue that.

00;37;18;00 - 00;37;23;17
Chris Butler
When you're at a more senior level, if you don't show something that is more polished or more put together or more confident.

00;37;23;24 - 00;37;27;00
Chris Butler
Right, there is kind of, again.

00;37;27;00 - 00;37;30;11
Chris Butler
A concern that people will have that things are not polished or put together.

00;37;31;02 - 00;37;32;26
Chris Butler
Even though the reality is like at every level.

00;37;32;26 - 00;37;34;13
Chris Butler
Everybody's just kind of like making things up.

00;37;34;22 - 00;37;36;27
Chris Butler
Like, oh.

00;37;36;27 - 00;37;43;04
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Chris, on that topic, our executives, are they product managers or do they have the same should they have the same mindset, same type of thinking?

00;37;44;06 - 00;37;47;02
Chris Butler
I don't know. I mean, I think that like, I do believe in.

00;37;47;02 - 00;37;50;21
Chris Butler
Cross-Functional teams at almost every level. And so I would argue.

00;37;50;28 - 00;37;51;29
Chris Butler
There are benefits to having.

00;37;51;29 - 00;37;58;08
Chris Butler
Like a GM at a certain point inside of an organization or a general manager that has the different functions like reporting to.

00;37;58;08 - 00;38;03;00
Chris Butler
Them. And it's mostly because of like escalation resolution. So I think the.

00;38;03;00 - 00;38;05;09
Chris Butler
Product manager or the product kind of practice.

00;38;05;09 - 00;38;07;02
Chris Butler
To me is being good at.

00;38;07;02 - 00;38;09;04
Chris Butler
That type of decision facilitation, which.

00;38;09;04 - 00;38;10;10
Chris Butler
Again, I think we need to like.

00;38;10;21 - 00;38;15;29
Chris Butler
Strengthen that muscle with a lot of our, a lot of our world or our kind of like industry.

00;38;15;29 - 00;38;18;17
Chris Butler
But then at a GM level, like honestly, I think that they need.

00;38;18;17 - 00;38;20;14
Chris Butler
To be good at this type of decision facilitation.

00;38;20;14 - 00;38;25;18
Chris Butler
Because if they are the ones that have to make a decision, there was a big failure like way below all the people.

00;38;25;18 - 00;38;27;26
Chris Butler
That were that were below them inside of the organization.

00;38;28;05 - 00;38;46;20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So this kind of reminds me of like a dual operating system where we have to think about kind of an we're we're operating in the ordered domain in the complex and chaotic domain. So that to me, that GM would be working more on the ordered side of the system. And then maybe a product management type of mindset would be on the more complex, chaotic sense.

00;38;47;02 - 00;38;49;10
Chris Butler
This machine, I guess like with the classic definition.

00;38;49;10 - 00;38;51;05
Chris Butler
Of like ordered or.

00;38;52;08 - 00;38;54;12
Chris Butler
I guess what is, what is, what's the.

00;38;54;12 - 00;38;56;05
Chris Butler
Most recent term that starts with a C.

00;38;56;05 - 00;39;00;18
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
For that. That's there's clear, clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;39;00;18 - 00;39;04;12
Chris Butler
So like from the clear standpoint, I actually wonder.

00;39;04;12 - 00;39;06;24
Chris Butler
How much we do inside of the clear domain at all.

00;39;07;08 - 00;39;07;27
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
I don't think we do.

00;39;08;11 - 00;39;10;14
Chris Butler
Yeah. And so I think that's the thing is I think what.

00;39;10;14 - 00;39;11;25
Chris Butler
We're talking about here is that.

00;39;12;08 - 00;39;13;11
Chris Butler
That lemon ality.

00;39;13;11 - 00;39;18;08
Chris Butler
Between kind of complicated and complex is where think a lot of software development ends up being.

00;39;18;14 - 00;39;18;29
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Absolutely.

00;39;18;29 - 00;39;20;13
Chris Butler
Like a complex is.

00;39;20;13 - 00;39;29;20
Chris Butler
For me especially when we talk about like, like part of my job is to like PM the PM experience and so trying to figure out like how we do a better job of product manager effectiveness, like.

00;39;30;06 - 00;39;30;23
Chris Butler
When should.

00;39;30;23 - 00;39;45;03
Chris Butler
We actually take something and turn it into a system or process for our team right. And so a lot of my work is like a lot of one on ones, a lot of small group meetings, a lot of like hands on type of stuff where we're doing like critiques and like feedback sessions and even retros, right?

00;39;45;03 - 00;39;47;23
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Is this like an apprenticeship model you have going on or.

00;39;48;06 - 00;39;54;21
Chris Butler
Kind of yeah. I mean, that's why apprenticeship models work the way they do is that I think of like, like gaining tacit knowledge depends on you to.

00;39;54;21 - 00;40;11;23
Chris Butler
Do the practice and to see someone that is like more senior than you doing the practice and doing it alongside. So in the critiques that I do, for example, like we'll have five people where we're going to critique like a specification or thank you or some document, I'll bring a document as well as everybody else in that group brings a document and we all critique each other's documents.

00;40;11;23 - 00;40;15;07
Chris Butler
To critique, you have to bring something to be critiqued, basically.

00;40;15;15 - 00;40;17;16
Chris Butler
And so you end up not only learning.

00;40;17;16 - 00;40;21;26
Chris Butler
From the direct critique, right? Like, here's questions I would have for you about this document.

00;40;22;16 - 00;40;23;12
Chris Butler
But I would also.

00;40;23;12 - 00;40;29;22
Chris Butler
Then you see vicariously through other people getting critiqued and you critiquing other people what is really good about something. Right.

00;40;30;05 - 00;40;31;10
Chris Butler
And this gets back to the.

00;40;31;10 - 00;40;35;02
Chris Butler
Discourse aspect of things is that the reason why our cognitive biases exists?

00;40;35;02 - 00;40;38;25
Chris Butler
Because it's inside of our own head. The moment that we have to like see something.

00;40;38;25 - 00;40;43;29
Chris Butler
Is the other. We then are able to critique it in a way that we're not able to create a critique ourselves.

00;40;43;29 - 00;40;47;07
Chris Butler
And so I think that's like so it's like apprenticeship in a lot of ways. I do think the product.

00;40;47;07 - 00;40;53;00
Chris Butler
Management will probably work better as like growing people as an apprenticeship model. Then I think something else.

00;40;53;00 - 00;40;53;16
Chris Butler
But that's.

00;40;53;16 - 00;40;55;20
Chris Butler
The thing is we're doing all this stuff in the complex domain.

00;40;56;29 - 00;40;58;02
Chris Butler
And then we're saying like, okay, well.

00;40;58;02 - 00;41;14;18
Chris Butler
There's one thing that we think systemically there's a pattern here, right? So in complex world, we start seeing patterns of things that we think could be helped by one system or change. We bring that into the complicated space and we say, Here's a new way that we're going to do pads or we're going to like do road mapping process because we.

00;41;14;18 - 00;41;15;22
Chris Butler
Feel like the benefits.

00;41;15;22 - 00;41;30;22
Chris Butler
Across the entire are going to be valuable. The part that I keep on like thinking about is like, what are the kind of like code smell, equivalence of that this complicated thing should no longer be in complicated and we have to like stop doing it and actually go back into complex. Right. Right. So I think that's a very interesting question.

00;41;31;03 - 00;41;47;02
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So, Chris, I want to move over to machine learning and AI here in a little bit. But before we do that, I want to make sure I give you the opportunity to share some techniques, tactics, processes, methods, whatever they may be. Going back to landscape and I'm going to anchor you here a little bit. You talk about narrative.

00;41;48;06 - 00;41;52;17
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
What are some tools and techniques that people can use to understand the landscape?

00;41;53;13 - 00;41;58;00
Chris Butler
Yeah. So there's a couple key things. So it's not just.

00;41;58;00 - 00;42;05;06
Chris Butler
Say your competitors that you believe are in the same space as you like. What are the stories they're telling? How are they marketing to people? How are they selling things like.

00;42;05;11 - 00;42;06;14
Chris Butler
All of those kind of.

00;42;06;14 - 00;42;28;01
Chris Butler
Decision making process in the way that they're interpreting the environment, I think is really interesting, right? That helps give you another viewpoint on it. But I would argue that probably the best way to really understand things is, is one to be engaged with it, right? So I think like companies that end up going after communities first, they can be very successful because so there's a technique called sales safari and sales safari.

00;42;29;10 - 00;42;32;11
Chris Butler
Is this technique that was created to basically like you.

00;42;32;11 - 00;42;48;24
Chris Butler
Go to the online community where these people are and you go and watch them talk about their problems. You kind of do this like rough counting of what is going there, how do people solve them? Right. And when you want to look at is like what are the problems that are talked about the most? What are people like cobbling together solutions for?

00;42;49;03 - 00;42;51;01
Chris Butler
And then like what are people actually spending money on.

00;42;51;01 - 00;42;53;22
Chris Butler
Fixing in some way? And that gets you so.

00;42;53;22 - 00;42;58;26
Chris Butler
Far along understanding just like for your customer, how do they think about the world, right? Like what is the terminology they use?

00;42;59;03 - 00;42;59;23
Chris Butler
And so this is very much.

00;42;59;23 - 00;43;04;24
Chris Butler
Related to things like other types of qualitative user research, like contextual inquiry.

00;43;05;20 - 00;43;07;13
Chris Butler
Like, you know, all that type of stuff I think is like.

00;43;07;13 - 00;43;10;00
Chris Butler
A really great way to understand the landscape.

00;43;10;00 - 00;43;11;18
Chris Butler
That that's one thing I would say about that.

00;43;12;29 - 00;43;17;03
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Can you use any naturalistic? Well, it's an LP like in the right natural.

00;43;17;03 - 00;43;18;28
Chris Butler
Nationalistic decision making and yeah.

00;43;19;07 - 00;43;26;01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah andme and then can't I forgot the other term that to think about but yet can you walk us through that.

00;43;26;20 - 00;43;30;09
Chris Butler
Yeah. So participant query. Yeah. And since maker that's.

00;43;30;10 - 00;43;31;13
Chris Butler
I think what you were thinking of.

00;43;31;25 - 00;43;33;02
Chris Butler
Yeah. So I think this, this.

00;43;33;02 - 00;43;36;08
Chris Butler
Concept of also collecting stories is pretty interesting. But the part.

00;43;36;08 - 00;43;38;09
Chris Butler
That, you know, and I've done a little bit of work with.

00;43;38;09 - 00;43;47;10
Chris Butler
Since Maker and I've, I've done other kind of like narrative inquiry or MPI is what it's usually referred to where you go out and you basically collect a bunch of stories from people and then you have.

00;43;47;10 - 00;43;48;24
Chris Butler
Them do a bunch of things to kind.

00;43;48;24 - 00;43;52;23
Chris Butler
Of like annotate the data and the annotation is what's really interesting. So it's not just like.

00;43;53;06 - 00;43;53;24
Chris Butler
I want you to tell.

00;43;53;24 - 00;44;02;25
Chris Butler
Me a story about the last time that you really felt like you were part of a team, right? That would be an interesting thing for me to understand as like a person that's trying to understand the community practice.

00;44;03;04 - 00;44;04;07
Chris Butler
And so then I would say you.

00;44;04;07 - 00;44;05;25
Chris Butler
Tell a story about that and.

00;44;05;25 - 00;44;06;21
Chris Butler
Then I'd say, okay, please.

00;44;06;21 - 00;44;08;03
Chris Butler
Give this story a title, right?

00;44;08;03 - 00;44;09;05
Chris Butler
Because that, that gives me.

00;44;09;05 - 00;44;17;07
Chris Butler
More terminology from like a taxonomy standpoint, maybe from like a different like standpoint of like how are you thinking about this? And then I have a bunch of questions that are like, All right, well.

00;44;17;07 - 00;44;20;22
Chris Butler
So you can use like a what they call like a I think it's like.

00;44;20;22 - 00;44;23;25
Chris Butler
A diode technically. And there's a try out who's forget the terminology, the.

00;44;24;07 - 00;44;25;20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Triads and dyads. Yeah, that's right.

00;44;25;20 - 00;44;28;17
Chris Butler
That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so basically you have like on the.

00;44;28;17 - 00;44;30;07
Chris Butler
Spectrum between this and this.

00;44;30;07 - 00;44;33;17
Chris Butler
Like how much of this like in the triad, the triad thing is.

00;44;33;17 - 00;44;41;13
Chris Butler
Like, you know, how much was this about the community, how much this was was this about your relationship with your manager? How much was this about like your meaning in the work?

00;44;41;28 - 00;44;43;28
Chris Butler
And you start to then classify all these different.

00;44;43;28 - 00;44;46;14
Chris Butler
Stories with these different kind of annotations of.

00;44;46;14 - 00;44;48;01
Chris Butler
Data. So you can then.

00;44;48;05 - 00;44;54;10
Chris Butler
Start to look at a graph and say, Oh, there's a really interesting cluster here. What is where are all the stories in this cluster here about?

00;44;54;10 - 00;44;55;16
Chris Butler
And, you know, Dave Snowden.

00;44;55;16 - 00;45;09;25
Chris Butler
Talks about it from a sense my your standpoint is that you want to eventually then start to say like we want to make change with these stories. And so what was a common thing in this story that we can now change or we want to move people from here in the map to over here on the map? And so what are the differences between these clusters of stories?

00;45;09;25 - 00;45;14;03
Chris Butler
And so they're kind of like P and I in general, I think is a really valuable thing.

00;45;14;03 - 00;45;17;22
Chris Butler
Now, the hard part about that is getting to actually give you stories.

00;45;18;02 - 00;45;22;07
Chris Butler
Right? He's like the really hard part. And so like, you know, I know Dave Snowden has done a lot of.

00;45;22;07 - 00;45;27;01
Chris Butler
Things, but both like through online collection and person collection and then like farming that out to other people.

00;45;27;17 - 00;45;28;05
Chris Butler
But I think that is.

00;45;28;05 - 00;45;31;02
Chris Butler
Always like that is by far the hardest part of that type of process.

00;45;31;02 - 00;45;36;13
Chris Butler
But but it does give you very interesting perspective because I think when we talk about.

00;45;36;13 - 00;45;42;10
Chris Butler
Complexity, right, like we don't want to just do predictive things. We don't want to like just understand what is this predictive value.

00;45;42;19 - 00;45;43;13
Chris Butler
Because then we lose.

00;45;43;13 - 00;45;51;06
Chris Butler
The context of it and we don't want to just look at the context because then we kind of lose out on this idea of like productiveness or understanding in a certain way. And so.

00;45;51;16 - 00;45;52;08
Chris Butler
Complexity.

00;45;52;08 - 00;46;01;27
Chris Butler
Especially process of narrative narrative inquiry tries to get at this like we're connecting these two different sides of the data together so that we can understand, like the individual human expression of this like thing, but.

00;46;01;27 - 00;46;02;13
Chris Butler
Also kind of.

00;46;02;13 - 00;46;08;18
Chris Butler
Like, what does it mean when we're starting to look across patterns in the data? And that's really the most important thing, is that that idea of like identification of patterns.

00;46;09;10 - 00;46;10;25
Chris Butler
Which I think is hardest for me, like.

00;46;11;03 - 00;46;21;22
Chris Butler
We call it kind of product operations, is what I would call that in the plumbing. The PM experience was very hard to discern when something is a big enough pattern to actually take action on.

00;46;21;29 - 00;46;23;02
Chris Butler
And okay, I think.

00;46;23;02 - 00;46;25;16
Chris Butler
That is another thing that requires a lot of tacit knowledge.

00;46;25;16 - 00;46;33;02
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah. Anything else you use to understand the landscape or your company or your customer or your competition? Your competitor?

00;46;33;15 - 00;46;36;18
Chris Butler
Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing looking at behavioral.

00;46;36;18 - 00;46;42;21
Chris Butler
Data is very interesting, but it doesn't tell you why. Right? So it's the decontextualized aspects of like, what are they doing in the world?

00;46;43;23 - 00;46;47;05
Chris Butler
And so I think there's a there's a big goal.

00;46;47;05 - 00;46;50;17
Chris Butler
Within at least the product management world to be more data driven or informed.

00;46;51;21 - 00;46;53;25
Chris Butler
And I think the problem with this type.

00;46;53;25 - 00;47;01;06
Chris Butler
Of thing is that part of project management is to actually make a guess about things and we're never going to have a true full ROI.

00;47;02;22 - 00;47;04;13
Chris Butler
On something. So like any time that you're.

00;47;04;13 - 00;47;06;15
Chris Butler
In an organization where you have to make like a complete.

00;47;06;22 - 00;47;10;09
Chris Butler
Kind of, I guess anytime you have to build.

00;47;10;09 - 00;47;18;09
Chris Butler
Out in a way that is very specific about how much time will take and how much value you're going to get, you're you're probably in an organization that doesn't really care about like trying out new ideas.

00;47;18;09 - 00;47;21;24
Chris Butler
And so maybe that's the next thing, which is like, you know, that idea of.

00;47;21;24 - 00;47;39;00
Chris Butler
Probe sense respond, especially in the complex domain is that you have to actually put something out there. And so prototyping and I would say there's a couple of different like subgenres of prototyping that are very interesting. Like one that. I've really I don't think we need a new term for it, but I've seen the term prototyping for provocative prototyping.

00;47;39;25 - 00;47;41;24
Chris Butler
Which is like one post about it, but it really stuck in my mind.

00;47;41;24 - 00;47;42;26
Chris Butler
So maybe it worked as a term.

00;47;43;21 - 00;47;44;10
Chris Butler
But it's about where.

00;47;44;10 - 00;47;48;00
Chris Butler
You build a prototype that is like the worst prototype possible and then you show it to people.

00;47;48;00 - 00;47;53;23
Chris Butler
To see what that, that's fine. So like the, the example they use in this particular case is like they wanted to.

00;47;53;23 - 00;47;55;08
Chris Butler
Build a health care site and so they.

00;47;56;03 - 00;48;01;14
Chris Butler
Like make it purple and it's like common comic sans everywhere as a font. Yeah. And everything.

00;48;02;08 - 00;48;04;21
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So you're saying not to do that is it. Okay.

00;48;05;16 - 00;48;08;01
Chris Butler
Well then so, so you try this out, you show it to people and you're like.

00;48;08;01 - 00;48;11;21
Chris Butler
Well, so here's our new health care site. Can you please try to book an appointment? Right.

00;48;12;04 - 00;48;20;12
Chris Butler
Okay. They'll look at it. They're like, okay, well, this I didn't realize that this button meant that I could book appointment. And then when I get to the booking appointment, it doesn't allow me to.

00;48;20;12 - 00;48;30;02
Chris Butler
Now I go and look at my calendar and find a time that's worthwhile. And so they didn't care that it was purple or Comic Sans or whatever, right? They didn't care about any of that stuff that you maybe thought they would have cared about.

00;48;30;08 - 00;48;32;29
Chris Butler
But they care about this one thing. And so I sort of get in the realm of.

00;48;32;29 - 00;48;36;28
Chris Butler
Like, I think speculative future speculative design, discursive design.

00;48;37;03 - 00;48;38;05
Chris Butler
Talks about this idea of like.

00;48;38;11 - 00;48;44;03
Chris Butler
Using really weird, horrible stuff in the future to talk about like what does it mean today? And so.

00;48;44;10 - 00;48;44;28
Chris Butler
There's a whole thing.

00;48;44;28 - 00;48;48;24
Chris Butler
About that idea of like especially that there's a lot of futurists that I know.

00;48;49;07 - 00;48;52;05
Chris Butler
Where their whole thing is, like prototyping, like what would the 99.

00;48;52;05 - 00;48;54;21
Chris Butler
Cent store of 30 years from now look like, right?

00;48;54;21 - 00;48;58;16
Chris Butler
Or what is what does it mean for like what is what is.

00;48;58;16 - 00;49;02;16
Chris Butler
Spam look like in the future when you have like neuro link, right?

00;49;03;04 - 00;49;04;18
Chris Butler
And so all those types of questions.

00;49;04;18 - 00;49;09;12
Chris Butler
Start to bring you back to like how do we actually understand what is valuable to us today but is a way for you to do that?

00;49;09;12 - 00;49;10;21
Chris Butler
So I think like prototyping.

00;49;10;21 - 00;49;14;16
Chris Butler
Is another one of those like weird kind of things that you can do to, to understand the landscape.

00;49;14;16 - 00;49;17;04
Chris Butler
Better because you're talking about then that is the.

00;49;17;04 - 00;49;23;10
Chris Butler
Form you're trying to put in context somewhere. If you use Christopher Alexander right, as the form as a prototype.

00;49;23;18 - 00;49;28;05
Chris Butler
And then what you'll see is you'll see how much is that form actually fitting inside that context.

00;49;28;05 - 00;49;31;06
Chris Butler
Is it the shaping like? Is it overlapping and things are some way and.

00;49;31;06 - 00;49;33;10
Chris Butler
So maybe using that I started I used to draw.

00;49;33;10 - 00;49;34;14
Chris Butler
Kind of like this idea of like.

00;49;34;23 - 00;49;35;20
Chris Butler
Kind of like.

00;49;35;20 - 00;49;38;26
Chris Butler
An area that you would try to drop something into. And I think there's a lot of.

00;49;39;06 - 00;49;40;08
Chris Butler
Interesting like ecosystem.

00;49;40;08 - 00;49;41;24
Chris Butler
Plays from a strategic standpoint.

00;49;41;24 - 00;49;48;08
Chris Butler
Right? If we want to take the ecosystem analogy, building a new company and landing it and having it be valuable.

00;49;48;08 - 00;49;51;02
Chris Butler
To people is actually what I would refer to as like niche expansion.

00;49;51;14 - 00;49;52;18
Chris Butler
So you need to be like the beaver.

00;49;52;18 - 00;49;56;02
Chris Butler
That builds the dam to be able to create the environment you want, right? Right.

00;49;56;06 - 00;49;57;01
Chris Butler
And you need to be.

00;49;57;01 - 00;50;00;08
Chris Butler
Around all these other animals and things that are inside the ecosystem.

00;50;00;18 - 00;50;01;18
Chris Butler
But that gets me back to just that.

00;50;01;18 - 00;50;09;00
Chris Butler
Idea of like form in context. And so prototyping is a powerful tool to be able to understand that because that's the form context is the, the actual environment that you're trying to fit.

00;50;09;00 - 00;50;13;16
Mark McGrath 4
Then how did you come into contact with Christopher Alexander's books?

00;50;14;15 - 00;50;17;04
Chris Butler
I think it was like it was actually that there's a couple.

00;50;17;04 - 00;50;19;23
Chris Butler
Of different software people that that read the pattern.

00;50;19;23 - 00;50;23;15
Chris Butler
Language and then they're like, Hey, you know, we should like I think one of the talks I saw.

00;50;23;15 - 00;50;25;05
Chris Butler
Was where he's at like a Java conference.

00;50;25;05 - 00;50;31;24
Chris Butler
Back in the day. He's like, I have no idea why I'm here, but, you know, you know, when you think about like the Gang of.

00;50;31;24 - 00;50;33;15
Chris Butler
Four Patterns book and stuff like.

00;50;33;15 - 00;50;37;17
Chris Butler
That, I think there's something interesting about the way you contextualize like.

00;50;37;19 - 00;50;39;01
Chris Butler
Different things for different uses.

00;50;39;09 - 00;50;41;12
Chris Butler
But I do think that people kind of I mean, I haven't.

00;50;41;12 - 00;50;45;20
Chris Butler
Read his latest thing, which is like four humongous books of just like nature.

00;50;45;23 - 00;50;48;25
Chris Butler
And everything like that. But I mean, he passed away.

00;50;48;25 - 00;50;50;07
Chris Butler
Just last year, I think.

00;50;50;11 - 00;50;52;08
Mark McGrath 4
Oh, really? I wasn't aware of that.

00;50;52;16 - 00;50;56;17
Chris Butler
So he's not he wasn't too far away either. I'm in Oakland, California, and so he's teaching.

00;50;56;17 - 00;50;57;11
Chris Butler
At UC Berkeley.

00;50;57;11 - 00;51;01;26
Chris Butler
And like, I think there's something really amazing about the way he thinks.

00;51;01;26 - 00;51;03;25
Chris Butler
About going into a situation where.

00;51;04;05 - 00;51;05;21
Chris Butler
You know, kind of like the idea of.

00;51;05;21 - 00;51;08;21
Chris Butler
Void, of understanding what is going on right now. Right.

00;51;08;27 - 00;51;12;17
Chris Butler
Like when he first started thinking about actually building this this.

00;51;12;24 - 00;51;14;21
Chris Butler
Campus like school campus in Japan.

00;51;15;15 - 00;51;16;11
Chris Butler
He went in and would just like.

00;51;16;11 - 00;51;17;19
Chris Butler
Walk around the location.

00;51;17;19 - 00;51;28;10
Chris Butler
I guess what he wants is his idea of like a great kitchen window. Right. Actually, shouldn't be where I think the kitchen should be. It's like, what is the best view I can put that this kitchen window.

00;51;28;10 - 00;51;31;04
Chris Butler
Will be in front of? Because we want people to gather there.

00;51;31;11 - 00;51;32;11
Chris Butler
And while washing dishes, I.

00;51;32;11 - 00;51;36;10
Chris Butler
Want to be like, stay out of this, like beautiful area. Or if I'm sitting at the table drinking coffee, I.

00;51;36;10 - 00;51;38;11
Chris Butler
Want to have that light. And so he thinks about.

00;51;38;11 - 00;51;39;22
Chris Butler
Like the contextualization.

00;51;40;03 - 00;51;43;09
Chris Butler
Of what where you live, right within the.

00;51;43;09 - 00;51;46;07
Chris Butler
Actual, like, realm of the ecosystem that's around him.

00;51;46;23 - 00;51;47;29
Chris Butler
And same thing with like the idea of.

00;51;47;29 - 00;51;53;12
Chris Butler
Like height and kind of proportion with things and the patterns of the way that people use and everything.

00;51;53;21 - 00;51;56;17
Chris Butler
So I mean, my dad was kind of a he was a graphic.

00;51;57;04 - 00;51;59;15
Chris Butler
Art director, but then dabbled in architecture.

00;51;59;22 - 00;52;00;16
Chris Butler
And I think if I was going.

00;52;00;16 - 00;52;01;18
Chris Butler
To do something else.

00;52;01;25 - 00;52;02;16
Chris Butler
I would go back.

00;52;02;16 - 00;52;06;14
Chris Butler
And do something in like architecture because it's kind of the most important usability.

00;52;07;02 - 00;52;07;28
Chris Butler
You're dealing with.

00;52;08;01 - 00;52;29;25
Mark McGrath 4
It hit a chord with me because I'm tied into a guest that we've had on the show. I first came into contact with Christopher Alexander's work as a parent of small children going to Disney World and wondering, I have to make some sense out of this beyond character. I'm going to lose my mind. And I was always blown away by the form and the function of the place and the design.

00;52;29;25 - 00;52;51;09
Mark McGrath 4
And I got this book. It was called Walton The Promise of Progress City, and it was talking about how the original intent of the Florida project, which became Disney World, was to be this just unique, livable place that was space, that was human centered. And sort of the things that you're talking about would have certain vistas and other things in the book that they kept referring to was the timeless way of building by Christopher Alexander.

00;52;51;09 - 00;53;12;27
Mark McGrath 4
So of course I read it and then roll the clock. I had a few years in the throes of the great financial crisis. John Robb, who is on episode five of the show. John Robb had a list of books to read and a pattern language by Christopher Alexander was one of the it was one of the books that he thought that his global gorilla's cohort should help.

00;53;13;08 - 00;53;21;06
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And Mark, I thought, you're going to bring up and based on out of Duke and his physics of flow and understanding how we see beauty in yeah yeah they do.

00;53;21;14 - 00;53;47;06
Mark McGrath 4
Absolutely time so we haven't released Adrien's interview yet but yeah, he comes at it from not an architecture perspective or a global gorilla perspective, but as a as a mechanical engineer versus thermodynamics. That's an athlete and other things. It's funny. It goes back really it brings us back to what you said the very outset, that the imperative reason of being multi-disc culinary is a massive advantage.

00;53;47;06 - 00;54;05;24
Mark McGrath 4
And you can come at this from so many different disciplines in so many angles. And the question that I had for you earlier, I wrote it down just so we can come back to this, those that don't embrace the multidisciplinary nature of everything that we've talked about have how vulnerable are they? It strikes me that they're remarkably vulnerable.

00;54;06;15 - 00;54;10;05
Chris Butler
Well, they are, because I think that's when we talk about like in the.

00;54;10;09 - 00;54;16;18
Chris Butler
Nevins sense of falling from like clear to chaotic, right. Is that you believe everything to be true and then suddenly it's not anymore.

00;54;17;00 - 00;54;19;18
Chris Butler
I would say, though, that, like the idea of.

00;54;19;18 - 00;54;31;00
Chris Butler
A multidisciplinary person is it's hard, though, to write because the idea of being able to speak a similar language to someone, be able to like have probably same espouse values.

00;54;31;10 - 00;54;32;27
Chris Butler
There's this is the whole thing about.

00;54;32;27 - 00;54;35;15
Chris Butler
Like the idea of like the in-group versus the outgroup, right?

00;54;36;14 - 00;54;38;13
Chris Butler
There's there's benefits to.

00;54;38;14 - 00;54;47;20
Chris Butler
To rethinking things, reframing things, looking between different industries. But a lot of the time, those people tend to not be respected by either industry.

00;54;47;24 - 00;54;47;29
Chris Butler
Or.

00;54;47;29 - 00;54;48;16
Chris Butler
Discipline.

00;54;48;21 - 00;54;49;11
Chris Butler
And they have to.

00;54;49;11 - 00;54;52;11
Chris Butler
Sometimes, like, you know, basically just prove their point.

00;54;52;11 - 00;55;00;10
Chris Butler
Right? Like by, by just like just trying to force through it. Right? So I'd say, like, it's hard.

00;55;00;10 - 00;55;01;16
Chris Butler
Like there's there's a lot of.

00;55;01;16 - 00;55;01;27
Chris Butler
Kind of.

00;55;02;14 - 00;55;05;21
Chris Butler
To this, but it's also not something the way that like humans work. Right.

00;55;05;24 - 00;55;07;16
Mark McGrath 4
Not a lot of empathy, right? Like not a lot.

00;55;07;16 - 00;55;10;01
Chris Butler
Yeah. It's well and there's empathy for like.

00;55;10;01 - 00;55;14;24
Chris Butler
Our group, right? It's the problem is, is that this person who comes in here is like using some weird language.

00;55;15;09 - 00;55;16;16
Chris Butler
That is now like talking about.

00;55;16;16 - 00;55;17;20
Chris Butler
Something that's cross discipline.

00;55;17;25 - 00;55;19;12
Chris Butler
That does it. That kind of like flies in the.

00;55;19;12 - 00;55;21;26
Chris Butler
Face of some of the things we were just saying about our discipline.

00;55;22;08 - 00;55;22;26
Chris Butler
Right, but.

00;55;22;26 - 00;55;24;19
Chris Butler
Using other pieces of other disciplines.

00;55;25;04 - 00;55;27;02
Chris Butler
I think this is also why like in a lot.

00;55;27;02 - 00;55;33;02
Chris Butler
Of the stuff that I end up doing, like if I if I do a workshop, I don't really like give an intro to myself anymore, right?

00;55;33;03 - 00;55;35;16
Chris Butler
Like I just don't, it's not about who I am.

00;55;35;16 - 00;55;40;00
Chris Butler
It's not about who they are. It's about like, why are we here in this, like, container of a meeting to actually get something.

00;55;40;00 - 00;55;41;18
Chris Butler
Done and that that allows them this.

00;55;41;18 - 00;55;44;01
Chris Butler
Kind of like just rejection of of.

00;55;44;01 - 00;55;47;17
Chris Butler
Kind of like discipline in general. But I do think, like, I probably.

00;55;47;17 - 00;55;50;12
Chris Butler
Got the most haters on TikTok when it came to the fact.

00;55;50;12 - 00;55;52;06
Chris Butler
I did a podcast.

00;55;52;06 - 00;55;55;15
Chris Butler
And a clip came out about how I was feeling about how technical product managers should be.

00;55;55;25 - 00;55;57;16
Chris Butler
And basically I don't think.

00;55;57;16 - 00;56;01;23
Chris Butler
They should be that technical, or at least they should be able to talk about trade offs with.

00;56;01;23 - 00;56;02;27
Chris Butler
People, but they should not.

00;56;02;27 - 00;56;04;12
Chris Butler
Be the technical decision makers.

00;56;04;12 - 00;56;06;27
Chris Butler
And I think the problem there is that.

00;56;06;27 - 00;56;11;15
Chris Butler
What is that shared language we then have with engineers, right. Is is a good question.

00;56;11;21 - 00;56;13;27
Chris Butler
And I think maybe relating to this idea.

00;56;13;27 - 00;56;31;05
Chris Butler
Of like A.I. machine learning, like what is the language that we need to speak as product managers with people that are the research scientists or, you know, software engineers that are building out these things that are very odd in the way that, you know, maybe if you want to consider everything today is based on like heuristic, right? You build out.

00;56;31;10 - 00;56;36;04
Chris Butler
You write code to do exactly what you think it supposed to do and you're actually rewarded.

00;56;36;04 - 00;56;39;02
Chris Butler
For reduction of ambiguity when you do that right.

00;56;39;02 - 00;56;44;20
Chris Butler
Like the better code ends up being like exactly what you say and think it should do. And then bugs are.

00;56;44;20 - 00;56;46;09
Chris Butler
Like a departure between those.

00;56;46;09 - 00;56;57;08
Chris Butler
Things. With machine learning, it's much more about like what is the context? We've given it as like data, right? And then how have we in some way understood the way that.

00;56;57;08 - 00;57;09;09
Chris Butler
That model would be trained and how the data is applied to actually creating a set of rules that the machine comes up with. So we're like talking about building an environment rather than the thing, right? The thing is the model architecture.

00;57;09;09 - 00;57;10;10
Chris Butler
The thing that comes out of it.

00;57;10;10 - 00;57;15;01
Chris Butler
That's a model is actually a bunch of the data jammed into a model architecture that's been trained.

00;57;15;25 - 00;57;17;22
Chris Butler
And then there's the idea of like interaction.

00;57;17;22 - 00;57;32;11
Chris Butler
And so there's like loops, loops here where it's like there's one training step versus one training loop, which includes experimentation versus like this larger thing about like how do we detect drift when we've deployed a model somewhere and people are no longer like getting the benefit from it anymore?

00;57;32;11 - 00;57;41;08
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And so is there a connection to the loop in machine learning and artificial intelligence that you see or I mean, from your experience, you go to the archives and looking at it.

00;57;42;06 - 00;57;43;25
Chris Butler
I mean, I think a lot of the stuff.

00;57;43;25 - 00;57;46;25
Chris Butler
That he was reading about, like cybernetics and things like that.

00;57;46;25 - 00;57;55;17
Chris Butler
I think leads us there. I mean, he definitely I don't know if he would what he would have believed about like the things that.

00;57;55;17 - 00;57;56;21
Chris Butler
We have available today.

00;57;57;16 - 00;57;58;17
Chris Butler
Like the idea of a large.

00;57;58;17 - 00;58;01;29
Chris Butler
Language model and kind of coming up with the average of what.

00;58;02;17 - 00;58;03;22
Chris Butler
Like should.

00;58;03;22 - 00;58;05;06
Chris Butler
Be predicted. As far as text.

00;58;05;27 - 00;58;07;02
Chris Butler
I don't think I've read anything.

00;58;07;02 - 00;58;08;24
Chris Butler
Or a sunny notes from him specifically.

00;58;08;24 - 00;58;17;12
Chris Butler
That would talk to that. But, but yeah. So I think there's something really interesting about.

00;58;18;11 - 00;58;20;11
Chris Butler
I'm sorry, excuse me. Let me clear my trousers.

00;58;21;03 - 00;58;28;20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
No problem. We will not edit this out.

00;58;28;20 - 00;58;31;18
Chris Butler
It's nice you get to hear me, like, choke on air. That's.

00;58;32;02 - 00;58;34;18
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. We don't know how to edit. So you're in.

00;58;34;24 - 00;58;39;20
Mark McGrath 4
Already started like ten times as we've been talking. I had popcorn earlier. I think one got stuck in my throat now.

00;58;40;07 - 00;58;46;09
Chris Butler
All right. But yeah. So I think, like, how John Boyd would think about a lot of these things. I mean, this this was a short.

00;58;46;09 - 00;59;01;20
Chris Butler
Story that I wrote and it was actually published in the Mad Scientist blog, which is the Army kind of innovation group, kind of, I guess, akin to the crew. Black for the Marines. But I wrote an article about kind of like randomness and randomness in decision making.

00;59;02;06 - 00;59;03;23
Chris Butler
And this whole.

00;59;03;23 - 00;59;10;08
Chris Butler
Story, I won't ruin it for people, but it's like, what if Netflix was a military contractor? And what would it mean.

00;59;10;19 - 00;59;12;02
Chris Butler
About the idea of.

00;59;12;19 - 00;59;20;08
Chris Butler
Prediction services and personalization when it comes to the way that you are? You know, I guess predictable.

00;59;20;19 - 00;59;23;17
Chris Butler
And so I think there's something about, you know.

00;59;23;17 - 00;59;27;00
Chris Butler
Intelligence, counterintelligence, counter counterintelligence.

00;59;27;00 - 00;59;27;24
Chris Butler
Those types of loops.

00;59;27;24 - 00;59;29;22
Chris Butler
Are something that John Boyd would be really interested in.

00;59;29;22 - 00;59;36;08
Chris Butler
Because I think like language models, especially when we think about the the main concept of that, it is.

00;59;36;08 - 00;59;38;05
Chris Butler
About the average, right? So if.

00;59;38;05 - 00;59;39;15
Chris Butler
You if you have something like.

00;59;39;28 - 00;59;42;14
Chris Butler
Chat GPT generate some some text for you.

00;59;42;20 - 00;59;43;17
Chris Butler
It's kind of like what the.

00;59;43;17 - 00;59;47;04
Chris Butler
Statistical average would be for that pre context you gave it, right?

00;59;47;04 - 00;59;48;17
Chris Butler
So it's very much.

00;59;48;17 - 00;59;49;28
Chris Butler
The average of things.

00;59;51;02 - 00;59;52;00
Chris Butler
I mean the way that I.

00;59;52;00 - 00;59;57;18
Chris Butler
Think about using these tools is I actually will use them to generate an article if I want to write something and then I'll do Yeah. Like everything.

00;59;57;18 - 01;00;00;29
Chris Butler
Else that it didn't say because that is actually the.

01;00;00;29 - 01;00;02;17
Chris Butler
Differentiated content in some way.

01;00;03;03 - 01;00;25;19
Mark McGrath 4
Is that kind of like the one when we were in college? You know, again, I think you graduate in 2000. I graduated in 98. So we're in a similar epoch. Yeah, yeah. Where you transition away from the card catalog and you go to the search engine. But I remember there were a lot of people that said, no, that's dishonorable and you shouldn't do that, and you should go to the library and look up the card catalog.

01;00;25;19 - 01;00;36;12
Mark McGrath 4
And now you can't even imagine doing that. Is that is that no interact with chat that's going to change CBT rather that that's where it could work. We're at that stage where it's kind of like we don't know which way it's going to go.

01;00;36;12 - 01;00;39;11
Chris Butler
And I think we do know which way it's going to go.

01;00;39;11 - 01;00;41;13
Chris Butler
These tools are kind of out of the barn.

01;00;41;19 - 01;00;47;13
Chris Butler
At this point when it comes to the thing. But what I would argue is that like what is like, I.

01;00;47;13 - 01;00;57;15
Chris Butler
Think in education is where we're mostly concerned about. And a friend of mine, Greg Larkin, wrote a post that was basically about what he calls the bullshit economy or the term paper economy. Right. Which is like.

01;00;57;25 - 01;00;58;25
Chris Butler
Big, big.

01;00;58;25 - 01;01;02;03
Chris Butler
Four consultancies are basically doing term papers. But for adults.

01;01;02;14 - 01;01;02;20
Chris Butler
And.

01;01;02;23 - 01;01;05;11
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Would get out of here.

01;01;05;16 - 01;01;08;06
Mark McGrath 4
Come on, man.

01;01;08;23 - 01;01;10;06
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You earned it. The go ahead.

01;01;10;14 - 01;01;13;16
Chris Butler
So you don't have to need to see this piece. Okay. I think.

01;01;14;13 - 01;01;16;02
Mark McGrath 4
He's saying that today humans.

01;01;17;19 - 01;01;19;05
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And this is a known thing.

01;01;19;10 - 01;01;23;20
Chris Butler
Yeah, my only point about that is that there is a certain point that like.

01;01;24;01 - 01;01;33;27
Chris Butler
Maybe that's not what people should be spending their time on as much. Right? Maybe the idea of summarization of things is something that that maybe machines do. Well, now there's a bunch of other problems that come up with that.

01;01;35;05 - 01;01;37;04
Chris Butler
But I wonder, like when you are.

01;01;37;04 - 01;01;49;11
Chris Butler
Learning something, right, we go back to the way that actually teaching or people change the way that they understand or they internalize knowledge. Right. There's a great paper that talks about like how to use creativity inside the classroom.

01;01;49;11 - 01;01;51;07
Chris Butler
And one of the things they said is that what.

01;01;51;07 - 01;01;56;09
Chris Butler
They should do is they should have the student actually generate a paper on the topic that they're learning.

01;01;56;19 - 01;01;57;20
Chris Butler
And then have.

01;01;57;20 - 01;02;02;18
Chris Butler
Them try to understand all of the inaccuracies or problems with what you just said.

01;02;03;10 - 01;02;08;05
Chris Butler
Because that internalization of what is actually the real kind of topic and.

01;02;08;05 - 01;02;09;21
Chris Butler
Having that critical analysis.

01;02;09;28 - 01;02;11;20
Chris Butler
Is maybe way more valuable than me, just like.

01;02;11;21 - 01;02;14;15
Chris Butler
Outputting a summary of a book that I just read, right?

01;02;14;15 - 01;02;15;26
Chris Butler
Yeah, there's interpretation.

01;02;15;26 - 01;02;16;18
Chris Butler
Of course, but like.

01;02;16;26 - 01;02;21;02
Chris Butler
There's something very interesting or important about like we no longer.

01;02;21;15 - 01;02;30;19
Chris Butler
Think about the idea of just like summarization or translation of text, but we will do a lot of things that are really like getting to the heart of the issue, right? Or getting to the heart of the expertize.

01;02;30;19 - 01;02;31;19
Chris Butler
And I think that that's.

01;02;31;19 - 01;02;34;09
Chris Butler
Potentially very valuable is is allowing humans to really think that.

01;02;34;09 - 01;02;35;29
Chris Butler
Way. It doesn't mean we stop learning.

01;02;35;29 - 01;02;37;00
Chris Butler
It doesn't mean we don't learn.

01;02;37;06 - 01;02;40;08
Chris Butler
All of these subjects. It just means that critical analysis.

01;02;40;08 - 01;02;42;27
Chris Butler
Is the way we get there rather than kind of rote.

01;02;43;05 - 01;02;45;19
Chris Butler
Repetitive type of stuff. Now, there still is.

01;02;45;19 - 01;02;50;00
Chris Butler
The problem that we probably should still learn are like multiplication tables, even though we have calculators.

01;02;50;20 - 01;02;51;12
Chris Butler
But doesn't mean that we.

01;02;51;12 - 01;02;56;23
Chris Butler
Should just write like some ridiculous summary of a of a book because, you know, we can do that. It's it's not.

01;02;56;25 - 01;02;57;29
Mark McGrath 4
Urgent. It's just published.

01;02;58;15 - 01;03;01;29
Chris Butler
Yeah, the DFC is and kind of that.

01;03;01;29 - 01;03;15;03
Chris Butler
Concept about how you learn is incredibly important. DFC is to use the Socratic method because there's something about like being called on, right? And law like law degrees do this through the casework, nursing and doctoral types of things.

01;03;15;03 - 01;03;17;04
Chris Butler
It's all about this idea that like, no, you're not going.

01;03;17;04 - 01;03;21;18
Chris Butler
To just be able to do this paper and turn it in. Like we're going to have a discussion right now and I'm going to say you're wrong.

01;03;21;24 - 01;03;26;12
Chris Butler
And you're going to like defend your point in some way to be able to have that, because, again, that that.

01;03;26;12 - 01;03;32;14
Chris Butler
Discourse is what makes us great at what we do, rather than us being in isolation and being geniuses in some way.

01;03;32;21 - 01;03;37;23
Mark McGrath 4
Have you seen the reduction of publication number seven learning? That's fairly recent.

01;03;37;23 - 01;03;41;26
Chris Butler
Yeah, I so I yeah. What did you think about that?

01;03;43;04 - 01;03;56;00
Mark McGrath 4
I thought it was good. We had a guest on that. Didn't think it was great. We've had it. We had another guest. I loved it. On episode three, our friend Hunter Hastings, I think.

01;03;56;02 - 01;03;57;28
Chris Butler
I haven't read it, but it was on my list of.

01;03;57;28 - 01;04;01;12
Chris Butler
Things to like check out. I think our intelligence is the other one I do read.

01;04;02;07 - 01;04;25;27
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah, I think the intent of of that is great. I liked it personally. I think that there's a lot of value. I think that of, of, of all the pubs that the Marines have put out that are transferable to other domains, certainly we're fighting. But but one dash for competition and number seven, learning are sort of right there with it for business.

01;04;26;04 - 01;04;46;25
Mark McGrath 4
Of course, you could add, you know, planning and all any of them would fit. But but those three for sure, I got a lot of value out of learning because I think what it does, maybe not perfectly, but what it does is it gets you to that point where you accept that you don't know everything. And the minute that you think you do, you're dead.

01;04;47;02 - 01;05;08;01
Mark McGrath 4
And the minute you think you do, you can't adapt. I loved how you started. We were saying about decision force cases and and using military analogies and you've never spent one day in the military and it's important to study. I mean, I remember where I used to work, Dave, to stop talking about the military. It's not valid to what we do.

01;05;08;01 - 01;05;30;04
Mark McGrath 4
And what we're doing was capital markets and trading and investing. I'm like, it's totally pertinent to this because it's chaotic, it's fluid, it's dynamic in those patterns which Boyd taught us. Those patterns of conflict through those patterns of competition are those patterns of product management. If we don't have an eye for those, if we don't have a mind for those, we're not going to see them and they're going to destroy us.

01;05;31;09 - 01;05;33;02
Chris Butler
Well, it's like it's like the reason why.

01;05;33;12 - 01;05;39;26
Chris Butler
Simon Wylie talks a lot of like, patterns and like climates and things like that inside of his work is because.

01;05;40;08 - 01;05;42;22
Chris Butler
You know, when it comes to competition.

01;05;42;22 - 01;05;48;29
Chris Butler
Or like direct engagement or any of these types of things, there are patterns that end up happening. You know.

01;05;49;12 - 01;05;51;24
Chris Butler
Again, how many of them are out there, I.

01;05;51;24 - 01;05;53;04
Chris Butler
Think is a really interesting question.

01;05;53;15 - 01;05;54;09
Chris Butler
But one that.

01;05;54;09 - 01;06;24;24
Chris Butler
I think is always interesting is the idea of like commodification and that kind of pattern within the the worldly map. So like going things are being commodified over time. Build something higher level abstraction that is more value gets commodified. And so that idea of constantly that cycle is always going to be happening. I think the product manager's job is to actually ride that cycle in a way that is like very beneficial to your organization because you should be doing everything you can to commodify the things you have, and you should be figuring out what is the next higher level abstraction that's high value to people.

01;06;25;16 - 01;06;28;27
Chris Butler
And that, I think, is the most important one that I think about a lot.

01;06;29;08 - 01;06;58;29
Mark McGrath 4
And not shoot those people. Right. Because I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the room where somebody was telling I believe they got him from 7-Eleven. The CEO of Blockbuster said he was pushing a retail experience, whereas Netflix was pushing a get movies to your house faster experience. And I just would love to hear the the debate and the people that I took a contrarian viewpoint that probably lost everything or probably got quashed or fired or thrown out.

01;06;59;29 - 01;07;00;27
Chris Butler
Well, and it's.

01;07;00;27 - 01;07;10;26
Chris Butler
Hard to make change inside of organizations that's why I would I would argue that the main way you do it is either through real crisis or manufactured crisis. Yeah. And so that's why I like, you know.

01;07;11;12 - 01;07;12;27
Mark McGrath 4
You cannot enforce cases, right?

01;07;12;27 - 01;07;18;18
Chris Butler
That's you can enforce cases. I mean, I think there's some some things I've been starting to think.

01;07;18;18 - 01;07;26;05
Chris Butler
About for DFC is have been to also use them to like teach organizational values or principles as well. But unpack.

01;07;26;05 - 01;07;29;05
Mark McGrath 4
That. Tell us more about that because that's I think that's huge.

01;07;29;21 - 01;07;31;16
Chris Butler
Yeah. I mean, the stories that we tell.

01;07;31;16 - 01;08;03;12
Chris Butler
Ourselves inside of an organization are usually kind of like not only what is allowed here or what is not allowed here, but it's kind of like what do we see ourselves as? And so, you know, one of the values that we've identified inside inside of our group are kind of like, you know, accessibility to to machine learning tools, this idea of kind of like trustworthiness in the products that we build, and then sustainability, not only from the standpoint of like, you know, we want to make sure we're using compute in a way that is like very efficient, but that is directly related to like electricity and carbon.

01;08;03;12 - 01;08;04;06
Chris Butler
Right? And so.

01;08;04;26 - 01;08;05;15
Chris Butler
All of those things.

01;08;05;15 - 01;08;22;27
Chris Butler
Are like really important to us. And so the question I wonder about like and I think what we talk about, like strategy documents inside of an organization is like how, do we how do we talk about these like this over that statements or, you know, tenants or principles or values inside of the way we end up making decisions right.

01;08;22;27 - 01;08;27;01
Chris Butler
And you should be able to tell that with examples. And if you can't, then that.

01;08;27;01 - 01;08;29;20
Chris Butler
Means that things are probably more aspirational than they actually are real.

01;08;30;07 - 01;08;34;06
Chris Butler
And so that's that's, I think, important to identify doesn't mean you can't.

01;08;34;06 - 01;08;52;11
Chris Butler
Be aspirational at all. Right. We should be aspirational about what we want to do as far as organizations to be able to like make the world better in whatever way we think that is. But we have to be very clear that when we're also then making like what we believe are ethical decisions, right? Those ethical decisions are based on values that we espouse in some.

01;08;52;11 - 01;09;08;11
Chris Butler
And so there's a lot of like interesting work that we've been doing. Just to understand when it comes to machine learning and AI, what is what is ethical or responsible or trustworthy AI and machine learning? What does that mean, but also like what does that mean when we build the tools to be able to do this? And so that is what we think about.

01;09;08;11 - 01;09;09;11
Chris Butler
When I when I think about this term.

01;09;09;18 - 01;09;22;04
Mark McGrath 4
It sounds like what you're saying is this a fair statement? The better your self-awareness is, the more aligned your self-awareness is. Whether individually, as a team, then your situational awareness can improve.

01;09;22;04 - 01;09;25;09
Chris Butler
That's right. Because I mean, I think there's been a couple of different.

01;09;25;09 - 01;09;34;11
Chris Butler
Nation states or organizations and companies that have all put together kind of like what do they believe far as responsibly we have responsibly AI principles?

01;09;35;03 - 01;09;39;05
Chris Butler
I think they're they're very important.

01;09;39;05 - 01;09;59;05
Chris Butler
Because there are subtleties between, the way that people talk about what is responsible. Right. And any time that we try to think that these things are universal, like, you know, I think in one of your podcasts you were talking about how kind of living overseas is something that was valuable in your growth as an individual. I lived in Hong Kong for two years and.

01;10;00;00 - 01;10;07;00
Chris Butler
Like again, it's more of a tourist spot in public places. You you both were. But like, I think there's something.

01;10;07;00 - 01;10;26;22
Chris Butler
Very interesting to understand, just like different contextualization, because even the Hong Kong people versus I spend a lot of time in mainland China as well as Japan. Those are very different cultures. Right. And the way that they end up considering what would a responsible artificial intelligence mean to those different countries are probably very different, right?

01;10;27;28 - 01;10;28;07
Chris Butler
Yeah.

01;10;30;01 - 01;10;48;06
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Well, Chris has been an amazing conversation. We want to invite you back in the future. But before we do that, how about this? How do we get you on our team? And if you can't be on our team, how can you know those that are listening to this podcast connect with you and hire your services?

01;10;48;29 - 01;10;52;27
Chris Butler
Yeah, so I think like the thing I do most of the time as I write.

01;10;52;27 - 01;10;55;15
Chris Butler
And do a lot of speaking just about like product management.

01;10;55;15 - 01;10;57;02
Chris Butler
And you know, in general, like.

01;10;57;02 - 01;11;01;20
Chris Butler
When I find that there's an analogy or a tool or a method or something like that that I find to be.

01;11;01;26 - 01;11;02;23
Chris Butler
Helpful, I.

01;11;02;23 - 01;11;04;15
Chris Butler
Tend to turn that into a talk.

01;11;04;22 - 01;11;05;02
Chris Butler
I'm one of.

01;11;05;02 - 01;11;08;12
Chris Butler
Those people that has a really hard time doing the same talk over and over again.

01;11;08;18 - 01;11;15;00
Chris Butler
And so I'm with you, I'm always like altering them and like evolving them over time. But, you know, I mean.

01;11;15;23 - 01;11;26;19
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
What's funny is that's kind of like the Hispanic way. I mean, you know we never cook with recipes and we never cook the same way and we never talk, which I deliver the same talk because. All right, Mark, have you ever done the same time?

01;11;28;07 - 01;11;31;29
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah. Got my flag flying. Yeah, yeah. That's our way.

01;11;32;09 - 01;11;38;08
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
That's our way. People are like, hey, can you give that talk you gave months ago? I'm like, Probably not because I forgot it. Yeah.

01;11;38;12 - 01;11;40;20
Chris Butler
I can give you a better service today. Yeah.

01;11;41;17 - 01;11;41;27
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah.

01;11;42;04 - 01;11;46;11
Chris Butler
But no, we love it. Yeah. And so I think, like, that's something I really, I really enjoy.

01;11;46;11 - 01;11;49;21
Chris Butler
Doing is this kind of like constantly of these concepts. And so.

01;11;49;28 - 01;11;55;22
Chris Butler
I want to say like, you know, I would love to hear that for the things that I've talked about and things that would be interesting to this.

01;11;55;22 - 01;12;16;13
Chris Butler
Audience, I think is, you know, I did a talk like adversarial product management and what does that mean? And I've done stuff around randomness in decision making. I'm doing one about like kind of alignment of this product spine. I'm going to be doing another talk at a product operations summit in New York in March around like deciding how to decide.

01;12;16;24 - 01;12;22;16
Chris Butler
And so all things I think are like along this theme of just like how do we do? How do we.

01;12;22;16 - 01;12;24;02
Chris Butler
Understand as an organization.

01;12;24;09 - 01;12;26;15
Chris Butler
Really that decision making is one.

01;12;26;15 - 01;12;30;07
Chris Butler
Of the most important things we can do, right? It's not just doing the work. I mean.

01;12;30;10 - 01;12;34;12
Chris Butler
I think the work you have to have the work to make the decisions, but like we always like kind of just.

01;12;34;12 - 01;12;35;09
Chris Butler
Had a way of the decision.

01;12;35;09 - 01;12;38;14
Chris Butler
Making. And so I would say thinking about the.

01;12;38;14 - 01;12;56;10
Chris Butler
Craft of decision making is, is something that I really believe strongly. And I think product managers are one of those roles that you really an awful lot about it. I think when you see organizations where product managers don't exist, right, there's usually a bunch of different people that are doing kind of that work and maybe spread out in such a way.

01;12;56;18 - 01;12;58;21
Chris Butler
That it's not it's not like the third.

01;12;59;01 - 01;13;00;13
Chris Butler
Party type of thing, right?

01;13;00;13 - 01;13;03;29
Chris Butler
Like you want somewhat and this maybe gets back.

01;13;03;29 - 01;13;05;13
Chris Butler
To just like my theory about.

01;13;05;13 - 01;13;07;01
Chris Butler
Teams, but you should be building.

01;13;07;07 - 01;13;14;06
Chris Butler
Helpful tensions within teams because you then do a good job of that like argumentative discourse type of stuff is you have different people in different positions.

01;13;14;18 - 01;13;16;12
Chris Butler
You can do techniques that then.

01;13;16;12 - 01;13;18;27
Chris Butler
Put people in different like argument stances.

01;13;19;03 - 01;13;21;13
Chris Butler
Right? But I think if you have a team that's able to do.

01;13;21;13 - 01;13;24;17
Chris Butler
That, it's much more functional. And so I would love to hear if people try.

01;13;24;17 - 01;13;25;18
Chris Butler
Out any of these things.

01;13;25;18 - 01;13;31;11
Chris Butler
In their teams and does it work or it doesn't. Right. And I would love to hear that story that is really, really interesting to me.

01;13;31;21 - 01;13;38;23
Mark McGrath 4
So I would drive it home with this and ask you. So you've never spent day in the military you didn't come from.

01;13;38;27 - 01;13;41;20
Chris Butler
Okay. I did take I did take two semesters.

01;13;41;20 - 01;13;43;16
Chris Butler
Worth of Army ROTC in.

01;13;43;26 - 01;13;47;28
Chris Butler
College. But it was because I thought I was going to get into video games and I.

01;13;47;28 - 01;13;52;07
Chris Butler
Wanted to learn the alphabet basically, so I could say Alpha Bravo.

01;13;52;07 - 01;13;55;19
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Or Charlie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's phonetically tune.

01;13;55;19 - 01;13;58;17
Chris Butler
And squad type of stuff. But I, I never joined.

01;13;59;10 - 01;13;59;24
Chris Butler
Audience.

01;14;00;03 - 01;14;22;14
Mark McGrath 4
So, so in that, in that context and in someone who yourself you've studied John Boyd, he studies theories you've been to his archives and I'm like, punch in myself. You don't come from a military background that respect him. Why is it important for someone or for anybody that's listening that may never have spent the day in the military?

01;14;22;14 - 01;14;43;29
Mark McGrath 4
Or maybe they're just tuning in for the first time. They've Never heard of John Boyd. And from someone in your position, in your world, what would you recommend as the reason that they should explore and expand their knowledge on John Boyd beyond what he's just most often lead reduced to the loop? But yeah, really delving into his theories and their applicability.

01;14;43;29 - 01;14;44;23
Mark McGrath 4
What would you say to that?

01;14;45;13 - 01;14;46;26
Chris Butler
I mean, I think it's someone that is.

01;14;46;26 - 01;14;48;10
Chris Butler
Incredibly measured, right?

01;14;48;10 - 01;14;53;12
Chris Butler
He seemed like he was even though he was like someone that really, I think benefited.

01;14;53;12 - 01;15;04;24
Chris Butler
From cross discipline thinking. I think of him as someone that's like very rigorous in the way that he considers things. And so I think learning from him in the way that he goes after the understanding of topics.

01;15;05;04 - 01;15;05;23
Chris Butler
And then doing.

01;15;05;23 - 01;15;07;17
Chris Butler
That in such a way across disciplines.

01;15;08;14 - 01;15;15;16
Chris Butler
I think is, is like someone to be looked up to. And you know, when I think about like the small.

01;15;15;16 - 01;15;17;00
Chris Butler
Group of like people in.

01;15;17;00 - 01;15;19;15
Chris Butler
My head that are like my board of.

01;15;19;21 - 01;15;37;12
Chris Butler
Board of kind of like advisors. I think of John Boyd as being one of those. And so I think every product person should learn from the fact that John Boyd is not only interdisciplinary, but he's rigorous about thinking and decision making and he's constantly trying to rethink the models by which he understands the world. And so that's that's what I think is most valuable.

01;15;38;20 - 01;15;50;09
Mark McGrath 4
What people who take your advice on that have nothing but upside. It's unlimited once they once they crack the code. So we're grateful for your time and we're looking forward to more things.

01;15;50;28 - 01;15;53;29
Chris Butler
Yeah, thank you for having me on here. And I really do hope we.

01;15;54;01 - 01;15;58;11
Chris Butler
Find out more about how many of the Dune books he actually ended up reading, because I think that is an incredibly.

01;15;58;11 - 01;16;00;13
Mark McGrath 4
Interesting topic. We're going to get to the bottom of that.

01;16;00;22 - 01;16;01;09
Chris Butler
I think. Yeah.

01;16;02;04 - 01;16;36;20
Mark McGrath 4
Well, one final before we let you go. You are this is the first time we've had an on air question sent our way and it has to do with dune and sci fi. So my I earlier my buddy Adam Krauss who's a writer, I'll send you a great thing that he wrote about combining the story grid of Sean Coyne and Black Irish books with with UDA and he's the one who I would credit my resurgence of interest in science fiction and I, I sent him a text and said, hey, I mentioned you by name on the, on the podcast.

01;16;36;20 - 01;16;58;23
Mark McGrath 4
The topic was science fiction. So I sent them your profile and I said, Hey, do you have any questions? And he did. And this is the this is the question. Definitely ask him to expound on D&D character alignment. So I wrote I replied with a question, I reply with a question mark, an emoji that goes like this. He replied with shaking my head.

01;16;59;04 - 01;17;13;23
Mark McGrath 4
I replied with Dungeons and Dragons. He replied. His link in his profile says his chaotic good. And he sent me the matrix of chaotic good. So now I know what it is, so maybe you could explain.

01;17;14;04 - 01;17;15;09
Chris Butler
So this is this is like a.

01;17;15;09 - 01;17;23;04
Chris Butler
Little nerd Easter egg for people inside of my LinkedIn profile. But I go by the chaotic, good product manager. And so.

01;17;23;20 - 01;17;25;13
Chris Butler
Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying.

01;17;25;13 - 01;17;27;07
Chris Butler
Game from a very long time ago.

01;17;27;07 - 01;17;27;22
Chris Butler
Mostly.

01;17;27;22 - 01;17;29;09
Chris Butler
Came from Wargaming, by the way.

01;17;30;05 - 01;17;34;14
Chris Butler
And, you know, so the climate chart is like two different things.

01;17;34;14 - 01;17;35;05
Chris Butler
So it's either.

01;17;35;15 - 01;17;35;27
Chris Butler
Good.

01;17;35;27 - 01;17;43;21
Chris Butler
Neutral and evil, right? So kind of like are you for other people or not essentially? And then are you lawful, neutral or chaotic.

01;17;44;00 - 01;17;45;02
Chris Butler
And it's kind of like, do you.

01;17;45;02 - 01;17;47;13
Chris Butler
Adhere to a code or not essentially.

01;17;47;22 - 01;17;52;03
Chris Butler
And so like, you know, chaotic, good at least the reason why I.

01;17;52;03 - 01;17;53;04
Chris Butler
Have it is part of my title.

01;17;53;17 - 01;17;57;00
Chris Butler
Is one, I guess I think about how.

01;17;58;03 - 01;17;59;28
Chris Butler
I bristle at a lot of different types of.

01;17;59;28 - 01;18;03;15
Chris Butler
Institutional things. And so for me, the chaotic.

01;18;03;15 - 01;18;08;08
Chris Butler
Stance is just something that like I always enjoy not doing or following.

01;18;08;14 - 01;18;10;21
Chris Butler
You know, there's certain I would say there are certain.

01;18;10;21 - 01;18;11;21
Chris Butler
Codes that I follow.

01;18;12;09 - 01;18;13;07
Chris Butler
But I wouldn't say that like.

01;18;13;07 - 01;18;20;05
Chris Butler
I am like a super lawful, like waffle, kind of like follow the way that everybody says you should do product management, for example.

01;18;20;07 - 01;18;27;16
Chris Butler
Like I'd go against a lot of that type of thing. And that's the chaotic side. And then the good side is just like, you know, I think my role within the teams.

01;18;27;16 - 01;18;36;06
Chris Butler
Is to help everybody get better at what they do, but to also kind like help the world ideally continue to, you know, continue to survive on our own.

01;18;36;26 - 01;18;39;23
Chris Butler
On our own terms and to move forward.

01;18;39;23 - 01;18;43;19
Chris Butler
So that's where it kind of good comes from. And I think actually this is like a quick detour.

01;18;43;19 - 01;18;46;21
Chris Butler
I do a little bit of game.

01;18;46;21 - 01;18;49;15
Chris Butler
Mastering and do a couple of roleplaying games where.

01;18;49;19 - 01;18;50;21
Chris Butler
I kind of see it a lot like.

01;18;50;21 - 01;18;53;12
Chris Butler
Facilitation, writing workshops. And so.

01;18;53;22 - 01;18;55;01
Chris Butler
I been trying to get.

01;18;55;01 - 01;19;11;21
Chris Butler
More and more into this idea of like facilitation of, of, of role playing. And I've actually been starting to write scenarios. So I think that's like the next thing I'm going to publish is there's a couple of games that I play once called Cyborg, which is like a cyberpunk thing. And the other one is Mothership, which is a kind of it's.

01;19;12;15 - 01;19;13;10
Chris Butler
Very much like sci.

01;19;13;10 - 01;19;21;28
Chris Butler
Fi from the eighties, but horror. So like aliens and event horizon. And so I'm going to start some scenarios around that.

01;19;23;12 - 01;19;25;17
Chris Butler
But yeah, so I guess I'm, I guess based on.

01;19;25;17 - 01;19;26;23
Chris Butler
This chart, I'm neo.

01;19;27;14 - 01;19;32;12
Chris Butler
Based on chaotic good and if you if you end up linking to that but yeah so that's that's where.

01;19;32;12 - 01;19;33;13
Chris Butler
Chaotic good comes from is.

01;19;33;13 - 01;19;35;02
Chris Butler
I just I think there's something really.

01;19;35;02 - 01;19;39;01
Chris Butler
Enriching about narrative storytelling and facilitation, role playing games. And so I made that of.

01;19;39;16 - 01;19;49;14
Mark McGrath 4
The one, the one that he sent me had you as Captain Jacks? No, no, no. Captain Jack Sparrow. Robin Hood. Sorry. Right.

01;19;49;24 - 01;19;50;24
Chris Butler
Okay. Yeah, that's fair.

01;19;50;25 - 01;19;54;12
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah. Captain Jack is chaotic, neutral. The Joker is chaotic evil.

01;19;54;29 - 01;19;57;26
Chris Butler
Yeah, exactly. That's. That's a good way to think about that. Yeah.

01;19;58;03 - 01;20;04;19
Mark McGrath 4
So I get it now. And my, my learning curve continues to be compressed by my friend Adam.

01;20;05;15 - 01;20;08;01
Chris Butler
Well, this is this is just like a nerdy thing.

01;20;08;01 - 01;20;09;05
Chris Butler
That's part of that group.

01;20;09;05 - 01;20;13;17
Chris Butler
So, you know, again, I use it because I think I think it does help.

01;20;13;24 - 01;20;17;17
Chris Butler
Of summarize the way I approach product management. But it's.

01;20;17;17 - 01;20;19;19
Chris Butler
But it's also kind of a little.

01;20;19;19 - 01;20;25;17
Chris Butler
Easter egg for some people that are out there that played Dungeons and Dragons back in the day.

01;20;25;17 - 01;20;35;16
Commercial
You are listening to No Way Out, sponsored by Adults. Now let's get back to building your confidence in complexity.

01;20;35;16 - 01;20;48;27
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Walk us through why you went to the archives, what you learned there, and why are other product managers, you know, looking to talk to what your knowledge is and trying to apply that to their day to day work? What's the huge connection?

01;20;49;15 - 01;20;51;21
Chris Butler
Yeah, I mean, I think kind of.

01;20;51;21 - 01;21;05;19
Chris Butler
After I had heard and read, I think it was the a single book were really he dives into all of the different kind of like different sources that Boyd was really pulling from to be able to put together some of his theories about.

01;21;05;28 - 01;21;06;19
Chris Butler
Kind of what.

01;21;06;19 - 01;21;13;02
Chris Butler
His strategy, you know, like the highlights would be like what is strategy snowmobile like this of OODA, like a.

01;21;13;02 - 01;21;13;17
Chris Butler
Bunch of things.

01;21;13;17 - 01;21;14;03
Chris Butler
Like that.

01;21;14;03 - 01;21;15;14
Chris Butler
That are kind of about.

01;21;15;14 - 01;21;22;10
Chris Butler
Deconstructing why you're doing something and trying to understand how you do that better. That's kind of how I think about it, right? A lot of his work and.

01;21;23;26 - 01;21;25;04
Chris Butler
You know, I think the reason why I.

01;21;25;04 - 01;21;30;28
Chris Butler
Visited the archives was I wanted to kind of see some of the presentations.

01;21;30;28 - 01;21;33;17
Chris Butler
That he'd given. I think that's the thing is I like to really like unless.

01;21;33;17 - 01;21;38;13
Chris Butler
You were there and you were able to get the briefings by Boyd and I unfortunately missed all that.

01;21;39;12 - 01;21;42;00
Chris Butler
You can see some of the videos, but I think that idea of like.

01;21;42;11 - 01;21;50;21
Chris Butler
The discourse that he has around these ideas is something that I wanted to see if I could get more of from kind of the development of these presentations, which again, it was.

01;21;51;11 - 01;21;55;07
Chris Butler
When I was in college, I was I was actually printing out stuff on like acetate.

01;21;55;07 - 01;21;57;28
Chris Butler
To be able to like do slide like slide presentations.

01;21;57;28 - 01;22;01;13
Chris Butler
And everything. So it was great to see that again. But then all the.

01;22;01;13 - 01;22;08;28
Chris Butler
Annotations in the book are really interesting to me, right? So all the different books he has, you can tell which kind of concepts really start to resonate with.

01;22;08;28 - 01;22;11;12
Chris Butler
Him, because it's not just the idea of the underlined, but then it's like the.

01;22;11;12 - 01;22;13;27
Chris Butler
Double underline and then it's like the pluses and the columns.

01;22;13;27 - 01;22;18;27
Chris Butler
And I got like it's like it's almost like this idea of like he was rereading these things.

01;22;18;27 - 01;22;27;06
Chris Butler
To understand like over time, how the concepts actually evolve in his own head and how do they become valuable to reference later. And so.

01;22;27;15 - 01;22;27;24
Chris Butler
That.

01;22;27;24 - 01;22;28;25
Chris Butler
Was really interesting to me.

01;22;28;25 - 01;22;34;00
Chris Butler
I mean, I think the that was that was really cool. I mean, the thing that I, you know, I tweeted about.

01;22;34;00 - 01;22;42;26
Chris Butler
Previously, but I thought was like one of the most interesting things was just the fact that there's one archive record that's called Doon. And when you get it, it's like this one.

01;22;42;26 - 01;22;58;18
Chris Butler
Manila envelope, like, like folder where it's just like a three by five card of like doing quotes and I mean, I love to talk about that too because yeah, well, and it's awesome because like, well, one, if it's, if it's the book of the movie, I think like it would be amazing to.

01;22;58;18 - 01;23;01;17
Chris Butler
Understand more about whether it was both are one right because.

01;23;02;00 - 01;23;02;18
Chris Butler
It tells me.

01;23;02;18 - 01;23;05;27
Chris Butler
Something very interesting about the way he likes to do storytelling potentially.

01;23;06;26 - 01;23;09;12
Chris Butler
But also I think like the thing about doing that is.

01;23;09;12 - 01;23;10;12
Chris Butler
Really interesting, right, is.

01;23;10;12 - 01;23;12;10
Chris Butler
Is that Dune is really I mean, it's all about that.

01;23;12;10 - 01;23;16;29
Chris Butler
Idea of like ecosystems and the idea of insurgency. Right? And so it's.

01;23;16;29 - 01;23;17;26
Chris Butler
Both of those things that I.

01;23;17;26 - 01;23;22;05
Chris Butler
Think are really in line with the way that Boyd thought about warfare in general.

01;23;23;05 - 01;23;26;20
Chris Butler
And what I wonder, though, and I wonder how.

01;23;26;27 - 01;23;28;16
Chris Butler
Deep he got into the other books.

01;23;29;10 - 01;23;30;29
Chris Butler
Because like if you go further.

01;23;30;29 - 01;23;31;07
Chris Butler
In the.

01;23;31;07 - 01;23;35;00
Chris Butler
Dune kind of books, it's really a lot about like.

01;23;35;00 - 01;23;38;09
Chris Butler
How in the end, like idea of like messiahs are.

01;23;38;09 - 01;23;43;17
Chris Butler
Bad in some way and that the main character or like a trainee portrayed is in.

01;23;43;17 - 01;23;44;00
Chris Butler
The first.

01;23;44;00 - 01;23;52;11
Chris Butler
Dune book is like, Yeah, he, you're like, Oh yeah, I'm going, I'm totally rooting for this character, this protagonist, and he wins. And then like a thousand years later.

01;23;52;21 - 01;23;54;12
Chris Butler
Everybody in the universe is enslaved.

01;23;55;08 - 01;23;58;28
Chris Butler
And so like, I think there's something really interesting about that too. I would love to.

01;23;58;28 - 01;24;01;01
Chris Butler
Know, like, how much more deep you got into the books.

01;24;01;01 - 01;24;03;29
Chris Butler
Because the dune book itself just.

01;24;03;29 - 01;24;07;13
Chris Butler
By itself, right? Like definitely ecosystems, insurgency.

01;24;07;19 - 01;24;11;20
Chris Butler
The idea of like, you know, like all the way that, like he.

01;24;11;20 - 01;24;17;05
Chris Butler
Would have these conversations where it was more about like mental play between these different factions.

01;24;18;00 - 01;24;20;00
Chris Butler
The Jasira like I think that.

01;24;20;03 - 01;24;23;13
Chris Butler
Probably is the main group that got inside of everybody else's loop. Right?

01;24;23;29 - 01;24;27;28
Chris Butler
So I don't know how deep you want to go on this, but I think there's many interesting topics that.

01;24;28;07 - 01;24;54;29
Mark McGrath 4
Well, I know there's the rerelease of the the series now or something on Dune, but like your thing about Messiahs is interesting because Boyd was very famous for saying if you think that anything that I'm saying is like a witch, me, a guru status, or that this should be set in stone, you should take it out and burn it right now, because the ideas that were always changing, I think that he would probably have had that skeptical skepticism of the messiahs that would be frozen or static in their thinking.

01;24;54;29 - 01;24;58;24
Mark McGrath 4
And they weren't evolving and aligning with reality as it unfolds now.

01;24;58;24 - 01;25;03;20
Chris Butler
And I think you're probably right. I mean, I hear that. That's why it's very interesting to me, because poetry.

01;25;03;21 - 01;25;10;08
Chris Butler
Is is a story of an insurgent becomes the king, right. Or the emperor. And so, you know, what.

01;25;10;08 - 01;25;11;21
Chris Butler
Is what does that mean.

01;25;11;21 - 01;25;15;18
Chris Butler
For for him when it comes to, I guess, the evolution.

01;25;15;18 - 01;25;16;25
Chris Butler
Not just of war, but like.

01;25;16;25 - 01;25;22;20
Chris Butler
I think this is where, like grand strategy is meant to be, is like what is the end goal of what we're all trying to do? Yeah, right. And there's.

01;25;22;29 - 01;25;24;10
Chris Butler
That's where I think this idea of like.

01;25;24;18 - 01;25;31;27
Chris Butler
Larger loops when it comes to the way that we get feedback and maybe getting back to the what, what product managers should learn from all of this, right?

01;25;32;20 - 01;25;34;08
Chris Butler
Is Yeah, there we go. There you.

01;25;34;08 - 01;25;35;19
Mark McGrath 4
Go. You.

01;25;35;19 - 01;25;38;05
Chris Butler
I love it. It's such an amazing picture.

01;25;38;24 - 01;26;05;14
Mark McGrath 4
So so for those for some for those listening pontious put up a the card that Chris was to of dune quotes so we've got but a person needs new experiences they draw something deep inside allowing him to grow without change. Something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. And then the last one, the sleeper must awaken. That's what's phenomenal.

01;26;05;14 - 01;26;08;02
Chris Butler
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'd love to. I mean, I wonder how.

01;26;08;02 - 01;26;10;02
Chris Butler
We can find out more about, like, the depth of.

01;26;10;02 - 01;26;10;12
Chris Butler
Of.

01;26;10;25 - 01;26;12;09
Chris Butler
How he thought about this stuff.

01;26;12;09 - 01;26;17;19
Chris Butler
As well. But I mean, again, Dune is, a really interesting book because I think also.

01;26;18;01 - 01;26;37;04
Chris Butler
You know, the original author meant it more as kind of like an I mean, not only was it kind of an anti kind of messiah type of thing, but it was also a lot about ecosystems. And so he spent a lot of time actually building out the way the world works. Right. So you learn over the course of the different books where Spice actually comes from, right.

01;26;37;04 - 01;26;40;02
Chris Butler
And what does it mean for all of these things to kind of integrate with each other?

01;26;40;02 - 01;26;42;28
Mark McGrath 4
And so are you a science fiction fan in general? Yeah.

01;26;43;10 - 01;26;48;16
Chris Butler
I do read a little bit. I mean, I've also written some science fiction, so I've gotten paid and.

01;26;48;16 - 01;26;53;14
Chris Butler
Also been rejected by a publication. So I feel like I am technically a sci fi, right?

01;26;53;14 - 01;27;13;28
Mark McGrath 4
Have to connect you with our friend Alan Krauss who's who's a writer and he took credit after credit him for reviving my interest in science fiction, which had been dormant for many, many years. But one of the books that we had to read, the Marine Corps, which is another of Boyd's books, was Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

01;27;13;28 - 01;27;23;19
Mark McGrath 4
So it's interesting, a lot of those kind of ideas that people were envisioning. Thanks for everything, Chris. And we'll we'll look forward to having you back on again soon.

01;27;23;19 - 01;27;24;28
Chris Butler
Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me.

01;27;25;12 - 01;27;25;19
Mark McGrath 4
Yeah.