Alexander Kuilman, founder of The Practice, joins Beyond the Prompt to ask why people still resist AI even when they know they should be using it. The conversation gets into fear, psychological safety, the “AI vampire,” and Alex’s idea of “corporate numbing”: using the busyness of work to avoid things that may be harder to sit with.
Alexander Kuilman works with CEOs and executive teams to bring more humanity into how they lead. He joins Henrik and Jeremy to explore why, if leaders know AI matters, getting people to actually use it can still be so difficult.
Using Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s Immunity to Change framework, Alex argues that “I don’t have time” can mask deeper fears about competence, relevance, and what happens when AI can do work you previously thought made you valuable. They also explore why psychological safety matters if people are going to admit what they don’t know and actually experiment.
The conversation ends with the “AI vampire” and Alex’s idea of “corporate numbing”: AI makes us more productive, but instead of taking the time back, we often fill it with more work. Which leaves a bigger question: when AI gives us time back, what do we actually want to do with it?
Key Takeaways:
The Practice: bethepractice.com
Alex's LinkedIn: LinkedIn/AlexKuilman
Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow
Amy Edmondson on Psychological Safety: Psychological Safety
00:00 Intro: The Problem of Corporate Numbing
00:23 Meet Alexander Kuilman
04:45 Why Aren’t People Using AI More?
06:49 The Hidden Assumptions Blocking Change
08:08 Jeremy’s Travel Problem
14:12 What Are People Really Afraid of With AI?
16:02 Stop Making Time to Experiment
22:25 Psychological Safety and AI Adoption
32:56 How to Hold Yourself
38:57 The Leaders Who Make People Feel Safe
40:33 What If AI Helps Us Think Less?
44:13 The AI Vampire
46:10 Corporate Numbing
54:08 Your Humanity Is the Advantage
58:05 The Debrief
📜 Read the transcript for this episode: Here!
[00:00:00] Alexander Kuilman: The term I use is corporate numbing I think to a large degree, we've come to a place in our own, in sort of the societal norming, at least in Western culture, that it is really pleasurable to numb oneself- in the busyness of life.
I think corporate numbing cannot be underestimated, because if, if, if there is a level of inefficiency in systems, it's because people have become numb.
I'm Alex. I, uh, run a company called The Practice, which looks at bringing more humanity into day-to-day business through working with CEOs and their executive teams. One of the things that we're fascinated by is the pure humanity that is missing very often in corporate environments, and that if we can make more space with the advent of AI to focus more on the sensorial nature of what being an executive in a corporate environment actually provides, if you can bring psychological safety to folks, they will be more efficient.
And I think if we can combine AI with that, we're much further ahead.
[00:00:57] Henrik Werdelin: I think, Jeremy, as we've talked a lot about in this pod, we are getting to a point where we talk to a lot of people who work with AI in their organization. They are convinced that it's the future of their business, and they seem to have this very difficult time to do two things.
One is to get people excited about using AI to the level that they think they should in, in their day-to-day work. And second, I think we hear increasingly people are anxious, worried, scared of this technology. And I thought since we enjoyed so much talking to an anthropologist, Mikkel, um, about AI, even though his core- Yeah
competency is not AI itself, I thought it'd be interesting to invite Alex, 'cause Alex has spent your whole career understanding organizations, understanding people, and try to really help leaders navigate with difficult challenges when it comes to themselves and to the organizations they manage. So, and maybe with that, Alex, 'cause...
And I know you're a very humble person, but can you try to brag a little bit about what you've done in your past?
[00:02:09] Alexander Kuilman: Let me start with the why, actually. It's kind of, it would be fun to think about this. So I was a lawyer for a number of years and left. I call myself a recovering lawyer, and in part because there was...
The way I grew up, which had more hippie sort of early days of, of, uh, back-to-the-lander type movement, there was a humanity that was missing in the practice of law, which I found very sad. And so for about 20 years I helped build, or founded and then built a firm called Mobius, and that transitioned from Mobius into what we now run, which is called The Practice, which is looking at humanity at the heart of business.
And so what does my day-to-day look like? It, it's a combination of many things, but primarily taking CEOs through a n- a number of iterative processes, whether it's with each other live, long walks in the woods, a whole host of different modalities which I won't share publicly, but somewhat more esoteric practices that help people essentially pause and ask themself a couple questions that they wouldn't otherwise ask themselves.
And as Henrik said, it's usually in moments of transition, whether it's the board that's mandating this or they themselves come to the realization that they're on their third mandate or second mandate or first mandate, and recognizing they need to up their game. Very often we get called in to help them do that.
So it's quite a deep personal journey that we take people on to help them, if you want the basics, build shareholder value for the job that they are running. They're running a company, and they need to build shareholder value to the benefit of The investors, but also making sure their employees are doing what, what they should be doing.
[00:03:46] Jeremy Utley: Now I know, uh, previous comments to West Coast notwithstanding, I know there are some people in our audience who go, "Isn't that a little woo-woo?" I mean-
[00:03:55] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah ...
[00:03:56] Jeremy Utley: deep personal journey, shareholder value. What's... If, if I had to kind of, uh, if I had to play the skeptic, what's the connection between deep personal work and shareholder value?
[00:04:06] Alexander Kuilman: Have personal efficiency. So, so often I think we get stuck behind our own paradigms and thought processes. The way you think about something is likely gonna direct your attention, and if your attention is going in the wrong direction, there's a high likelihood you're not gonna get to the actual goal more efficiently.
And so if you, if you're looking at people who are leading others, CEO as an example, there's a high likelihood that they wanna be as clean and efficient as they can be, 'cause the complexity of what they're dealing with is so vast nowadays, they just wanna get there quickly. And I think that requires a practice, and that practice is helping them see themselves and the system they're working in differently.
[00:04:45] Henrik Werdelin: Now, we talk to a lot of professionals that has been tasked or have put it upon themselves to say, "AI is this incredible new tool. If my organization adopted it and embraced it, we would be more efficient, and then we'd be ready to kind of like the, the next stage of this company." And a lot of them then sit back with the feeling of, it's just not happening.
And I think Jeremy do a lot of work then in teaching people how to ma- work it, to work with it better, uh, and facilitate a lot of that conversation, which is very much needed. He's very, very good at it. I think some people look at organizational design of like, why is it that this energy that AI is kind of creating is seemingly not released in the organization?
And so I, through the work that I do with some of the organizations that I'm involved in, look at that. But there seem to be this underlying kind of like question, why the hell are people not just using it more? Explain to us why.
[00:05:49] Alexander Kuilman: I don't know.
[00:05:50] Jeremy Utley: I'm,
[00:05:51] Alexander Kuilman: I'm one of them. So I-
[00:05:52] Henrik Werdelin: And that was, and that was how this conversation ended.
[00:05:55] Jeremy Utley: That's great. Now you got a 10... Let's wrap, let's wrap. Off we go. Well, w- well, of course none of us know, Alex, but let's assume if we squint our eyes, it's not unlike previous transitions we've observed, right? And let's assume if we squint our eyes, human psychology and programming hasn't changed much since, say, the last transition.
Okay.
[00:06:15] Alexander Kuilman: Who's the woo woo guy now, huh? Just saying.
[00:06:19] Jeremy Utley: Me, right here.
[00:06:20] Alexander Kuilman: Okay.
[00:06:20] Jeremy Utley: Uh, so what's the... What are the things, what are maybe some of the immutable things that we know about human psychology, and call it, I don't know, not to, not to use a phrase, but resistance to change, that might inform why adoption efforts or transformation efforts would be stalling if, provided you know nothing about the particulars of the particular, um, technology- Yeah
what is it about humans that would prevent a transformation from occurring?
[00:06:49] Alexander Kuilman: So the language and, and you, you will recognize the author. So Kegan is the guy, I would say Bob Kegan at Harvard is probably your, your, your best author to talk to and about the very question you're posing. Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey wrote a book, I think called Immunity to Change, and they basically look at, if I were to simplify it, sort of four buckets that you wanna look at, a process to understand that, if you will, psychological level of change that very often doesn't get talked about.
And so if we take Kegan's ideas and we put it into the context of the conversation today, the fourth bucket is the one that very often is, I would say, missed in that what he refers to as the big assumption. It's this thing that we assume, it's a set of beliefs that we have that very often support this sort of, uh, set of choices we're making unconsciously that are not getting us to a better outcome.
And so we could just play it out now. So if there was... Let's, let's... Ei- either one of you just for shiggles, as my daughter would say, shits and giggles.
[00:07:50] Jeremy Utley: Shiggles. Um- I love shiggles. That's great.
[00:07:54] Alexander Kuilman: So for shiggles, let's take one of you. You're both married?
[00:07:58] Jeremy Utley: Yes.
[00:07:58] Alexander Kuilman: Yes. And so your wife has been asking you to do something over and over for a few years.
What might that be? And Jeremy's smiling.
[00:08:08] Henrik Werdelin: I, I'll
[00:08:08] Jeremy Utley: let you start,
[00:08:09] Henrik Werdelin: Jeremy
[00:08:09] Jeremy Utley: I mean, yeah. How s- how deep do we want to go? One, one thing I will, I will declare as a minor AI victory, uh- Yes ... one thing that she often asks me is, "Hey, when are you traveling this week?" And we can come back to travel 'cause that's actually, that is related.
But she'll say, "When are you traveling?" And I, I don't, I'm not the kind of person who holds that information in my mind. Yes. Uh, I have no idea. And if she asks me to look, then I get distracted by email and, you know, WhatsApp or whatever, and 20 minutes later she's like, "Remember, you were looking for your flight schedule," right?
Well, I was in a agent-building session the other day with a football club here in the US, and, uh, the person who was facilitating the session said, "Hey, everybody needs a briefing," right? "Let's all make a briefing, a match report on player performance and stuff." And I'm sitting there and I'm going, "Honestly, I do not need a briefing, so I'm not gonna do that."
But then I thought, "What do I need a briefing about?" And Michelle's kind of age-old question came to my mind. And so I, while the 50 people from this football club were building a briefing bot, I built a Jeremy travel briefing, like an agent that basically every week, every Saturday morning it goes, reads my calendar.
It looks for words like flight, keynote, hotel, et cetera, and then drops it into a single page PDF and emails it to Michelle. I didn't even know if it worked, by the way, uh, because I was just testing the integrations, and I hit test, and I get an all caps text from Michelle, okay? She's not an all caps gal.
And it says, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Why did it take you 20 years?"
[00:09:32] Henrik Werdelin: Perfect.
[00:09:33] Jeremy Utley: And it's perfect, right? There we go. 'Cause it's like I... The tech- by the way, the technology to do that has been available for at least the last three years. The problem is, I, I like to call these wherewithal moments. It just had never occurred to me.
My imagination is the limitation. So anyway, that's kind of a fun AI win there. But I would say generally, if you're asking me what is something that, you know, she often asks about, it's like, "Hey, y- you, do you have to be gone so much?"
[00:09:56] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:57] Jeremy Utley: Right? And, and generally, am I the kind of guy who would like to be home more?
Yes, of course. Uh, so i- is there something wrong with me? I mean, we could get really deep if you want, but why am I gone so much when I say I want to be home, right? So that's, that's real
[00:10:11] Alexander Kuilman: Gorgeous. And, and a brilliant way to start. So the, i- if I just take Keegan's language... And by the way, thank you for making it real, 'cause it just is more interesting to play with the reality of this.
[00:10:20] Jeremy Utley: Sure.
[00:10:20] Alexander Kuilman: And this, this idea of the bot you just suggested, it will likely go viral after this because I'm assuming other partners- ... of beloveds who have travel schedules may be looking for the same thing, so.
[00:10:31] Jeremy Utley: Totally. That's brilliant. By the way, it took me five minutes to set up. The point is, it's not the tech, it's just the idea of doing it.
That's the, that's the limitation.
[00:10:40] Alexander Kuilman: And I think that's the very core of, uh, Henrik's and your question is like, what, why is it that it's taken, in your, you said three, three to four years, and it just took me five minutes. So if we take, if we- let's just go through the steps 'cause it's probably easiest. And, and I feel like a complete imposter.
You should probably have Bob come and talk to you about this, or Lisa. But for, for what it's worth, improvement goal, as you've just stated it, is I, I... Well, you s- what's the improvement goal set by your beloved?
[00:11:05] Jeremy Utley: So, uh, do we want... Uh, so not talking about the solved problem, but call it the unsolved problem.
[00:11:10] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah.
[00:11:10] Jeremy Utley: The, the improvement goal would be more nights at home.
[00:11:16] Alexander Kuilman: Brilliant. So then he says, "What are you doing or not doing instead?"
[00:11:21] Jeremy Utley: Uh, accepting work requests that require me b- to be physically elsewhere.
[00:11:28] Alexander Kuilman: Right. So then he goes, "What's the hidden competing commitment?" And it's usually something that's unconscious, but it's something that's
It's, it's like a protective mechanism that you might not necessarily think about. And so if you think about the negation of traveling for work, in other words, if I, Jeremy, don't travel for work, what are a couple of things that you might be thinking that are stronger, in other words, there's a competing interest here-
[00:11:54] Jeremy Utley: Yeah
[00:11:54] Alexander Kuilman: that makes the choice to go travel versus stay home?
[00:11:58] Jeremy Utley: Probab- I mean, the, the first one that comes to my mind is providing, right? I think it's I need to provide for my family.
[00:12:04] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah. Anything else?
[00:12:06] Jeremy Utley: I think if I'm honest, there's probably a little bit ... It, it's not FOMO exactly. It's, um, uncertainty. For whatever reason, people want to have me at things right now.
I don't have any delusions that people will want to have me at things in the future. And so there's part of me that goes, "You know what? This might be the last time I ever get invited to do anything. I better say yes." I think honestly, if, if I'm being very honest, that is a little bit in the back of my mind.
[00:12:35] Henrik Werdelin: Right on. Anything else?
[00:12:37] Jeremy Utley: I don't think so.
[00:12:39] Alexander Kuilman: So Bob would then say, "Okay, there's a big assumption that's kinda underlying the competing commitment." The big assumption is this sort of belief that if you, quote, "are not on the road," you're not gonna be able to provide, and actually the, the FOMO that you described, or the non-FOMO but ultimately is FOMO, it will ultimately come true.
[00:13:01] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:02] Alexander Kuilman: And so if we take that and we just say, "Okay, good," like, as opposed to looking at it as a negative, let's look at it as, okay, brilliant. The good thing about this is that you've got, like, what I'd call a protective or a defensive mechanism that's keeping the present state of what Jeremy would like totally online.
Mm-hmm. In other words, you're doing exactly what your psyche should be doing, which is keeping you safe. And we'll come back to this notion of psychological safety, 'cause I think it's all part of the missing pieces of the puzzle. But-
[00:13:29] Jeremy Utley: Mm ...
[00:13:29] Alexander Kuilman: if we just take it for now, the choice you're making is the wisest choice in light of the present state of Jeremy wisdom and consciousness of what you're, you're choosing Then the question becomes, what if, if you did a few experiments to say, "Okay, I'm gonna stay home or I'm not gonna agree to a, you know, once a month I, I'm gonna select the options that I've got to travel and I'm, I'm gonna stay at home on two of the, let's say 10."
And you're gonna see can you still provide and will the FOMO actually come true?
[00:14:01] Jeremy Utley: And so the, the recommended remedy there is a, to kind of ex- abstract, is a discrete experiment to test an underlying assumption.
[00:14:10] Alexander Kuilman: Bingo.
[00:14:11] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:14:12] Henrik Werdelin: And so do you think when it comes to AI, it's the same way? We move this into- Yeah
I'm a staff member. I was asked by my boss to use Claude Code Work to do more of my stuff. How do you think this framework would play out for, for them?
[00:14:29] Alexander Kuilman: So, so the assumption might be let's just give people little experiments to play with code, to play with Claude Code. And I think that's, that's the mistake that's made is 'cause that's kind of touching, if you will, bucket one and bucket two.
It's more the, the immediate response. And what I'm hoping comes across, and boy, Keegan will be furious if I can't parlay this properly, but if there's not this sense of like, "Hmm, there's a belief that doesn't make sense, let me challenge it." In the case that you're suggesting, Henrik, I think it's more like what is it that is making me not take on the Claude Code?
And it's usually fear related. There's a fear. In Jeremy's case, it's fear of not being relevant in the long term.
[00:15:10] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:10] Alexander Kuilman: Mm-hmm. It's fear of not providing. And
[00:15:12] Henrik Werdelin: you have- And for the AI case, it might be fear of not being good enough of using it or showing that what I normally provide as a service to my work is not that unique.
And so like what happens to me- What happens to me if I get
[00:15:24] Jeremy Utley: Claude Code to do it or something?
[00:15:27] Alexander Kuilman: E- exactly, and, and very often you'd likely get like if we, if we just stick with the buckets, so bucket one is I want myself and my team to use AI more in a daily operational- Way. Claude Code being an example.
Bucket number two is doing or not doing something instead. So the visible thing that we're seeing people doing is, well, like, "I don't have time." That's like the classic ex- that's the one I always use. And I'm assuming- Always. Yeah. "
[00:15:49] Jeremy Utley: I don't have time." Yes.
[00:15:51] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah. And then we go back to the loop of, okay, let's see if I can change the calendar or lock it in, and for some that works, for many it doesn't because it's just more of a behavioral, what I call sort of first level...
Yeah, chairman?
[00:16:02] Jeremy Utley: Well, you're, you're, you're hitting on something I think is very important. A, "I don't have time" is like a, is, is a perennial challenge. And how I have solved it, and I will just observe my own behavior as kind of front row student in the classroom, not as professor. I have had to learn that I should experiment on live work.
So don't try to carve out some other time. So for example, very simple example, um, I saw that Claude has recently created this feature. You can record your screen while you're doing something and then tell it to make a Skill. And I know I actually have an engagement with a senior leadership team of a, let's say, an entertainment company coming up where they're hiring me over the course of like four or five weeks to kind of train their SLT on kind of Claude proficiency.
And when I saw this thing come out, I go, "That would be really cool to get them to do," but I don't know- Yeah ... I don't know how to do it, and I can't teach them to do it if I don't know how to do it. So I've got that, it's like niggling kind of thing in the back of my mind. Well then, on Monday, I always write my newsletter on Monday, and, uh, and then it goes out on Tuesdays.
On Monday night, I'm doing it and my typical workflow is like I, I, o- obviously work with AI quite extensively to do research and, and, and outline all that stuff. But then once I've actually got my blog, I've got to write it on Squarespace, then I copy paste it into Medium, and then I copy paste it into Substack, and it's always like there's these like stupid little formatting things like I've got to backspace and whatever.
And as I was starting to do it, the ding ding kind of went off and I go, "I should have Claude record my screen to see if it c-", and I have no idea if it will work. But I basically just opened, like really quickly did like a quick Google like how do I get Claude, 'cause I don't even know like how to set it up.
But basically I found out it's just you hit a plus button and hit record your screen, and then you just do the thing, right? And so the point is, I did what I was already gonna do anyway, 'cause I've already got to re- you know, it, it, Claude ended up calling it syndicating my blog, which I didn't even have a word for.
But Claude was like, "Oh, I just watched you take 687 steps To syndicate your blog across these four platforms. Now I've codified that into a skill. But my point is- Yeah ... I did not say, "I need to carve out time to experiment." I... Which, which by the way, I tell... And, and the reason I mention that is 'cause I tell people that all the time, "You need to carve out time to experiment."
But what you're getting at is, no, it's not about time to experiment, it's about having a mindset, whatever I'm doing, can I find ways of bringing the experiment into that? Am I getting that right?
[00:18:31] Alexander Kuilman: So from a tactical level, yes. And I love the way you describe the literal example, because so often, and, and now I might deviate, in any of the work that at least I, I have the luxury of doing, which is with executive teams, like what you're describing, but doing it for different purposes, there's a, a, an idea that it's very hard to embed a lot of these new ways of working-
[00:18:51] Henrik Werdelin: Mm
[00:18:51] Alexander Kuilman: unless you make it part of the, you know, the daily workflow or cadence of an executive's day-to-day life. Mm. Because they just don't have extra time. And so what we're having to do as, you know, folks who support other executives going into their, their, their next generation of what they need to get done, we need to think of embedding whatever this new practice is in their day-to-day operational life.
And so what you're describing with, with the Claude recording is a version of what that could look like.
[00:19:18] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Alexander Kuilman: I look at it as like there's, there's now layers on layers, but what we're talking about is more of a tactical, it's almost binary, it's something that is more structural. I guess what very few people will experience i- in their lifetime, and, uh, in fact, one of your guests, who was it, Mikkel, the, the anthropologist, and you mentioned him at the beginning.
He kinda opened a window that you guys partially went through, but I thought it'd be fun to go a little bit deeper into this, and this might get woo-woo, but the- Bring it ... the fact that Mikkel introduced it already I love, because it sort of gives a freedom to play. He talked about, and I'm gonna, uh, you know, misinterpret what he said, but he basically referred to there's a, an e- an embodied sensation that to date AI will never be able to experience.
What does that mean? Uh, we have five senses that we can pick up. What... Let's just use as an example, like when I smell chocolate, I have a certain definition of what that smell is. It might be completely different from yours. We have no way to test that at present. The color orange- Like there's an orange that falls off a tree, but who's to say that my version of orange is the same as yours?
These are two like random examples. What I think he was referring to is our sensate ability, the capacity, what I'm just gonna refer to as to hold another person, to go into the safety of having a discussion, which is the one that we talked about, these big assumptions, and you're referring to some of the, the fear that you might be experiencing.
We've somehow had the facility of saying it. But if we were offline, not on the podcast, I would go about four levels deeper into the fear that you've just described, because I have a feeling although we went to a place that many may not naturally, and thank you again, 'cause the just the vulnerability of putting that out there in public is great.
But there's four or five levels deeper, and that's where Henrik and I have had a number of conversations. It requires what I'm just gonna refer to as the sensate capacity to hold And as a parent, we do it traditionally, hopefully for children, and we got that hopefully from our parents. But the capacity to hold is only a skill set, if you will.
It's an innate capacity that we have as human beings that are required to make what I would call the-- So, it's so great that we have the structural solution that, that we have to start looking at how do we embed a practice using Claude Code in the day-to-day cadence of an executive life. Great. Maybe a solution.
But unless we can talk about these big assumptions, if we go back to Keegan, in a way that's safe enough, in other words, I as the leader am holding my team in such a place that I'm not gonna make them to be idiots 'cause they're not doing it, I'm exaggerating the language, the actual big assumption stays very im-- sort of stuck.
It goes deep under the rug. And so the job, I believe, of leaders is to hold their employees and have themselves be held to be able to unlock some of the deeper levels of what they're not aware of as to why this thing is holding them back.
[00:22:25] Henrik Werdelin: So just to be concrete, I heard two things. One, I had a colleague once who talked about healthcare as the best way to do that is through what he called stealth health, where you don't ask people to have a different way of doing stuff, you cheat at stuff.
So in Denmark, they don't install elevators, they have stairs 'cause it makes people take the stairs, and they don't have to tell people to be healthy 'cause they're walking up and down the stairs. Um, so one is using, and I think Jeremy's kind of example is, can you stealth health AI usage by making it so easy to do their job they have to be done?
So I think that's kind of one bucket. The other bucket, which I enjoy and I think is interesting, but I, I don't know what that'll mean. So let's say that I would like my, the people in my organization, I'd like to hold them in a safe way so I feel that they have a better chance of embracing AI. What does that actually m-mean?
Like how do I, how do I do that?
[00:23:28] Alexander Kuilman: On-- So hopefully in, in an executive team, you're gonna have a regular cadence of meetings, whether it's weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever. Hopefully not quarterly. Um- You had a a woman,
[00:23:42] Jeremy Utley: uh, Chantal
[00:23:42] Alexander Kuilman: talk about-
[00:23:43] Jeremy Utley: Chantal Pratt, yeah ...
[00:23:43] Alexander Kuilman: Chantal Pratt. I love what she spoke about 'cause she, she, if, if I could link it to some of what Chantal was saying, there's, there's usually a level of fear that would stop one from just blurting out something random out, uh, or developing that curiosity, which I think is the precursor to doing what you guys are asking about.
What is it that blocks someone from being curious? The fear. I'm oversimplifying what you referred to.
[00:24:06] Jeremy Utley: No, that's exactly right. Exactly right.
[00:24:08] Alexander Kuilman: And so if that's true, when I'm referring to, like, as a leader, can I hold all the people who are in my system to make it safe enough to come back to this concept of psychological safety, which, which Amy Edmondson from Harvard talked about and, and did...
I think Google did a whole host of studies with a whole host of teams, Aristotle was the name of the project, that basically looked at the efficiency that is gained when there is psychological safety in the system. Why? Because they feel held They feel that they can be curious. They feel that they can actually say, "I'm scared of my..."
A- and, and you mentioned it briefly when we touched on employees who may not want to start engaging in AI. Why? 'Cause it makes their day-to-day relevance of what they've seen themselves as being important about no longer true.
[00:24:52] Jeremy Utley: Well, and by the way, the whole narrative right now is AI, AI layoffs. Exactly, and this, this is
[00:24:58] Alexander Kuilman: exactly
[00:24:59] Jeremy Utley: where- That is incompatible with holding space, right?
[00:25:02] Alexander Kuilman: Which is why I think this topic is so important.
[00:25:04] Henrik Werdelin: And also, I think it, there's a lot of people that when everybody now assumes that everybody uses AI all the time, and a lot of people do, and they do more than they used to. I think Jeremy, you told me the other day a story where you, I think you said, "How many here use AI?"
And everybody raised their hand, and then you added like a follow-up question with something like, you know, "Who has, you know, the app installed on their phone?" Or some kind of other qualifier. Right. And basically everybody took it down. And-
[00:25:29] Jeremy Utley: Well, actually, to just, just to, just to clarify the record there, because it's interesting and insightful, "How many of you feel tired of talking about AI?"
Everybody raised their hand. And then I said, "Keep your hand up if I can throw you the clicker and you're ready to share your screen to show everybody what you're doing." Every hand went down.
[00:25:45] Henrik Werdelin: There we go.
[00:25:46] Jeremy Utley: So I said, "Wow, we're talking about it, but not doing it."
[00:25:48] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah.
[00:25:49] Henrik Werdelin: So like the, the, as I understanding the, the emotional safety- Yeah
I would imagine that nobody feels safe saying in the organization right now, "I understand that AI is important. I don't really get it, and I don't really use it that much." That is not what you hear a lot, right? And, and- No ... and you're saying that is in part a safety issue.
[00:26:12] Alexander Kuilman: I, I think there's many issues. I think the one that likely gets, uh, not a lot of air time is this question of psychological safety.
Because it's so, for so many, and we started in the conversation like it's woo woo. Feelings, woo woo. We're here to deliver on shareholder return, basta. Well, how do we get there is my challenge in saying it, it is just, a- and it's proven, this is what's so fascinating, and I refer to Amy Edmondson as one, but there's others who've done the research.
It's just proven that in an efficient system, one of the component parts is do I feel safe enough to test and try?
[00:26:47] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:48] Alexander Kuilman: And if we're looking at the Kegan Model which says as sort of test the big assumption, you need to be able to safe enough to test and try a few things that make this question of fear that you think is a given be not true.
But until such time as you feel safe enough to say, you know, at week one of AI being imposed on me because we all have been given a license to try something, I don't want to look incompetent in front of my buddies and colleagues as an idea. And so, okay, great. So that incompetence, try a few times and then go back to your buddies to see, do I look incompetent if I'm not getting to where I want to?
I'm the poster child of incompetence when it comes to my relationship with Henrik 'cause he just laughs at me most of the time because of how I am not capable of, of, you know, taking on these ideas more effectively. But because I feel safe enough to do these experiments now with him, I'm way further up the curve- Hmm
than I would've expected- Because of that, yeah ... had the conversations with Henrik not making, making it safe.
[00:27:47] Jeremy Utley: What, what do you think about this? And I, I won't... So someone famous who's a household name who, uh, she is a organizational leader, and she said something that I really liked, but I would like to test whether you think it's sufficiently safe.
So she said, "In my SLT, I do weekly..." I, I won't even use the phrase so that if it's out in the public she, uh, you know, won't expose her identity. Um, but she said, "I have people share either a success they're proud of or a failure they're embarrassed by." And her phrase, which I love, which I don't think is public, so I'm just, I'm avoiding Google ability, she says, "Either is okay, neither is not."
I love that actually as like, as a, as a holding mechanism.
[00:28:30] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah. Do.
[00:28:31] Jeremy Utley: Is that... But, but my question, not, well, I don't mean to influence you by saying but, as I'm hearing you talk about elements of psychological safety, the pressure, I don't, I wonder what role pressure and expectation play, and I, I, I don't know.
What do you think?
[00:28:47] Alexander Kuilman: I, I think they play a huge pla- a, a huge part of it, and this is maybe where I go too down the woo woo lens, but there's a piece of the puzzle that if I go back to Mikel's work, unless we're able to feel what psychological safety is- I think we're missing the boat. And so even in the example you're giving, there is a level of like there's a structural solution.
The questions I'm going to pose are gonna be this or that. Uh, you know, either one is good, neither is not. So there's a pressure now set up that if I don't actually feel safe enough, so the precondition for answering it honestly is gonna be this executive's ability to hold her people and likely role model it by doing it herself over a few times, 'cause they, you know, once is fine, but two or three times makes a little bit more of a role model.
But it's the sensate feeling, to go back to Mikkel's words. How do we have people feel, not just in a binary way practice a gimmick?
[00:29:46] Jeremy Utley: Hmm.
[00:29:48] Alexander Kuilman: And that to me is the missing piece that too often is lost.
[00:29:52] Jeremy Utley: That's beautiful.
[00:29:53] Henrik Werdelin: I know that you work with a lot of big companies and very senior people. If I walked into a chief innovation officer and said, "You know what, dude, what your...
Or dudette. Dude, gender neutral. What your problem is, is not that you don't have cloud code. It's not that the technical team only wants you to use the oldest model. It's not all these different things. It's basically that you don't have enough emotional safety in your organization."
[00:30:28] Alexander Kuilman: He, he'll probably tell you to take a hike.
[00:30:31] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah, she or he will just be like, "I, I, maybe, but I mean, like, we're 3,000 people. I don't really make that kind of environment here. My job to be done is to, yeah, just to get more tokens used." You know, like- ... yeah, in a joke. And, and so, so how do you... I, I'm sure you've met that too, right? Like, in your line of work.
How, how do you, how do you help this person?
[00:30:56] Alexander Kuilman: I don't know, 'cause I don't know the person. But what I would say is you can deliver the harshest messages to people if your own practice is to hold that conversation differently. And so part of the practice, I think, is, is recognizing if I'm going to sit in front of a CEO, which I spend a lot of my time doing, delivering messages that they may not want to hear, I have to have that sense, that sensorial, like, experience of slowing everything down in my own body enabling myself to not feel the nerves and the potential risk that I'm gonna face if I'm chucked out of this person's office, they innately capture that sensation, that feeling, 'cause I'm not coming in all flustered and no.
I'm hopefully enabling them to implicitly experience the comfort of, "Got a harsh message for you," that I've both built up the credibility over a few conversations with them, but have also done it in the immediacy of there's a crisis, I've been asked to go in by the supervisory board to give a message to a CEO, and that message has to be delivered.
Not only delivered, but then taken on board. And my job is then enabling myself to practice this holding of myself, which I do in many ways, which I can share. But it's also i- i- it going back to what Mikel refers to is, can the person sitting in front of me experience me in that more We call it basics in the, in this more pure neutral place.
If I do that with this example you're giving, there's a higher likelihood that the conversation then becomes where are the little places we could practice doing what I'm suggesting you might benefit from, Mr. C or Mrs. CIO? Although you're asking the question, I'm kind of turning it around saying, "What is your Henrik's state as you go into doing the conversation?"
[00:32:53] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:54] Alexander Kuilman: That'll likely have an equal if not more important outcome.
[00:32:56] Jeremy Utley: I like, I like the phrase you used, hold yourself. And it's one thing to hold space for a team, it's another thing to hold yourself. You said, "If you, if you're willing, I would actually love to hear," you, you just kind of made an aside comment.
There are ways that I, I, I think you said hold myself, if I'm not mistaken. How does one hold oneself? And is that a precursor actually to being able to hold space for a team? If so, seems like that's a great place to start.
[00:33:20] Alexander Kuilman: I would agree. Um, there are many practices. Um, there, there's... At, at the practice we generally love working with this kind of elite, what we call practitioners in the space, and one of this, one of these practitioners is a woman named Linda, who's taught us what I referred to before as basics.
And she says before you engage in any contested environment, or what she says an environment that is not coherent, 'cause usually when there's a lack of coherence, that's where you're gonna get friction and that's where you're gonna get resistance. And so her first thing is, okay, ground yourself. So just imagine yourself...
We could do it right now. Imagine yourself having, uh, roots. It's gonna get a bit woo-woo, so I apologize, but imagine literally that you have roots growing out of your feet, and if you don't wanna do that, yeah, there, you're going. Great. Imagine that you're just actually, like, I get executives to take their shoes off and socks off and have their feet literally on the carpet floor or hopefully better outside, and having them feel that sensate experience of being grounded.
[00:34:20] Jeremy Utley: What you're saying there, just to be clear, and it's similar to what you said earlier, it's not enough to say it, you have to feel it. You have to feel it. And in this case, in, in a way you're saying it's not enough to imagine it- Correct ... you have to feel it. It helps. So feel it while you imagine it maybe is a way to say.
[00:34:34] Alexander Kuilman: Well, what did you... You, you closed your eyes just now- Yeah ... and you, what did you feel?
[00:34:38] Jeremy Utley: Well, I took- Did anything change? I, I'm, I'm wearing, I'm wearing slippers actually, and I took them off so my feet are bare- Great ... and I put them on the wood floor.
[00:34:45] Alexander Kuilman: Did anything change?
[00:34:45] Jeremy Utley: Yes. Physically in your body. One, 100%, yes.
I can say 100%. What, how
[00:34:48] Alexander Kuilman: would you describe that experience?
[00:34:50] Jeremy Utley: Uh, it went from being a head experience to a body experience.
[00:34:55] Alexander Kuilman: Beautiful. So that would be stage one of, of what we're referring to as basics, and you just ground yourself. So that's the beginning I think of anybody who wants to hold themself, it has to start with ground.
[00:35:06] Henrik Werdelin: Jeremy, would you dare go into your next workshop, and before you start all your heady stuff, which I know you do so well- To say to people, "Hey, we've tried a lot of stuff. You, the organization have been through like the ringer, this. You invited me because you wanna do something new and different." What we gotta do before I show you how Claude will be able to record your screen and take your-- turn it into a skill, is I want you to feel grounded in this experience.
I'm gonna take, it's, I mean, like it's wild.
[00:35:43] Jeremy Utley: I-- So Henrik, I will-- Here's how I'll answer your question Uh, one, a two-part answer. One, the, the class I teach at Stanford, or that I taught historically, I'm not teaching it right now, I'm in, I'm in book mode. But the class I taught historically I taught with the head of the dance department at Stanford, Aleta Hayes, and we're all this match between head and body.
So I am already a believer in somatic stuff. Okay? So that's as a preface, very important preface, and shout out to Aleta, she's amazing. Invite her to all your things. She's great. Second, if I were... Like, if I picture, as I said, I have this actual executive team that I'm working with, I would want to have the support of the CEO.
I would want to speak with this person privately ahead of time and say, "I'm going to do this. Everyone in the room is gonna look at you and whether your eyes are closed. If your eyes are not closed, I can't do this. I think it's very important. Do I have your agreement that you will be the most enthusiastic participant, because I'm gonna call on you first?"
If that person... Uh, and usually if I put it straight to a, a leader who really wants to be high-performing, they go, "Whatever you need, I'll do it," right? Um, I would never do it without getting the leaders... Like they say, like never go to a board meeting without telling all the board members what's gonna happen, right?
I would never go to that meeting without clear alignment, at least with the CEO, because that's the person everybody's looking to, that they are, they are willing to go woo-woo with me.
[00:37:08] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah. I think a, a wise, wise counsel and wise caution. I would then challenge you to prepare yourself differently, because even in what you're describing, there's a level of fear to dot, dot, dot.
What if you were to engage with yourself, ground yourself to start, and then actually engage with the SLT, looking at the CEO, and if he or she doesn't follow you, that becomes data for you to work with that there's a level of fear in the system that you- Mm-hmm ... may not actually be able to engage at the level that you'd like to, so you have to adjust the way you're intervening.
[00:37:39] Jeremy Utley: And you're saying, y- so just, just to riff with you. You're saying there- Yeah ... instead of talking to the CEO ahead of time-
[00:37:44] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah ...
[00:37:45] Jeremy Utley: doing it as a way to gather information about the degree of openness. Exactly. Because to your point, actually, I think it's, I think it's quite insightful, and even I said it myself, a CEO, if I ask him, he's gonna say yes.
But saying yes and doing it kind of superficially aren't necessar- aren't tantamount to the psychological safety. Interesting.
[00:38:03] Alexander Kuilman: Exactly.
[00:38:04] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:38:04] Alexander Kuilman: And this is why I think very often we- Mm-hmm ... miss the boat, is because we do predetermine, as you said, supervisory board, which is a whole other kettle of fish, which I'd love to come back and discuss at a later time, 'cause, but, you know, doing board reviews becomes an interesting concept because I would say many executive teams now are embarking on these journeys that we're discussing.
Supervisory boards may not be just yet. Yeah. And happy to talk about that as a separate conversation. But the capacity to hold a system predicates The person holding, which in this case is an outsider coming in to support, having the capacity to hold, which means I have to hold myself and w- we had step one of...
There are other steps to do. But they, the, the... From years of doing this, the, the experience that the SLT in this ca- will have will be, there's a different feeling. Something is different. I can't determine what it is, but something is different. '
[00:38:57] Henrik Werdelin: Cause one thing, Jeremy, we could kind of observe is we talked about Wade a few times in this, uh, podcast, and we, uh, the CEO of Asabia, a founder and CEO.
And when we talk about him in the past, we've often mentioned that he called a code red. He does hackathons every quarter. We're very tactical in the way that we prescribe how he's successful- It's a great point ... getting some out. Great point. But when we meet, you meet him, he has very... He holds me when we talk to him.
Yeah. I feel very safe in his company.
[00:39:32] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:32] Henrik Werdelin: And so I wonder if there is something in, like, some of the leaders that we've seen do the same thing.
[00:39:38] Jeremy Utley: Um- Well said. Well said. That's very insightful. And you're right. We, I, I, I reference Wade regularly- Bryce, same thing ... and it's always tactics. It's not the psychology.
[00:39:50] Henrik Werdelin: Let's take Bryce, former Moderna, now, uh, OpenAI. Same thing. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Feel incredibly calm in his, his company. Very thoughtful, very grounded.
[00:39:59] Alexander Kuilman: Jeremy, you, you mentioned something, I just wanna flag it 'cause I do think it's important. Y- yes, there is an element of psychology. I'm not a psychologist. I'm, I'm fascinated by the human experience, which is why, if we go back, I love that you had Mikel on the podcast talking about what is the body sensate's ability versus just the cognitive ability that we've been educated to look at.
More and more, and this fabulous woman, who by the way I would love to meet, the dancer who, the... What is her name?
[00:40:28] Jeremy Utley: Aleta Hayes
[00:40:30] Alexander Kuilman: Elita Hayes. Yes. I'd love to meet her.
[00:40:33] Jeremy Utley: She's-- I'd be happy
[00:40:33] Alexander Kuilman: to connect you. She's fabulous. She, she and you together... She sounds amazing, and to have the combination of a Jeremy and Elita in a room for students must be extraordinary.
And so if there is a piece of the puzzle that is now being discovered, which is ultimately, I would say, the angle that humanity can bring in conjunction with AI as it is becoming a necessary combo, we need to focus our energy and attention much more onto the core skills of humanity, which is sensate, it's somatic, it's body awareness.
The cognitive capacity is something that AI can do for us better than we can do for ourselves at this stage.
[00:41:10] Henrik Werdelin: Can I just segue a little bit to this, uh, thing I heard, um, Andrew Zuckerman say the other day? He's, uh, very well known for his work with Apple and an artist and, but also does brands and multi-skill.
He's an incredible, incredible person. He, he basically made the point the other day that one of the things that AI does for us is it offload cognitive capacity, and I think we've heard that before, and then we're like, "Oh, that's an issue." Like, we get lazy, stuff like that. He says, "Thank God," because the last 100 years we have gone from understanding how to use our body to walk out in the woods, to smell, to listen, and we have gone full heady.
And he's like- I think, therefore
[00:41:54] Alexander Kuilman: I am ...
[00:41:55] Henrik Werdelin: he goes, "What if what AI is gonna give us is our ability to non-think, to feel?" And so I, it was, I thought it was very positive, a bit woo-woo, but very positive and suddenly you like- Yeah ... it opens up on this whole world. Sorry, Alex.
[00:42:10] Alexander Kuilman: Henrik, no, this is exactly, this is exactly the root in providing for the grounding and, and e- the, the, the basics as are...
The spaciousness is what we lack. You, you hit it 100% right, Henrik. The spaciousness is what we lack. We do not... If we look at the, uh, uh, standard executive schedule, it is back to back to back to back. Block myself two hours to make sure I can go to the gym, which is just back to back to back to back. Like, there is very, very little time for spaciousness of exploration, of curiosity, the joy of doing nothing, the joy of going for a walk in the woods.
Like, that's where a lot of this stuff becomes relevant because that's where there's an opening to taste again, to feel again, to see
[00:42:56] Jeremy Utley: again. Now, there, there is an interesting contrast here by just, just to flag it. Um, we started the conversation by saying the wrong answer is make time to experiment And we've now come full circle to the conversation saying the problem is people don't have enough space, which, which feels like at least a tension, if not a contradiction.
What do we think about that?
[00:43:17] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah. I love it 'cause it's usually in the tension we're gonna find a solution.
[00:43:22] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:22] Alexander Kuilman: I would hold the tension.
[00:43:23] Jeremy Utley: Mm.
[00:43:24] Alexander Kuilman: I, I would apply the example that you gave because the fact that the, what I'm just gonna refer to as the Claude code example that you- Mm-hmm ... provided, that it, it just becomes...
It, it's not additive to your calendar. It's actually... The, there's nothing that's act- It's, you're supplementing in your, you know, locked in schedule. You're just adding another reality- Right ... that wouldn't have otherwise been there but for the Claude example of recording. So fabulous. Now, that may allow you, in a couple of weeks, year, months or years, to say, "Okay, I, I don't need to put my schedule in this frenetic pace all the time, and I would like to take an hour a day just to actually detox, go for a walk."
[00:44:03] Henrik Werdelin: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:03] Alexander Kuilman: Not to talk to anyone. Don't take my phone. It's the little experiments that ultimately I think are gonna get us back to a sensate experience of the life that we're living.
[00:44:13] Jeremy Utley: So, so this, so this is actually one of... Henrik and I, we probably haven't talked about this in a couple months, but this, I think, Alex, is one of the most fascinating and counterintuitive discoveries of the AI age, and I'd love to get your reaction to it, especially as, you know, a self-proclaimed not AI person.
There's a concept that folks have referred to as the AI vampire. Have you heard of this?
[00:44:33] Alexander Kuilman: No.
[00:44:33] Jeremy Utley: It's basically the idea that once you become more productive, you don't do less work, you do more. And so ostensibly, now you can do in one hour what you used to be able to do in 10, which means you should be able to do in half a day's work what you used to do in a week's, we call it a 40-hour work week.
What we're observing and what the most kind of AI-forward people are finding is not that now they only work four hours instead of 40, but now they work 80 because they can do 800 hours in those 80. Yeah. Whereas before they were working 60, say. And so there's this interesting tension that I... and I, I'm obsessed with it because, one, I, I think one of the kind of, uh, you know, theoretical benefits of AI is that it could restore our humanity.
It could restore our ability to, as you say, I love spaciousness for nothing as a phrase. I think it's beautiful What I've observed and, and many ... And I mean, I, I told Henry this. I asked kind of a WhatsApp group of some of the most AI proficient folks in the world. I can't understand 95% of the conversation.
I put a poll in the chat, what are you doing with your newfound productivity now that you're, you know, 10X-ing yourself? Are you investing in your health, in your family, in your community, or more work? 90-plus percent of people said more work, not health, family, community, right? And so to me, it's a very, uh, it's maybe tragic, it's maybe ironic, I don't know.
But it strikes me that the observed reality is not spaciousness for nothing. It's in fact less space for more. I ... Or whatever the- Yeah ... opposite is. W- what do you- Yeah ... what do we make of that?
[00:46:10] Alexander Kuilman: Couple of thoughts. Um, the term I use is corporate numbing I think to a large degree, we've come to a place in our own, in sort of the societal norming, at least in Western culture, that it is really pleasurable to numb oneself- Mm
in the busyness of life.
[00:46:27] Jeremy Utley: Mm.
[00:46:28] Alexander Kuilman: So that's one bucket that we can dig into a little bit. But I think corporate numbing cannot be underestimated, because if, if, if there is a level of inefficiency in systems, it's because people have become numb. And your reference to the 90% would be an example of that.
[00:46:41] Henrik Werdelin: I can just like, just further...
That resonates so much. The ability to feel safe by sitting and replying email versus coming up with something that my six-year-old find enjoyable, like is night and day. I, I-
[00:46:55] Jeremy Utley: Six-year-old is so much harder to deal with than a inbox.
[00:46:58] Henrik Werdelin: So much harder. That- Right? And so it's easier just to say, "Daddy has a few emails to do," and it feels justified.
[00:47:04] Alexander Kuilman: But in fairness, Henrik, and now I may be revealing too much, but you and I had a chat before going to spend time with your son, and it was an experiment which was an extremely positive outcome of like, oh my God, this kid is fabulous to hang out with. And the creativity that came from the hours that you spent with him was like off the dial.
Absolutely. Now, is it exhausting? Is it... Yeah, hope- like I've got kids myself, so I understand the,
[00:47:28] Jeremy Utley: the,
[00:47:29] Alexander Kuilman: the counterpoint to
[00:47:29] Jeremy Utley: it. But- Work, work as numbing is- That's a great
[00:47:32] Henrik Werdelin: term ...
[00:47:33] Jeremy Utley: so... And, and to me then what that says is the solution is not systemic and it's not organizational. The solution one could say to be woo is enlightenment, is recognizing your own longing for numbing and deciding you wanna feel your life.
I mean, that's actually the perfect, uh, opposite to sensory, right? Numbing is the opposite to sense. Maybe that's why you chose the word, actually. I'm just catching up here, Alex.
[00:48:00] Alexander Kuilman: Oh, I doubt that. Um, I, look, I, I do think it's a relevant term because it just, it does put it in, in opposition and I'm, frankly, I, I love the fact that we can talk about the polarities as both being true.
[00:48:13] Jeremy Utley: Hmm.
[00:48:13] Alexander Kuilman: I don't... Like we're, we're looking for solutions of which I don't think there are ready-made solutions.
[00:48:19] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:19] Alexander Kuilman: What I do think is the capacity to have the conversation we're having gives people the chance to make little experiments, to try what fits into their own day-to-day operational life, and then they get to choose.
Is it helping, not helping? I see a lot of primarily men, because it's still today, which is I think a, a systemic shift that needs to happen, most CEOs that I'm working with are men between 45 and
[00:48:42] Jeremy Utley: 65. Wow.
[00:48:43] Alexander Kuilman: In that age range, there is something that Jung referred to as the back end of life and where you literally, men, I'm in that bucket, I start asking myself a bunch of questions that I certainly didn't ask between 35 and 45, and probably only started asking in the last maybe 10 years.
And so if, if that's true, I think there's a whole demographic that's gonna start posing questions that might lead them to realize the numbing isn't actually serving them in the way that they like to be. But where can they talk to people about this? Where can they engage in the conversation? Where can they feel the polarity of, "But I still have to provide and I still have FOMO"?
[00:49:22] Jeremy Utley: Hmm.
[00:49:22] Henrik Werdelin: And I think, you know, as we talked about earlier- Wow ... Jeremy, there is the... Where I feel there is a blind spot of using AI is, and we talked about that as the negative space, the unspoken space, and the space that is not currently in world models, right? Because right now the AI world is in text written, but really text written since '91 to now on the internet, right?
And so it is text written that is really when you think about the world, like a pre- somewhat limited skew of the world, right? It's big, but it's, uh... And the thing that I guess, uh, Andrew Sugerman was talking about, like walking out in the forest and observing art and listening to music and playing with your six-year-old is like obviously a felt experience which we don't have.
And so maybe the unlock to all this creativity and this originality is ironically that we need to kind of like step away for all this to get back to it. That's where we're gonna find the new ideas. And once we... I mean, I guess we could pose a positive version of the AI future where we have offloaded all this thinking time to machines, and so that we can go out in the world, it doesn't have to be in the forest, but it could be just like hanging with our colleagues, and figure something completely new out because suddenly we're kind of back to using a full sensory spectrum.
[00:50:41] Alexander Kuilman: What if we could make that reality something more exciting because you'd actually get more done? What if we can make it safe enough to have the conversation to be more effective because you're taking that spaciousness? Like it's, how do you make it palatable for someone who just looks at you and says like, "You're talking complete nonsense.
I gotta get stuff done. Let me get on with it. Your woo-woo stuff isn't helping." I think we're missing the, the boat because we're not actually engaging and making this other alternative more interesting than the numbing that they're experiencing.
[00:51:14] Jeremy Utley: Can I, um, the... I just realized I had two thoughts, uh, one that we talked about, about, um, the AI vampire in regards to spaciousness for nothing.
So coming back to that as kind of like a banner, you know, for this part of the conversation. One thought I had was the AI vampire and the reali- realization that AI doesn't lead us to spaciousness necessarily. The second thing that I just thought of that I wanted run by you is Elon Musk, and I, I don't know how people feel about Elon.
Uh, unequivocally, he's, uh, he's a effective entrepreneur, let's put it that way. Um- I have-- I was pointed by a couple different friends to Isaacson's book and other resources, and the thing that strikes me is how little spaciousness he has in his life. Mm-hmm. To the point that sometimes he's just sitting on the edge of his bed, even in the middle of the night, like his wife and partners, and he's just...
He cannot sleep. He sleeps-- He famously sleeps on the factory floor with people, right? And so one thing that's-- I, and I don't know what to do with it, and perhaps it's just hold the tension and that's sufficient. But the, the kind of the thrust of our conversation is more spaciousness does lead to better.
And yet-- Or that it could- Yep ... at least.
[00:52:25] Alexander Kuilman: Yeah.
[00:52:26] Jeremy Utley: And yet, probably the preeminent example of at least entrepreneurial, or you could say organizational ef- efficiency or effectiveness, is an example of no spaciousness. Well, it's probably less spaciousness for himself and his direct reports than any manager who's ever lived.
And so I'm just trying to kind of wrestle with that duality or seeming contradiction.
[00:52:49] Alexander Kuilman: I, I, I don't know how to answer that other than, um, he is, he is one example of an extremely effective busy man.
[00:52:57] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:52:58] Alexander Kuilman: Um, do we all have the capacity to do that? Mm. I don't know. I, I don't know many people who actually can do that.
Proof is in the eating the pudding. There are very few people who are even remotely close to the capacity to deliver on what he says he can deliver. Mm-hmm. So he might be an outlier.
[00:53:13] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:53:14] Alexander Kuilman: Is it statistically relevant therefore to follow that one outlier- It's,
[00:53:17] Jeremy Utley: yeah, it's, it's, it's exactly actually- ... when the
[00:53:18] Alexander Kuilman: whole
[00:53:18] Jeremy Utley: of humanity- The problem of reasoning by anecdote is, you know, the prior probability.
Yeah, I, I tot- yeah, even as you're saying that, you're exactly right. We... Just because he does doesn't mean any of us can or should.
[00:53:30] Alexander Kuilman: And I, I don't know enough about Elon to say, well, maybe there is a part of his life that is gonna start changing and, and he may embark on a, on a moment when he is getting between this thing that I'm referring to back end of life, that actually does force him to say, "Interesting.
Is there a spaciousness that I've lacked and therefore is there a capacity for me to live differently while benefiting from this incredible wealth that I have created?" And I mean wealth, not just financial, but what he's brought to the world is extraordinary.
[00:53:57] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. Yeah. Well said.
[00:53:59] Alexander Kuilman: I don't... I'd love to have the conversation with him.
If, if he's listening, give me a buzz.
[00:54:03] Jeremy Utley: Elon. Can we, can we get him to come? Yeah. Let's, let's get him to come. Can we? Yeah.
[00:54:08] Henrik Werdelin: I find this conversation to be refreshingly new in the context of Jeremy, what we're trying to help people like to try to find new ways of using AI for good in their life and their organization.
I have promised you, Jeremy, to get you out of here in about 10
[00:54:27] Jeremy Utley: minutes because- Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do, I... One thing I would say, Alex, is your... You, you started the conversation by kind of caveating how little you know about AI, and it's somewhat of my obsession. Henrik know- knows this. I've got a book coming out later this fall called "The Human Advantage," which is all about the, the most special thing about AI is actually you.
And the more expertise you have, the more special you are. And so what I, uh, like I just felt like as a friend and as a person, what I wanna say to you on the record, off the record, doesn't matter You have the potential to derive leverage and value from proficient collaboration with AI that few others in the world do, specifically because of your human expertise.
You don't need technical ability, but if you will bring your abil- the way you connect as a human, if you will start to think about the way I say it is treat AI like a teammate, not like a tool. If you'll start to use some of the techniques that you use as a, as a highly capable collaborator to people, and as someone who is uniquely, I would say, familiar with techniques to get exceptional work out of this weird, intelligent thing called humans, you are uniquely qualified to get exceptional work out of this weird, intelligent thing called AI.
And that's, that's basically-- I'm happy to send you the book if you want. I'm happy, you know, just like- I would love ... as a friend. Because I think- I'd love ... that's, like I've s- I've taught MBAs for years, for example. If I'm- Yeah ... teaching a one-hour-long class, who's gonna get more out of that hour? Say it's on negotiations, right?
The whip-smart undergrad with no real-world experience but, you know, a 2400 SAT, or the sales veteran with 10 years experience under her belt, right? Uh, she's gonna- Yeah ... leave the class with a thousand times more knowledge, even though they both sat through the same hour. Why? Because of the knowledge they brought to that hour.
And I use that as just a metaphor to say the person who's gonna get the most out of AI is you because of what you bring to AI, provided that you bring your humanity, so to speak. So anyway, I just... I want-- I mean, you have Henrik in your life, so you're, you're never gonna get away from AI, just for the record.
But insofar as you're tempted to opt out because it feels like- Ah ... you know, it's tech, it's a young person's game, whatever, no, don't.
[00:56:35] Alexander Kuilman: Thank you. It's very generous of you to say, and, and please do not, uh, take on w- my, my self-deprecation is probably something I should work on. I, in, in-- before coming to this conversation, I had multiple conversations with Claude.
[00:56:49] Henrik Werdelin: Mm.
[00:56:49] Alexander Kuilman: I, I find it extremely helpful and have, um, in fact requested that the, within the company, the practice, that we actually have regular conversations about how are we using it to make what is our tagline is bringing more humanity into business. How do we make it that much more effective to do one of the pieces of the puzzle we talked about, which is in the cadence of an executive, I don't wanna add an extra thing for them to do.
But boy, oh boy, if I can have the capacity to record and to help them actually in their regular cadence of life and then feed back to them at a later point, these are two or three tweaks because I've heard you on multiple occasions, nothing additive in terms of extra time. This is just like one I, I practice that and then keep recording it.
So there's again an iterative practice in what they're doing. That's cool. AI does that beautifully. Yeah. So we're, we're in it. I just-- I feel like a little student with my dunce cap on when I'm speaking to two- I, I think honestly- ... deeply wise- ... what I would
[00:57:44] Jeremy Utley: say, what I would say, and this is actually the perfect place to wrap, is behind is the new normal If you don't feel behind, you are- Inshallah
you are delusional.
[00:57:55] Alexander Kuilman: I love that.
[00:57:56] Jeremy Utley: Okay?
[00:57:56] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah.
[00:57:56] Jeremy Utley: If you feel behind, congratulations. Welcome to 2026, right? Great way to wrap.
[00:58:02] Henrik Werdelin: And on that,
[00:58:03] Alexander Kuilman: thank you.
[00:58:04] Jeremy Utley: Okay, Henrik, ca- you, you started this episode by introducing Alex. I gotta say, I love that guy. What-
[00:58:11] Henrik Werdelin: I mean, like he is-
[00:58:12] Jeremy Utley: A fantastic human. I can understand why, one, why you want to meet with him, and two, probably you want to meet with him so often that you can't afford to pay him.
So I like how your arrangement has worked out, because otherwise you'd be in the poor house, my friend.
[00:58:24] Henrik Werdelin: I think unfortunately that is very true. Um- I mean, like I call him sometimes when I'm kind of wound up about stuff, and I think what I realized on this call is like he holds me. Like he provides me- Mm
a little, like a s- a space to just kind of feel safe for a little bit. Mm. I think though, as we talk here You know, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how you become better of using AI in your own life and in your organization, and I think in many ways, a lot of the conversation are similar in nature.
They're different kinda like versions of it. And so what I thought inspiring with this conversation is one of the first time that... We've had a few times, but is, is one of the few times where somebody went and said something and I'm like, "Ah, this is really different from kinda like what a conversation would normally be like- Yeah, yeah
in this thing." And while uncomfortable, I, I do recognize that often when I have success doing entrepreneurship or innovation or, or kind of promoting AI, it is when I create an environment where people feel safe to try, safe to kind of talk about like where they are in their journey and stuff like that.
And so definitely like a tool that I think I'm gonna try to explore a little bit more.
[00:59:37] Jeremy Utley: Mm. Yeah. The, the, uh, distinction between saying something and feeling something, or you could say hearing something and feeling something, I think is quite profound, and your observation of both Wade and Bryce as kind of prototypical examples of people who do say the right things, but who, more importantly on your reflection, which I totally agree with, help you feel a certain way, I think is something I, I don't think I've ever really thought about like that before.
Br- w- when Wa- And I... By the way, it would be kind of fun to talk to Wade and Bryce about this, but, um, Wade's playbook, you know, and he's written quite, you know, extensively about the transformation of Zapier. I don't think it includes anything about psychological safety, to my knowledge. I don't think it includes- No
anything about his personal leadership philosophy, et cetera. And so that's, that's quite interesting. I really hope... I'm, I'm gonna see if Amy Edmondson... I'm even, I'm putting this to recording right now. I'm gonna try to get Amy on the show. She actually blurbed my book, and she was on a previous podcast that I ran years ago prior to this one starting.
She's a fabulous thinker, and she... I mean, she literally wrote the book on psychological safety, but I think it's a, it's a really rich topic. And of course, as Alex mentioned, we hit on it a little bit with Chantel when we talked to her about how fear prevents learning, and sh- you know, she shared with us, I think, the PACE model of l- or fear prevents curiosity maybe.
Um, and so we've, we've kinda touched on the topic before, but I think, I think it'd be a really fascinating deep dive. And Amy's another one of those people, she'll be the first to say she's not an AI expert, which I think increasingly we go, "Great. We want experts- Yeah ... beyond AI."
And the other thing I gotta say, which I think is just really fascinating, is when we were talking about the AI vampire, I mean, there's so much here. I, I wanna listen to this episode many times actually myself. Um, his point that work can be, not as always, but can be a numbing mechanism, and your observation that dealing with your email is easier than dealing with a six-year-old, I think is...
There's something really, really deep there that, um, I don't think many professionals would regard their professional pursuits as avoidance tactics, as avoidance of or, or, or even more running from responsibility. Like, if you think about my example that I gave at the beginning of the, of the recording, right?
That I travel to provide, right? I do not think of my travel as running from family obligations. I think of it as a fulfillment of family obligations. Yeah. And I just... I wanna personally sit with it, and I would personally invite our audience as well to consider, is the amount you're working right now actually about...
Is it a justification to avoid the things you really need to be doing? That's a question I'm personally gonna be sitting with, and I'm, I'm tremendously grateful you brought Alex into my life and into this episode.
[01:02:59] Henrik Werdelin: I appreciate that, and as, as you know, I'm a incredibly huge fan of Alex. I had a, I had a staff member the other day come to me and say, "I'm probably five to 10 times more efficient than I was a year ago when you hired me."
And I was like, "Yeah." And she goes, "So I'm gonna take Fridays off." And I was like, "Hmm." And you... Very difficult to argue, right? You know, like I haven't put her salary up 10X since she's getting more done. And so where does this unleased energy, where does that flow to, and who does it belong to? I think it's an interesting question.
I... You post it with, you know, your question to the AI group. When you are now more efficient, when you've created another agent that gives you back 20 minutes, are you gonna give it to the gym? Are you gonna give it to yourself for thinking? Are you gonna give it to your family, to your community, whatever?
And I think, uh, that's a question that, you know, like back to your point, am I just giving it back to more emailing because that is where I feel emotionally numb? Uh, it's super, super fascinating question.
[01:04:05] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's challenging, and I, I love the challenge, so thank you.
[01:04:11] Henrik Werdelin: Appreciate it. And on that note, there's only one thing left to say, and that is
[01:04:17] Jeremy Utley: bye-bye.