Welcome to Agile Roots 2010, sponsored by Version 1, Rally Software, Vario, AmirSys, Agile Alliance, and Xmission Internet. Systems Thinking and the Learning Organization by Jason Dean. Well good morning, it's actually afternoon everyone. My name is Jason, and if you went to the presentation we had yesterday about on the cycles of your brain and your body during the day, this is the actual worst possible time you could be here. So, I'll do my best to keep you awake, and if I get boring, I have my permission to say, this sucks! So everybody practice, ready? This sucks! Good. So, that's our agreement. I won't take it against you, and we'll go from there. My name again is Jason, and I'm an Agile consultant by trade. I do training and consulting, and it's a relatively new business, so I just enjoy the opportunity to do it, mostly in the adoption space. So, working with companies who've never done Agile before, mostly. A lot of experience in the traditional PMI world as it were, and then a coder and tester and business analyst and project manager and various sides of teams and companies. So, I really enjoy what Agile has today to offer for us. Systems thinking is what I'm going to be talking about today, and unabashedly I've stolen everything for this talk directly out of Peter Sengay's book. How many people have read this book? Peter Sengay that did discipline. This is a must read. This is classic business literature, but I think it goes way beyond just the general organizational management. It has a lot of application for all of us, so that's where I'm going to be taking a lot of this information today, and I highly encourage you to get a copy of that. My supposition is that great software is only possible in a learning organization. There's lots of different ideas about what a learning organization is. We're going to look at a couple of different ideas here. I don't know if this turner is going to work, we'll see. So, a learning organization, and that might be kind of small, but I'll just kind of talk through it with you. What is a learning organization? Well, a learning organization, at least according to Peter Sengay, is a place where people are continually expanding their capacity to create. I think we can see some immediate value in that. Their capacity to create obviously directly impacts your ability to deliver value, and that's what agile should be all about, at least. But we're talking about getting the results you really want out of their organization. Wouldn't you like to live in a place or work in a place where thinking is nurtured and you're rewarded for that? You know, where you get to pursue this collective aspiration, working together. I know that in the agile world, that's definitely something we're trying to pattern, we're trying to build. We're trying to do that with a care program, and we're trying to do that with some of these different roles that we've established for Scrum, for example. It's a place where people are continually learning how to learn together. So a learning organization is not something you achieve, right? A learning organization is something that you constantly are continually doing. So what's wrong with the current system? Why do we need learning organizations? Well, I think Deming said it pretty well here. Our prevailing system of management is destroying our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, and joy to learn. I don't think a lot has changed since he made that statement. Very few organizations that I've worked in really focus on my success. And how many times have you been encouraged to succeed for the sake of others around you? We're encouraged to succeed to get the job done. But is it more than that? I hope that it is. And this highlighted part, destroying our people, this is why I do agile. I don't do agile because I just think it's something fun. I do it because I think you're valuable. I think that people are valuable. And I think that agile explores respect for people, you know, and that interaction between people. Maybe that's idealistic, but hey, I'm an idealistic kind of guy. So I think that agile has a lot to say about that. You know, we've seen a lot of short-term thinking of supplying the same rules across the organization no matter who you are, what kind of project it is, measuring the wrong things, controlling energy by fear. So the first step I really think about when we think about a learning organization is how do we create that? I mean, it doesn't happen by accident. Nothing good happens by accident, right? So we're going to have to build that organization ourselves and it's going to take some hard work. A lot of it has to do with this idea of creating and changing realities. Businesses that essentially are the sum of their decisions. Makes sense. It's not rocket science. The decisions, the culture, the ethos, these interactions that we've been talking about, their visions and goals. This system that the company has built has created its own situation, has created its own reality. It's really easy to complain about the problems that we have, that if we'll stop and think about it for a moment, they're there because of us, right? So if they're going to change, they're going to have to change because of us. Now sure we have external forces acting upon us and those can create problems internally, but what I'm really talking about is our ability to learn, our ability to grow, our ability to be more than we are today, right? So these decisions, this culture that we've built have really caused things to be the way they are. Peter talks about in his book here, he says that system structure leads to patterns of behavior, which sounds pretty logical, doesn't it? System structures, the way that we've built the organization, leads to these patterns of behavior which lead to events. So what are we always trying to fix in the organization? We're always trying to fix events, right? We're fixing the fact that the project is late, we don't have enough resources, there's these events that happen. And so we're always focused on the particular problem of the day, but what the point here is that there's something else behind that. And that's really the purpose of this whole talk today is to say that the problems that we experience and things that we go through, the structure of our system in our organization, is the result of behaviors that we've learned, behaviors that we've taken on as we were trained there, expectations of our culture, and they relate to these system structures that we continually either build up or tear down or add to. Peter talks about this idea of a metanoia, which means a change of mind. He related it to like the early Gnostic Christians would call this word repent. It means to turn around and change your way of thinking. He said that there needs to be a revolution in the way we think, that we're not just thinking of the small pieces. Now as good engineers we're trained to break apart everything, aren't we? We take apart the big problem and make it smaller problems. And then we take apart those smaller pieces and break them apart further. So we can try to get down to a root cause, these kinds of activities we do all the time. And yet when we do that, we wind up losing something. We lose the ability to see the whole system. I think that's the real value for Agile. That's something that I think we miss often, at least in companies where there aren't people sort of dedicated to looking at that system. Maybe they're a manager, a project manager maybe, or a business manager. But the problem so often is not just that event that happened, but there's a systemic reason. And we can think about this technically. We know what a systemic problem is. It's not just a data problem. It's not just a little defect. It's a result of the architecture of the system. So he says that we need a metanoia. We need to recreate ourselves. And this is how we're going to be able to really make a difference and learn and be in that place that we really want to be. Structure and patterns that control events. And what I'm saying to you is that those Agile patterns that we're talking about, those can be our structure. And that can enable us to be a true learning organization. And that's what I say here. Agile provides a framework from which a learning organization can be built. So my proposal is that Agile is not only good for building software, but it's good for building organizations. It's good for building interactions between people. We just heard from Alistair talking about those interactions. That exactly is where the meet is at. And Agile we have, maybe we use a card on a wall. It represents a conversation, right? That's what we need Agile for in our organization is to help us find ways to have more conversations. So we can break down those barriers between those organizations. We've all experienced that IT business, uncomfortableness. I was at HP, worked there for a number of years. And I was an R&D team. And I managed requirements for a remote delivery team, off-shore team. And they combined us, they did a reorg and they combined us with a marketing group. And I just thought that was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It was so strange. We had really geeky guys, technical freaks sitting next to these marketing guys who knew nothing about the technology underneath the software they were getting. What I found was it started a conversation. All of a sudden I knew why we were building those things that we needed. Now in Agile we know that that's a good thing. We talk about customers sitting with us or going to a customer's location. So we know that that's a good thing. But I propose that we use Agile to do more than just deliver value in software. I propose that we use it to deliver value in the organization. So there's three main core learning disciplines grouped into these five learning disciplines that Senge talks about. Fostering, aspiration, this three-legged stool. Fostering, aspiration, understanding, complexity, and developing reflective conversation. So I'm going to try to move through these pretty quick. My goal here is not that you try to get everything that I talk about because there's just a lot in this space. If you're at all interested in this, you know, I'll give you some more information. I just want you to be listening for keys that might help you think at a broader level. Our responsibility, our social responsibility in my opinion on this earth is to expand our circle. You know, we all have a little circle around us and this is where I live. This is my space. I control my thoughts and actions and I think about me and my needs and I eat and I sleep. That circle is very small and when we, you know, can draw that bigger circle around our family we're doing things for our family and with our family and we're able to help more people. So I'm encouraging you and I'm encouraging me to draw that circle bigger in our organization, develop partnerships, use these tools to help you think about the bigger picture. We're going to start with the concept of systems thinking, but we'll go through these other ones as well, systems thinking. So here's an example of a system. When it rains, we don't always think about the fact of the whole system behind it, right? We just think, now I need to do windshield wipers on the car, right? We're just thinking about the rain or it's getting my hair wet or whatever, but we know that there's a bigger system. There's rain that goes into the groundwater and the rivers and creeks and the ocean and evaporates up into the clouds and then it rains again. So we know the water cycle, right? So that's part of a system. It would be a mistake for us to think that rain just comes from the clouds because, you know? If we do things that damage our groundwater, that's going to cause an effect on the whole system. So we realize that there's a lot more than just one event. Systems thinking is about holistic thinking. I just got back from China and I loved it because there are very holistic thinkers. You know, when I had some good sweet and sour fish, the head is on one end and the table is on the other. You know, and they think that that looks nice because it's a good presentation. It's the whole animal. It's holistic thinking. You don't eat those parts unless you want to, but you know, you pick the meat off the fish and that's the meal. So they're used to thinking and broader concepts. But some of the parts and their interactions, that's what a system is. Interrelated actions. And again, more specifically, interrelated interactive conversations between components of the system. People are active participants in changing their future in the system, right? People are participating, making decisions. It's concept of dynamic complexity that we can't just say there's one main reason. Sometimes there is one main reason for something, but many times we know that there's a lot of other parts of the system that has an effect on what's going on. But so often we want to blame somebody, right? We want to blame the developer for writing the core code or we want to blame IT because they clearly can't, you know, don't know our business needs. So it's easy to try to blame someone, but really there's this dynamic complexity. There's detail complexity. Sure, there's little details that we need to understand and know, but there's this dynamic complexity about how all the parts of the system work together. And there's this concept of circles of causality, which is very interesting. If you can see that picture, essentially, you know, if you start with the faucet, turn the faucet on, right? Water fills up the cup. It's flowing into the cup and the water level is going up. My brain is seeing that with my eyes, right? I'm registering a perceived gap between the desired water level, right? I want a full glass of water, but not all the way to the top, a quarter inch below the top. So I'm looking for that. And when that water level approaches, I turn it off, right? So here we have a cycle. We have a system. Now, we typically describe it in that fashion. We would say I turn on the water. It fills up when I see that it's level I want. I turn it off. But you can also describe this in the reverse. The water level affects the faucet position through the perception. It can go the other direction as well. And so we don't often think about it from that way, right? We're just thinking about it from the fact that I'm controlling my hand. But really, it's the water level controlling my hand, right? So this is just a simple example. And those arrows represent influences. So your perceptions influence that faucet position and water flows and influence. So this is a system. Now, in Cengage's book, which I encourage you to dig into when you have time, he goes through several different archetypes. And I think these are really valuable for you to look at. There's this first one I'm just giving as an example, and it's limits to growth. And essentially what you have is two loops. You have this reinforcing loop and you have this balancing loop. So in this example, you have a production, flexibility and cost. And that influences our commitment to just-in-time delivery, right? And of course that just-in-time delivery affects or influences our production, flexibility and cost. Having the right stuff there at the right time influences our ability to produce more. On the other side, the balancing side, that left side is the growth side. The reinforcing is the growth. But on the left side, we have one of the right sides, the balancing loop. Well, that commitment to just-in-time threat causes or influences the manufacturer, doesn't it? The manufacturer has a goal. He wants to maintain multiple sources because he doesn't want to be left high and dry, okay? But the supplier, you know, he wants to be the sole source. That is a risk to the supplier. There's a delay between when we see the actual results happen. And that affects negatively our ability to have just-in-time delivery. So the point here is there's this reinforcing loop. There's things that cause things to go well and to grow. And you can have reinforcing of negatives as well, right? And then there's things that balance. Why is this important? Because when you're looking at a problem in your organization, when you're looking at a problem in your system, you need to realize that there's things that cause it to grow and there's things that cause it to be limited. Now, what do we normally do? If there's something that we want to grow, we push harder, right? Push harder on that thing to make it grow. We're going to train people more. We're going to do all these things to make it go faster and faster and faster. But in actuality, we need to be looking at the other side. We need to be looking at this limiting factor. That manufacturer's goal is a limiting factor. We need to address that. If we can reduce the limiting factor, then all of a sudden we've opened up our system to growth, right? Well, what is this? We know this as theory of constraints. That's exactly what this is. So Agile is already doing systems work. That's kind of the corollary part of this talk, is that when we use Agile, we're actually implementing systems thinking in our organization. But when we want to try to, in this case, reduce that limiting factor, then we're opened up. It's the same thing about saving money. We can make more money by saving it, right? System thinking then integrates some other learning disciplines, which we're going to look at. The idea of personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, dialogue, and team learning. We'll get to those. Again, this idea of a metanoia. We've been trained to break things down, but we need to think differently. What does Agile offer for us? How is Agile implementing this already? Well, we see here just a few things. Value stream, right? We know what a value stream is. It's a flow of value within the organization, the system, supplier, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Flow. Flow implies a system. Pull from a customer implies a system. Team ownership, right? We have a team that owns code, not just one person, so I can code on anything in the system because a team owns it. No individual ownership, no slicing of information instead of just having a component. Agile's already doing some of these things, which I think is good. That's why I'm proposing that Agile is a good tool to use for helping your organization be a learning organization. I'm going to go through these just real briefly because there's a lot here. We just don't have time. Again, we talked about this concept that today's problems came from yesterday's solutions, right? We know about refactoring. We know about technical debt. Does anybody have any technical debt? We know that tomorrow's problems are coming from the things we're building today. If that's the case, how should we be building the things that we're building today? With Agile, we're not thinking about everything that could possibly happen. We're not planning for 100 years down the line or a long time away. We're planning for a short time horizon. But we need to be thinking beyond just the next generation a little bit. We need to be thinking, how is our customer going to use this and what do they want to use next? What are competitors doing? As a developer, it was very helpful for me to know not only how my customers were using my software, but how the organization was going to be moving in that application space.  So I don't go and do a bunch of cleanup, maybe, in a particular part of the system. It really isn't going to go anywhere. So having a systems thinking perspective can be very helpful. Another thing that I've seen a lot in Agile and Scrum teams is that things go really great. They adopt Agile, they start doing well, and they start getting some great velocity and they start delivering. And everyone gets excited. And then what happens? It starts trailing off. They're not quite as concerned about it anymore. And the developers are kind of not really wanting to pair anymore. And the management is thinking, well, we did that already. What else do we need to do? So that you see this kind of great excitement and then things kind of taper off. That's what happens in general in systems. The behavior gets better before it gets worse. So if we know that's going to happen, what are we doing about that? What are we doing to ensure that we're continuing to motivate people, train people, prepare people? How do we integrate the IT and business better so we don't have these weird situations where they show up and say, I've got to have this tomorrow. I don't care what your process is. I don't care what it breaks in his bucket of stuff. I just care about my bucket of stuff. As a project manager, I can't tell you how many times a program manager came to me and said, I've got to have this done. And I don't blame them. They're under the gun. But what about the other program managers that I was delivering for? They had to say needs as well. And the easy way out often leads back in. It's like the story of the drunk guy. He's under the light out in front of his house and he's looking for his keys or he's looking around on the ground and somebody says, what are you looking for? Looking for your keys. Well, where did you leave them? Well, I dropped them by the door. What are you looking here for? Well, there's no light by the door. So it's this whole concept that it's easy to do what's familiar.  You're looking at yourself. You're introspective. You're retrospecting. That's why we do retrospective. So we can learn so we can grow. But when we stop learning, that's when systems begin to take over because the harder you push, it'll push back unless you're doing things to prevent them. Faster is slower. We know that. Sometimes we do agile thinking that we're just doing it for speed. And yeah, sometimes we can get speed, depending on the system. But, you know, faster is slower in the sense that unless we're thinking ahead, unless we're committing to these things that we're doing, it can cause problems, right? If we're exchanging the long term for the short term. And this is really boring stuff, but I like it anyway. So another big problem that we have is cause and effect are not connected always in time, right? In other words, just because we do something in one sprint doesn't mean we're going to see the results in the next. And maybe much further down the line before we realize that code we should have refactored is now causing some major problems, okay? So, there's this delay. But if we don't think about the fact that there's a delay, we just go happily on our way. And we never, we're not looking at the rest of the system looking for those delays. Now, we know from the leading perspective that we're always trying to get rid of those delays, right? Because those delays cause things to be covered up and cause them to be hidden. And when they're hidden, what happens? Then you have defects that show up at the end that came out of nowhere that are nasty that you can't ship because of this defect. What we should have known about it already. So, I'm just going to say, that's basically, you know, this systems thinking is this concept of looking at the whole picture. But really, we need to take it and apply it to the whole organization and not just, and even for the person living on the Agile team or a tester living on a team or an architect or a developer. The things you do should be connected to the things a company is doing. When I go to implement Agile in some place, I start with value stream mapping, right? I start at the top. What are you trying to do as a business? What's your strategic goals? And by the time we're done, their backlog is connected directly to their strategic goals. So that as a developer I'm sitting on a team, I know that this task that I'm doing right now actually is delivering value to the strategic goals of my company, right? But we don't often do that. So we're wind up doing all this work, lots and lots of work all the time that in the end just gets thrown away because we're not looking at it from a broader perspective. So we're going to talk about personal mastery. Personal mastery is this concept of expanding our own ability to produce the results we want in life. You know, it has to do with self-learning, but it has a lot of work. There's a lot more to it than that. I encourage you to read the book. There's a ton of information around this, but I want results in my life. What's important to you? What do you want out of life? You know, not very long ago, I essentially left corporate America to start my own business because I was tired of someone else determining my priorities for me. I was tired of somebody else telling me to work 12 hours a day building printers. You know, it's just not that important to me. It's not that it's not necessary. I'm glad there are people building printers because I use them, but that's not what makes me satisfied at the end of the day. So I wanted to be on my own so that I could pursue my own goals, my own dreams. What's important to you? How are you growing? How are you learning? The basic idea here is that you as an individual must learn before the organization can learn. Doesn't that make sense? As an organization, we try to say well, we need to move into this space. You've got to move into this market space. Well, we're not going to actually invest in any training. We're not going to invest in hiring people that know that space, or we're not going to invest in giving people time like on Fridays to build code in that area to explore it. We're just going to do things that we've always done. But as an individual, if we don't learn how in the world is an organization going to learn? So you have to learn first. Well, gosh, if you have to learn something, as a manager, what's my job? My job is to make you the best that you can be. Why don't our companies do that? You know? So I think Agile has the opportunity to, again, lift people up and help them be important because why? They're part of the decision process. They're part of making choices, right? So they're empowering people to have something in their life that satisfies. Because if you're just working to get paid, that doesn't really satisfy. Not might, for a time. But it doesn't last. So where does this start? It starts with personal vision. This is really good for me. I like this. An ability to focus on intrinsic desires. What do you really want? What are you pursuing in your life? As a developer, in your code base what are you pursuing? Are you pursuing just getting a job done? Are you pursuing knowing more about it? Being better at what you do? Are you pursuing being better for other people? Are you pursuing those relationships with others that make you a better coder because in the end you know why I'm building the software? Okay? So an ability to focus on the intrinsic desires. Ah, thank you. Is really critical and this is where it starts. People seeking mastery, personal mastery are continually doing these two things. Clarifying what's important and learning and looking learning about what is real. When I went on my own and started my own business it became immediately apparent that there was a lot of things I didn't know. Right? Is that going to stop me? No. Because I know some things and there's a few people in the world that know a little bit less than what I do so I try to find those and help them. Now there's a whole bunch of other people who know way more than me and so I go to places like this to learn from them and to try to be a part of them and be a part of their story. We all have a story. We all have something that brought us where we are. Are we a part of that for someone else? Are we seeking to really see where we are? Are we introspecting to say what is important to me? What's important to our organization? Is it all these other fringe things? Is there a core business that we should be focusing in? Are we building our people? So continually clarifying what's important, continually learning to see reality. Well, isn't this what we do in Agile? This is what we do all the time when we write. We're always looking back and we're always looking ahead. We're saying, how can we do this better? What opportunities for improvement do we have? How can I work better with this guy who's totally different than me? Now if I have a mature attitude I'm going to sit down with that guy that I don't really like and I'm going to find a way to have some common boundary or some common space, some common ground that I can get better at. This guy, really, really sharp guy but really blunt. He was just kind of rude. Everyone thought he was rude. He came across as rude, grumpy, was in constant pain all the time. I couldn't really tell. There was something that seemed wrong with the person. I'm just normally an outgoing person and it just didn't sit well with me. I had to work with him. I had to sit next to him and I wasn't willing to let that lay. I found out just real quickly that it wasn't that he's rude it's just that he's interested in the bottom line. He's interested in the details. He's not really interested in all the fluff. Once I found that out I was able to say, here you go, here's what you need. Here's the bottom line. One sentence I delivered what I needed to deliver to. Then all of a sudden he loved to talk about fishing, racing cars and building rockets. All of a sudden the whole door opened up to this guy because I learned a little bit about who he was and what he needed. Well, if we can in our organizations play the same role and say what is the core thing we need to do then we can deliver those things first and the rest opens up to us. I mentioned yesterday a couple of people that I read a proverb a day or so ago that said once we have understanding basic understanding of how the system is working then we get knowledge. In other words, we start to see the real issues. But unless you know how the system is flowing unless you know how you can grow and what's holding you back from growing, what are those limiting factors? How can you see? So these things help us have knowledge about our system help us to learn more about what's happening. It's this idea of moving from where we are to where we want to be this vision so there's a gap, we feel the gap we think we need to be better at these things it says really small in there it didn't zoom in like I wanted but there's this concept of creative tension we talked a little bit about a couple of other sessions yesterday about conflict in the team we talked a little bit more about that but creative tension is this idea of I'm stretching forward trying to grab hold of something and there's other things holding me back so what's the best way to move forward is to release those things holding me back because I'm already motivated man I'm already going places, I know what I want I know how I need to move forward but there's these things holding me back sometimes there are other people so I need to work with those people sometimes there's a business owner because I never can understand anything he tells me how am I supposed to build that? I don't even know what you're asking have I taken the time to ask realizing that there's conflict this is kind of interesting many times we think we can't learn, we can't do something new because we are powerless we think that we don't have any power to do that we think that we're worthless that we don't actually deserve that he says in his book you guys can just kind of listen along and say if you were to say this out loud and say I can create my life exactly the way I want it in all dimensions work, family, relationships community and the whole world do you believe you have the power to do that? do you feel like you're worried to do that? so what's holding you back? there's lots of opportunities in your own organization to overcome obstacles if you'll do it if you'll reach out and be vulnerable it's hard because you might we're afraid we're afraid someone's going to find out we don't know as much as we pretend that we know so we overcome conflict by committing to the truth and this relentless desire to root out our limits and then this next step is driving it to the subconscious I want it to be part of my autonomic system I don't have to think about all the things that have to happen for me to scratch my head my brain does, it does thousands of steps for me to scratch my head but I didn't have to think about that so we can drive these things into our autonomics the things that happen automatically things like sitting down with someone and asking what they think that seems so obvious but sometimes when you're focused and you're trying to get it done, you don't do that and in the end your quality is worse so how does agile help? it gives importance to interaction iteration and incremental discovery we're learning, we're growing this is what is good for an organization this is why I want to see organizations do agile sometimes they deliver software value frequently but because it gives them discovery opportunities that's why I like short sprints because you get to practice more right? conversation and collaboration, relying on personal and team craftsmanship personal accountability transparency and multiple perspectives have you ever heard of the three blind men in the elephant? you probably have this blind man was told to reach out and feel he didn't tell them what it was and then one guy was feeling the tail and he said well it feels like a rope another guy was feeling his leg and said well it feels like a tree another guy was feeling the side it feels like a wall and they were all right and they were all wrong it was all the same thing it was one animal but they had different perspectives right? they had a different way of seeing things well you're in a cross functional team we go around you that see things from a different perspective you need their perspectives but we sit there we just do our little job we don't think about the value that we could get if we would open up which is a scary thing to do sometimes shared vision is about what we want to create it's having this one picture the interesting thing about shared vision that it's built from your personal vision if everyone in this room has their own personal vision about what's the best the example we did with Alistair the best word, the best name but we had to come together with a shared vision we voted, mindset was the top so our personal visions apply into the shared vision and now we're all a little better off because of the shared vision we can all buy into it right? talk a little bit more about this in a second but the interesting thing is that Maslow have you heard of Maslow's hierarchy of need the base level is survival the top is self-fulfilling the things that we do can be so completely ingrained that they cannot be separated from us in other words they become they get forced down through to the lower level so in other words my ability to communicate and to bring in other people's perspectives if I can drive that down to my core need I don't have to think about it anymore if my organization automatically pursues diverse ideas and in our scrum team I'm automatically asking okay I've heard that idea who has a different idea who has another way to do it and as a scrum master I wouldn't leave until we have at least three ways to do something and then we would talk about what the best way was interrelationships require common understanding there's different kinds of commitments we make to one another sometimes it's more just signing up, I'm enrolling sometimes I'm doing it because I have to I'm compliant sometimes I just don't want to there's different kinds of compliance of course if you want people to invest in you guess what? you have to invest in them if you're going to have people that are committed to helping you deliver let's say the business person is helping you deliver good stories guess what? you're going to have to be committed to them and not just give them a bunch of fluff and excuses when something doesn't happen you take responsibility as a team, you take accountability as a team you succeed as a team, you fail as a team but you live in openness and transparency with those who depend on you right be honest and genuine you can't make people join to connect with you you have to reach out to connect to them it's your responsibility, not theirs reflective conversation has this idea of mental models to sum this up as mental model is your world view how do you see things? what's your perspective? which part of the elephant are you holding on to? and then have you shared that with somebody because you're right, at least the code do you think that elephant is just a little rope? and it's not I think the thing that's really important about this whole area is that in our organization we need to create ways for people to learn Google does this they'll give people Fridays or every other Friday something like that to do what they want to do they can do anything they want it has to be a productive project it doesn't have to be within the organization but something that they're learning and growing and building the company up why? because it brings that diversity in it brings that culture of inquiry to the table the worst thing I hate to see as a group of developers sitting around a table and no one says anything I know why that happens because there's lots of times that are just introspective people or they're not as loud and obnoxious as I am so they don't just automatically talk they like to think first but everyone has something to say everyone has something to share you've got a background you've learned some things you're willing to explore and enjoy the diversity of thought around you different world views forward here team learning we're trying to go somewhere we're trying to get somewhere well what usually happens is this that's what happens why? it happens because we don't talk to each other and when we do, we're not really connecting and we don't really care what should it look like that takes work are you willing to do the work? I hope so having real dialogue with one another conflict I love conflict conflict is an opportunity I hate conflict in the sense of arguing with somebody the conflict is an opportunity for you to do something better right? I have a conflict with someone from another country because of my ideological positions I don't need to learn from them if you have a conflict of what the coach should look like you have an opportunity to learn from someone to share but it requires these different ideas doesn't it make sense that if we're going to come together that we have our own passions our own ideas that can create conflict but that's good that we have different ideas right? it helps us to be better we need to learn to practice together as a team we need to learn from ourselves about learning organizations personal masters, vision mental models, team learning systems thinking I think agile is a great pattern for that I encourage you to dig into it find out how agile is making you better but also how thinking about the whole system can make your agile better as well so good luck thank you very much


The Ministry of Health recently received a donation of COVID-19 vaccine stickers and fuel vouchers from Saul E.C. Ltd. and First National Bank to aid in the successful rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination drive. General Manager of Saul E.C. Ltd. St. Lucia and Dominica, Deborah Raphael Edwards says, it was necessary to make a contribution towards combating the COVID-19 pandemic and also giving back to the hard-working nurses. Saul E.C. Ltd. has good corporate partners. When we found out that the stickers were indeed running out, there was a small need within the Ministry. We thought it fit in that we should partner with the Ministry. Given that COVID has been a very difficult time for us as a solution, and as you've heard, even what Ms. Lodz said, hope. We are really unsure around in the corner. So we decided that we would come on board with the Ministry to partner. We think this is just the first of many opportunities to work with the Ministry. Manager of Projects and Services of First National Bank, Robert Furious says, his organization is aimed at caring for solutions and giving back to the community. We are here as an Indigenous institution to support you in whatever way that we can. And so I extend that support further once it's necessary. First National Bank will be there as an Indigenous institution supporting the Ministry and of course the people of St. Lucia by extension. Director of the Bureau of Health Education, Natasha Lloyd-Felix, expressed heartfelt gratitude to First National Bank and Saul E.C. Ltd. for the donation and says it will be very instrumental in the advancement of the COVID-19 vaccination drive. That sticker has done so much for us at the Ministry because people came forward when we had none left, asking for their stickers, wanting pictures with their stickers, and found themselves in a position to become advocates on behalf of not only the Ministry of Health but for St. Lucia, to ensure that we led the charge collectively as a nation to give hope for a change for the better, a hope for us to return to what's normal, and a hope that we now can move forward collectively as a nation to take charge of our health and our well-being. So for you seeing the value of these stickers, which I think is more of a statement than a sticker says a lot because though small, it's very tangible, it's very meaningful. And so we thank you with great gratitude. The Ministry also thanked private physician Dr. Tanya Brobre for her dedication and commitment in mobilizing the private business organizations to support the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination drive. The Ministry of Health received a total of 20,000 COVID-19 vaccination stickers, $1,000 fuel vouchers, and thermal flash bottles. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fennel Neptune.


Good evening and welcome to the private property show house edition. We start off in the sunny Somerset West. This absolutely magnificent five bedroom home offers you views over Falz Bay. It is superb and in the prime location in Somerset West for those with a particular taste of stylish, stylish feel this home in Somerset West. We move to our second property in the French Hook area. Val de Vie Wine Farm Living. Four bedroom, four bathroom, two garages. Absolutely modern home and fully equipped with your newest technology features equipped with the best. This family home offers effortless entertaining. This is Val de Vie in the French Hook area. Move to our three bedroom in Sainte Bay. This home is absolutely it's ready waiting for you to move in in a gated estate. Of course if you look on the outside they are mountain views. Absolutely gorgeous. Massive open plan entrance, dining room, TV room and of course for those cold winter nights a gorgeous gorgeous fireplace. We move on over to the Serengeti estate. This absolutely gorgeous four bedroom, four bath, five garages. This home is perfect also ready to move in. It's got obviously the projector in the entertainment room and many extra features in this beautiful home.  For those load shedding nights that we need to prepare for surround sound, gas, heaters. The list is endless. Be sure to check out this gorgeous property in Serengeti and we move on up still in Serengeti. Absolutely stylish home as you can see from the birds eye view over there. This is stylish opulent architecture right here luxury home for you to move into. Obviously has built-in appliances all over this home and those extra features. Be sure to check that out. This is Serengeti estate gorgeous, gorgeous investment opportunity over here. And next up I give you this magnificent mansion. 11 bedroom in Bridal, seven bathrooms and 10 garages. This is the perfect investment opportunity. Own a piece of paradise right here in Bridal tranquility at its best. Away from the hustle and the bustle gives you a little bit of farm style with modern features to the bedrooms the open lounge area and your garden area over there. Perfect estate for a big family. To the Serengeti estate we have a five bedroom five bath mansion in Serengeti. This one has it all in a secluded cul-de-sac area large entrance and pool area with of course the views of the Gulf estate over there in Serengeti estate. Absolutely gorgeous home over here. And we move on over to this gorgeous four bedroom home all the way in blue gill four bathrooms four garage a masterpiece family home. Look at that majestic entrance to the bedrooms to the house. Lovely big sliding doors entrance for that gorgeous light just to shine in elegant kitchen of course that staircase absolutely gorgeous with chandeliers filling this home with that modern elegant feature to this beautiful home. Serengeti estate we offer you this lovely single story mansion seven bedrooms four bathrooms and of course this beautiful home did feature in the South African home owner magazine so you know that it is legit and extremely stylish. It also offers you a farm style element that still keeps with that modern home element also American shutters absolutely gorgeous filling this beautiful home in Serengeti estate. And last but definitely not least five bedroom five bathroom and four garages Serengeti estate once again offering us an amazing experience of this beautiful home of course this one also has a special feature it is wheelchair friendly and it's a move easy home look at those gorgeous finishes around this beautiful masterpiece in Serengeti estate. And there you have it that's all we have for you on this beautiful Saturday afternoon end it off with a bang and check out our gorgeous homes on the private property website stay safe and we'll see you again tomorrow.


Should you still negotiate higher salary if you were laid off during a recession? Here's a tip, number one, yes, you should, but really depends on the situation and how to do it. First of all, if you were laid off and in the final round interview, you have a conversation with a recruiter. If you discover that you're competing with other candidates and you're not the number one candidate and the recruiter kind of alluded to that they're selecting among all three of you guys in that situation, I wouldn't negotiate. However, if in the interview, you clearly can discover that you are the number one candidate or the Harry manager told you so or the recruiter told you so, you are the number one candidate, in that case, you can still negotiate very high compensation because you have the right and the value you can add to the company. For example, assuming my recently landed job in TikTok, I negotiate offer for her. Not only original salary is very high, we also increase salary again by using the right negotiation strategy. Like and subscribe and watch the next video for more product management tips.


I don't feel like that. I don't feel like that at all, but I do have monthly favorites for you guys. And I'm going to talk a little bit in between this about how things are going for me and what's been happening. And we're going to start out with a really great bag. OK, the reason I'm doing this and starting out with this is because I am moving this month into a different house, not anything better, not anything special. We're just moving into another house. And so I had to get something to carry my laptop with. And this thing is huge. My laptop is huge. It's 17.3 screen. And so it's big.  And this holds a time. You wouldn't think it would because it's got a really slim footprint on it. But this really does hold a lot. You also have the nice strap that goes across you in order to carry it, which is great. And of course, I had to get purple. Hello. I knew I was going to get purple. You knew I was going to get purple. I also touched on how light it is. The only thing that's heavy here is the actual computer itself. So I really do love this bag. My point in starting out with that bag and telling you about my move is that I have all these bags around me and they are for my move. But also I just kind of stocked up on things that I wanted to travel with. This is the time of year when so many people are going on vacation. So I definitely thought I'd share with you a few of the bags that I have been enjoying this one right here. This one, again, huge bag. I'll stick a picture up here because I know you're not going to be able to see it. By the way, I'm not getting up today because I just don't feel that great. And so I do a lot better just sitting down and showing you products. This bag is a weekender bag and I have fallen in love with it. Now, there is a white one that I showed a few months ago and I happened to have packed it away. I love that one because it does have chargers on it. If you do need one with chargers, I'll make sure that I link that one below. But I like this bag because it is super super lightweight material. It's a vinyl material that really washes up really easy nylon material, not vinyl. Also on the very bottom, you have your shoe compartment, which is awesome when you're going somewhere for the weekend. Maybe you need a pair of pair of heels. Maybe you need a change of sandals. It does also have the clip here where you can clip those together, carry it that way. It also has a big huge strap on it. I love this bag. It's so, so roomy. It has an extra bag right here that you can take with you. And it also has a smaller bag, which I have stuffed full right now of makeup. So these two bags come with it at no extra charge. And you're able to do a little bit more organizing inside the weekender bag. So that's the second one about travel. Now, I also did pick up another handbag. You all know that when I do a favorites video every month, I'm going to show you a handbag. I am so into these quilted bags. They're all the rage right now, but I love them. I think that they just look a little bit more posh, a little bit more elevated, but they don't cost you hardly anything compared to all of the name brands. Now, this one looks like it just has a handle on the lid right here or on the flap right here, but it's not just that. What you do is you stick down inside the bag, the long handle that you have for it, which, by the way, is so pretty with the gold accents. And it's just it's a gorgeous bag. And this will do a double strap, which is so nice to be able to use it over the shoulder. It's also great if you want to go ahead and pull it up like this and do a cross body. And it's really roomy compared to a lot of bags that I've been getting lately. And I just really have fallen in love with this. This comes in some of the funnest colors for summer. It comes in a pink and a yellow and a green, and it's just it's got some really great colors. So if you are in the market for a bag or if you just love bags like I do, go ahead and check this one out. It's a really great sturdy bag. By the way, I will list and link my earrings and the shirt. And I'll put up a picture of the shirt right here so that you can see it. It's a great shirt for dressing up or you can dress it down with a pair of jeans. It's just a really pretty shirt with the polka dots on the sleeve. But it is short sleeves, so it's kind of nice for summer. And then the earrings are just a gold hoop with rhinestones. And I think they're gorgeous as well. Actually, they do have the little rhinestones inside of the earring, too. So I thought those were really pretty, kind of a little bit of a different look to the hoops instead of just the regular rhinestones. OK, I have to tell you about this. Have to have to have to. This is called Amino Lean, and it's kind of a complete amino acid formula. If you don't know what amino acids are, amino acids are the building blocks to our muscles. They are also part of the collagen that gets built in our skin, those peptides, that kind of thing. So this is any time energy, weight loss management or weight management, not weight loss, mental focus. There are 70 servings in here, which is really good. And the other thing is this gives me energy like no other. And that's why I wanted to bring it to you today. I've been taking this for about 10 days, and I thought that it was just because I was feeling a little better after surgery, that I was getting more energy. And I looked back and sure enough, I started taking this about the day that I felt better. I'm somebody that in the afternoon always has to take a nap because I'm so tired. And I've been taking this and I don't have to nap. Which is unheard of for me. I mean, I've been taking naps for probably 20 years in the afternoon because it gets so tired with my fibromyalgia, but this is really helping a lot. Now, it doesn't take away pain. It doesn't do anything like that. And as far as weight management goes, I think because you have more energy, you have less time to think about eating, you're doing more things. I haven't really been that hungry. And I have that tendency to be hungry all the time because that's my mental outlook, forgive me for saying this, but it's my drug of choice is eating or sugar. And this really seems to be helping with all of those. And I'm really looking forward to the mental focus. And hopefully by the time I get a ways into this, that will kick in. Because since my surgery, I have felt a little fuzzy. I know that that's all about being in pain and everything. But this really has helped. And I can highly recommend it. Now, I will tell you that it says to take it in about eight to ten ounces of water, two scoops of it, but that those two little scoops in water, just eight ounces is terribly sweet. I mean, there's no way I can get through it. So I just put it in my water in the morning that I drink a lot of. And I try to get done with that one before noon so that this doesn't interfere with me sleeping at night. Although I have taken this in the afternoon and I haven't noticed it disrupting my sleep. And please always look at your ingredients, always talk to your doctor. I am just sharing with you what's working for me and nothing else. These natural supplements, sometimes they can interfere with the medications that you are taking. So please talk to your doctor, talk to your pharmacist and make sure it's not going to interfere at all. But this has been so good for me. And I'm really excited about using it. I've been watching a lot of hair tutorials and these women are talking about the longer your hair is, the better a bore hair bristle brush is. And this one was recommended and it does have the plastic bristles in it as well. But what those other bore bristles do, and I've been noticing this a lot, is they're super smoothing on your hair. I'm just shocked at how smooth it makes my hair feel. The other thing is at night when you're brushing your hair before you go to bed, if you start at the crown of your head or at the top of your head, you're brushing the oils through to the ends, which really does help with your hair growth also. And if you have color-treated hair or if you have damaged hair, the oils on your scalp are really important for helping the rest of your hair help. So this came with a comb. It came with another smaller one that I'm carrying in my purse. And I don't remember what else it came with. Doesn't seem like it came with much else. But I'm really enjoying this brush. I've been bringing you a brush just about every single time that I've been doing my monthly favorites lately. This is my latest favorite and I like it because of being able to brush those oils and help the ends that might be a little bit more damaged than the rest of my hair. Capari sent me their new SPF and I couldn't be more excited about it. It is the Sun Shield Soft Glow Daily Face SPF 30. And what I love about this is instead of it being just an SPF that I have to put on after my moisturizer and let's sink in, this is not just an SPF. This has turned into my primer as well. When you put this on, you're going to feel the silicone in it and it fills in the pores and it creates the barrier between your makeup and your moisturizer so that you don't have to have an extra primer. I've been using it as my primer and it's been working so well. It is slick like a primer normally is with the silicones in it. And yet it sinks in so nicely that I just really enjoy it. But yes, this is a very slick product. So if you're somebody that is oily, I don't think that you will like that this very much. And again, full disclosure, Capari did send me this. But you know what, Capari has been sending me things for a long time. And this is the first thing I brought to you.  I only bring you the best of the best. Also, if you're going traveling and you're getting on an airplane, I found this really great kit for TSA because you can only take a certain amount of ounces, right? And this is just perfect for me because there are a lot of containers in here, a lot of different containers in here. And so for me to be able to put it all in a compact container like this and get it all in there, it's great. So if you've been looking for something that you can carry on to the plane and easily show the gatekeepers, then this would be a really good one for you as well. This is another SPF only. This one is super hydrating. Now this one is new from the inky list. This is the polyglutamic acid. This is their Dewey sunscreen SPF of 30. I will make sure I put up on the screen whether Capari's was mineral. I'm not sure about it, but I'm pretty sure this one is mineral. You'll be able to see that right away. But what's really cool about it is it sinks in so quickly. That's one thing that I check immediately about SPFs is do they sink in? You're always going to have a little bit of that slick feeling, right? I'm enjoying this one because it is very hydrating. It is the one that I use today, but I also put some of the Capari on right in the middle right here where I get my oils breaking through partway through the day. So this is a beautiful one. I'm really excited to be bringing it to you and showing it to you today. And I did purchase this with my own money, inky list. I would love to be on your PR list so I can bring these lovely ladies the very best of the best. This is a really, really good SPF. I want to mention this just very, very briefly because this is a five piece LED magnet telescoping pick up tool. This has a bunch of different tools in it that are telescoping. OK, this is a mere one right here. And they just pull out to where I think that they're about well, the little handle came right off of that boop. So they just pull out to where they're I think they're about 30 inches. If I'm not mistaken, they also have one that's a flashlight. You have one that is just a magnet to have one that has another tool on there. And then you have this one that is a bigger mirror that is lighted.  One of my videos I did, I don't know, it's probably like a year and a half ago was all about gifts for him. I thought that everybody would really want to know about gifts for him, but that video flopped. So I'm definitely going to put it in the first comment pinned below along with all these products, but I'm also going to put it in the description box of this video. This is a great gift for him. It's something that he will use over and over again. But those two videos that I did, they did not do that well, but boy, they are so full of the coolest gifts. And I can tell you why they're so cool. My husband and my son helped me pick them out. So really great gifts for the guy in your life. One of the things that I get asked in almost every single video is about my readers. I buy all of my readers on Amazon. Now, this is probably the plainest one that I have, and it's the dirtiest one too, because this one is the one that my husband was using of mine. This is just a plain one, but this comes in a bunch of different colors. They come in sets. You can get whatever strength you need. I have to have a pretty good, you know, reader to be able to see anything these days. This is a fun cat eye with the bling right here. I just thought that was so cute. I don't remember whether this comes in three to five, something like that. I know that this next one, this is the one that I wear all the time and I get asked every time I wear it on on camera, what this reader is. And this, again, is from Amazon. I'll make sure that I link it below. It's got the bling and the tortoise shell. This comes in four different colors as well. And yeah, I just I'm one of those people that I have, like 10 readers laying around all day long in every part of my house, because otherwise I'm going to be chasing a reader down. I also want to share with you these little blushes that I got. These actually come in a three pack and one of the other one is actually the one that I wore today is over with my other makeup. But these are a liquid blush. They're a little bit messy. I wish that the delivery system was just a tiny bit better. The blush itself, though, it's really pigmented and I am enjoying them very much. You do have to be careful because if you get too much on it, you're going to be blending forever, but they are really nice. I use a makeup sponge to apply them. I actually just go and put it on back of my hand and then I'll dot it around my hand until it's blended out just a little bit and then I'll put it on my cheeks. These are really great. And like I said, I do have one on today and I've been enjoying them so much and just a little bit goes a long ways. This is like the blush that Nars has. And I do feel like it's every bit as much pigmented and it has a really nice lasting power. All right, this one was a blast from the past for me. There are four of these. There's a silver one that comes in this set as well. And you would think that they would be pens, but they're not pens. What they are is lip brushes. And I used to have a lip brush all while I was growing up doing makeup and then way into my married years, I had a lip brush. This is a great lip brush. So you have first the one that has a little tip on it that you can outline with. And then on the other side, you have the one that you can fill in with it. I love these. I think they are so good. They're retractable. They work really well on my lips to blend out. You know, if you have a lip liner that you use, it's hard to blend.  And I love that this one has a cap on the one end. And then the other side is retractable and you just push it back down. I used to have these brushes and then they would open up in my purse, make a mess in the bottom of my purse. But since this has a cap and it's retractable, I haven't had that problem at all. And there are four of them. You could put it in with anything to make a really nice gift and or just give all four of them if you want to or keep all four of them for yourself because they're so pretty. I also want to talk to you one more time because this month, the Benton fermentation essence has saved me.  I mean, my eyes, my eyelids peeled. That's how bad it was. I had my chin peeling, my neck peeling.  And it was because it all got kind of burnt and irritated from that extreme product. And by the way, it wasn't the product's fault. It was user error. So I won't even tell you what the product is because it was a really good product. I just used too much and I used it too soon together in consecutive days. But the Benton, this was almost the only thing that I could use. This and what I talk about with the Sukoyaku Suhara, those two products were the only things that I could use while my face was healing because it was so sensitive. But this with the fermentation products in it, it's Bifidate and Galactomyces. Those two are such soothing products. They also have a little bit of anti-oxidants in them. And I just wanted to mention it again. I talk about those all the time, but I'm going to forever stand on my soapbox about them because when you buy Lancome Genophique or Estee Lauder Night Repair, you're purchasing what the product is in here. However, it is nowhere near as potent as this is. This is the strong percentage of it. It's something like 50 percent, 60 percent. And in those other two products, they might get up to 10 percent. Some of them are at 8 percent. So this is wonderful, soothing, saved my butt. And I'm just so glad that I had it. And again, I wanted to talk to you about it. Lastly, I want to leave you with the hat that I show every year. I just love this hat. It's so cute. It's got a wide brim and it's really going to help keep you out of the sun. Keep those harmful rays off of your face. Wear your SPF, wear your wide brimmed hats and really protect your skin from those nasty UV rays. I hope that you did enjoy this video and I hope that you're having a great day. Are you enjoying any specific products this month that I should know about? Let me know that in the comments section. And like I told you, there will be all of these products pinned in the first comment and also down in the description box. Hope you're having a great day. Take care. I love you so much. Goodbye, my friends.


So So I got asked recently by one of my loyal and trusty fans What do you do? Or how do you deal with that naysayer?  It tells you that you can't do it. It won't work You're too dumb. You're too weak. You won't have you won't handle the attention It's disrespectful So it took me a couple of minutes of contemplation of where this was coming from based on his Question, but then it quickly became clear to me that what we're talking about is The effect of having Suppressive people in your life Now I'm gonna make a value judgment and say that you're probably either leaving with your parents or living with people or Networking with people who are extremely suppressive towards you These kinds of voices that you hear all the time. This won't work. This is bad.   Does that make sense? You're born as a baby so you got them along the way and You said that you're able to keep Doing what you want to do While you hear the voices in the background, so you have this anxiety In you and the voices are in the background So the solution to your problem is to remove the people who are naysayers from your life either Tell them to never talk that way again So neutralize a problem or Completely remove them from your life. I know you expected something better something more Spiritual inner maybe but I'm sorry. That's the answer You asked in the for the sake of the video. You said let's call it the removing the naysayer well In order to remove the inner naysayer You have to first remove the outer Naysayers because the inner naysayer is only a reflection Of the way you're living of who you're living with So as long as you let people who are naysayers into your life People who tell you you're not good enough. You shouldn't do this. Attention is bad Wait, it's not the right time.  Of course not.   You're good at nothing. It will be pretty clear that you should leave So what these people do they pretend to help you and they tell you now yet. You're not good enough. You have to wait all these Assertions that are meant to suppress you to stop you from going after the things you want from expansion You should also watch my previous video on the truth about relationships or secret about relationships That i just uploaded yesterday because i also talk about what happens when you carry around you these people who are Suppressing you and slowing you down and how you can never hope to even Have the slightest chance of achieving your dream If you let them be in your life So take care of that problem. You're not going to let go of that inner naysayer Till the outer naysayers are gone And i say this through experience as somebody who's had a lot of inner naysayers in me And once i've broken out of it once i decided i'm not going to listen to these people anymore i'm going to live on my own The inner naysayer was also gone now when i came back to these people I was already independent in my thinking so they could not control me Like they could then and i could pose limits on how they could speak to me So just because i tell you to cut them off it doesn't mean you have to do it forever But it does mean that you're going to have to take control of your inner space and then control their reaction towards you if you want to have them in your life So let go of the outer naysayers and then the inner naysayer Will disappear and you because you know it's rational You know what you want to do is the rational thing to do You know, it's the right thing to do not because i taught you but because your intuition tells you so Because your rational mind tells you so so anytime you're not acting rationally It's almost always the fault of the people around you And when i say the fault of the people around you i mean your fault for keeping these people Around you so take care of that and let me know how it went and i promise you your inner naysayer Will go away with them and it's good that he stays that way Hope that video help hope this video Hope you please subscribe if you haven't and let me know if you need some help with free Online coaching at least the first call is free and if it's a good fit we might just work together So like subscribe all that shit. See you soon


Welcome back to SuperCloud 3. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, live in Palo Alto Studios, second day of two great days of security plus AI. That's the theme for SuperCloud 3. SuperCloud 4 is coming up in October. Mark your calendar. That's gonna be all about AI. This session actually is a lot about AI and security. We're gonna find the truth in the data. Joel Inman, who's the CEO of compute.ai. Check it out, I love the domain name. Joel, great to see you. Keep alumni in a while. How's things? Thanks for having me. Things are great. I just got started coming back into the space after a time away and I was able to be reintroduced to Vikram Yoshi, who's the founder of the company and really excited to partner with him. He's supposed to be here today. Couldn't make it, had something going on. Really appreciate you guys coming on. We've been unpacking SuperCloud 3 episodically every quarter. This one's about security and AI. Obviously the data has been a big conversation. If you look at the forcing function of this next wave that's coming, the AI certainly over the top is powering a lot of activity in the developer community as well as companies. So security is an operational thing. So data now is continuing to inject a forcing function in how people are organizing how they do cloud and how they do on-premise hybrids and certainly with the Edge as well. What's your take on SuperCloud as this evolves into the next layer of IT coming? It's the same game, new variables. What's your view of SuperCloud? Yeah, I think it's really driven by people needing to get more out of their data, to get those deep meaningful insights out of their data. And the demand for analytics is about three, four orders of magnitude what it whatever has been before today. And it's just growing. I mean, AI ML is kind of the accelerator on top of that. But if you look at what's happening right now with just cloud infrastructure and the need to scale out and support those massive complex workloads, that's where we are today. And we're at an inflection point where that demand is only going to get stronger. So there may be a security angle here, but we were talking off camera about the semantic layer. And we talk all the time about the single version of the truth. It's been like the holy grail and tech forever. Data warehouses didn't do it, MDM didn't do it. Lake houses haven't done it. So what is your story around the semantic layer? That's a great question. And kind of that goes to the heart of the founding of Compute AI. Data warehouses and data lake houses have been a great step forward in kind of building these repositories where we're trying to analyze the data, right? But you need to connect that data. You need to have that tissue across your entire organization in order to go a level deeper and understand what to do with your business. Compute.ai and what we're doing, our vision for the future is really separating Compute from data management. The reason why we've had Compute as part of these relational database architectures has been it was convenient, okay? But now the demand for that Compute is skyrocketing and having that Compute trapped in data silos is no better than having data trapped in data silos because it starts to break down. There's not concurrency and the costs kind of get out of control as you start to try to feed the super cloud with that kind of infrastructure. So contextualize this for us because we've been talking about this the last couple of months and the last couple of decades really. But so you take Snowflake, what it did. So it separates Compute from storage, but it doesn't do what you're saying because you still put it all inside of Snowflake. I think I'm inferring. Look at what Databricks did at its recent show and it's basically building out a data mesh with its lake house, being able to connect even any data, Snowflake or whatever. Now of course, Snowflake is also connecting different data types. What's different about your vision? So the difference of separating Compute and our product is called pure Compute, right? Because you really want to get that Compute set aside. It's building Compute into the fabric of your server infrastructure. So we envision a Compute engine on every server and interacting the data in a very open and scalable fashion, SQL directly on files, taking that relational component and then plugging in a Compute infrastructure that is inherently reliable, that is highly memory efficient and that is able to scale from a tiny server from one node up to hundreds of nodes, thousands of users. You can hit it with different workloads. You can hit it with ad hoc queries. You can hit it with batch processing. It doesn't go down. It doesn't fail and the costs are linear as they scale. You're just simply benefiting from the elasticity of the cloud that you're on. And then I'm going to have data and different data types. I'm going to have different query mechanisms and you're saying you basically, I think I'm inferring translating it all back into SQL to make it simple, but I'm going to have vector database. I'm going to have graph database. I'm going to have relational. I'm going to have structured. I'm going to have unstructured. All those different data elements of today are incoherent. Now I can maybe bring in a DBT to KPI the metrics in a data warehouse. I can maybe do something with that scale, but it's still a real heavy lift. Are you, is your vision to change that so that all those data elements are coherent and can be joined at scale? Yeah, that's exactly what we're seeing and what we're saying. I mean, you said the keyword there DBT, right? And people are using that authoring tool to create their workloads and their pipelines and try to knit this data together. So when you're doing that, when you're creating the semantic layer, what you're doing is you're actually executing thousands and hundreds of thousands of joints, right? You're taking tables and formats and rows and columns from all the disparate areas of your business and you're putting them together into one semantic layer that is referenceable. And you said unstructured, it needs to have structure. It needs to have that kind of basic structure of a SQL engine. Just to not interrupt the cadence here, but real quick, define the semantic layer for the folks watching. Good question. We've heard of semantic web and we see chat GPD.  Can you just explain what is the different layers? Our view of the semantic layer is simply metadata that connects the different data silos so that you can put it all together. As a use case for that would be, the benefits would be what? The use case to that would be reaching into all the different aspects of your business and really being able to analyze the ephemeral data that you don't have time to put it into a data warehouse. You don't have time to run the analytics and the statistics on that because if you take the time to actually put it into that data warehouse, it's gone. This is the key point. It's real time and this is why we use Uber. As an example, people places things, riders, drivers, ETAs, destinations, prices, transaction data, all different types of data, but to Uber, they're coherent and it's done in real time. They're not shoving it into a data warehouse, analyzing it and pushing it back out. Because the lag to value is but the data's worth anything. You never get the ride. It's gone, the moment has passed and you can't ever get it again. Okay, so this is the problem that you're solving. What's interesting here is if the snowflakes and the data bricks of the world don't own that semantic layer, what's going to happen potentially is like what happened to Oracle with BEA. They basically extracted that and the rest of the application world took advantage of it. So this semantic layer in terms of, in the context of real time, digital representation of your business is a next wave when now you start to bring in AI and there is a security angle here to be able to do this for security in real time. There's a narrow application and security but the applications are endless. Well, and there's also an open standards implication here too, right? We're seeing a lot of people move to the Iceberg Parquet format and that's what we support and that kind of needs to be there for the community at large to be able to utilize these times. When you saw that at data bricks, they said, oh yeah, we're going to take whether it's an Iceberg table or Hootie or Delta, whatever it is, we're going to translate it into Parquet at the back end and we'll take care of everything. So the Iceberg standard is emerging, everybody's leaning into it. Can you mention Snowflake and data bricks, Dave? I'd love to get your perspective guys on this. It sounds like this is disruptive to people who have an incumbent position. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, again, I think Snowflake is they have a database mindset that database guys came out of Oracle. And I think they're bringing in people with an application mindset because they want to be the iPhone, the app store for enterprise data apps. But in order to do that, if they want to serve those real-time applications, they've got to have at least some kind of relationship with the semantic layer. And personally, I think they need to own it to justify their evaluation. I don't know, do you have a thought on this? Yeah, no, I do. Our vision of compute, we believe compute is a new category. People have never really separated out before. In terms of being disruptive, that's not our goal. We're very collaborative and we want to partner with all of these companies, right? So we think we can fit. We love everybody. Yeah, we love everybody and we can fit right in there. As they lose their share. Okay. So I think that we're seeing the early days, we're seeing the need, we're seeing people have data warehouses and data lake houses both in their environment. I think actually you publish a stat, 42% of all customers have both. And so that speaks to the need here, which is data is everywhere. It's spilling out, right? And how do we make use of it? We need to make use of it with a relational structure, a semantic layer, and then the infrastructure to support that and the infrastructure to support that is going to be the super cloud. So in concept, how could you partner with the snowflake? I don't know if you are thinking about it, but how in theory could you partner with a, what is essentially a closed proprietary system like snowflake? Well, I want to dodge that question and talk about Spark, Presto, and Trino, right? Because those are the landscapes, the areas that we play in. Same question for Databricks. I mean, with the exception of, well, there's some propriety.  We're kind of think of us as a coprocessor or a compute engine, right? So we go into that system and maybe it is a snowflake and you point dbt directly at our engine.  Or I could containerize your stack inside of snowflake. If you wanted to develop on top of snowflake, you could do that with what they've just announced. Yeah, I mean, the beautiful thing is about the vision is that we believe compute needs to be everywhere. Almost like the fabric, like VMware kind of came out in the early days. And so it needs to run almost like an operating system, unattended, you don't think about it, it's just there. And it's going to be at the edge. This is, I have no doubt that the likes of snowflake and Amazon and all the cloud guys are thinking about this, no question in my mind. It's just unclear to me how they play where the data is, which is everywhere. And you're saying compute has to be everywhere. And I also think the compute is going to be an ARM based processor that's low power, low cost and incredibly powerful. No? Well, my question on you guys is I love the name by the way compute.ai, great URL mentioned that at the top. What's the AI aspect of compute? Because we've had a lot of conversations in the CUBE over the past this session and before, how move the compute to the data because data egress is kind of expensive and moving around data, but also being smart. So having an AI component, where's the AI in the compute side of your play? That's a great question and prepare yourself for a long winded answer. So I'll try to be concise. It's okay, take your time. So the first part is we use AI ML in our product, right? And we use it to page to disk elegantly. So within our code, we use these algorithms in order to garner memory efficiency that has never been seen before. So bypassing the memory bus throttle that prevents CPUs from being 100% utilized. So if that makes sense to you, we can run CPUs at 100% utilization, even over commit CPUs, over commit memory and have a spill to disk that is very elegant. And so that's where we have the cost efficient piece of our product, right? Where you're not ever getting umkiled by memory overloads and you don't need to over provision memory anymore. So that's number one is we use AI, it's integral to the product that we built. The second piece of our name has to do with providing infrastructure for the next, the AI generation, right? And so we've had a decade of data scientists building these AI models and they're ready to go into production. The rubber is gonna hit the road. And when they do that, they need SQL as the empowering relational engine to put that into practice. And we're right there with them to support that because otherwise if you put an AI workload on top of the current infrastructure where compute is trapped in database silos, you're gonna get costs that go through the roof. I mean, there was a study that I read recently from CSET that showed the biggest LLM model is gonna cost $25 trillion in compute by 2026. I don't know if that's still relevant or not. You know, but 25 trillion, right? So McKinsey came out with a study that said, you know, we're gonna benefit three to four trillion dollars per year in economic value as our global economy. Well, if you're spending 25 trillion and you're benefiting three to four trillion, that math doesn't end up. So something has to be done about the compute and the infrastructure to support AI ML and that's where we play. So to John's point, you're bringing the compute, not only bringing the compute to the data, you're bringing the compute along with the AI and the ML to the data. Well, you know, the fact that we're using AI ML within our product itself is a small piece of it. Secondary to, so there's a third piece, which is somebody else's AI ML. Somebody else's AI, look, you have, I was talking to a customer yesterday who said, we have these models that we've been building and they're proprietary to us and we need to be able to run them within our platform and they were using BigQuery from Google. Perfect example of generating and building these models and then putting them on our infrastructure and they had a serverless infrastructure and it just works. And so that's the type of example. People are going to have to figure out how do we put our AI ML into production? Yeah, and then apps are coming. What's your vision of how you see the application market developing because super computing, super compute, smart compute, AI compute, would you guys have the super cloud layer and then you got super applications having to have data native built in, natively managing the data and a lot of this ephemeral data will be in the app. He mentions Uber. We'll see more of those apps being coded. So a whole developer tsunami is coming as well. So we're seeing a Cambrian explosion of developers getting their hands on these open source. So yeah, rubber's hitting the road for the Gen 1 data sciences with their LLMs and foundation models. Now you're going to have coders coding on top of data natively. Yeah, I mean, I think there's two parts to your question. One, how are applications evolving and developing? I mean, I think they need to be developed with a semantic layer in mind. We're really moving towards more of a data-centric ecosystem where applications, they need to stop being so grabby and they need to share data with everybody and the architecture needs to change a little bit to reference that semantic layer. That also corresponds with AIML because what greater way to feed your production workload AIML than with the semantic layer that reaches into every piece of your business, right? So we're setting the stage. SuperCloud is setting the stage to not only be able to meet the demands of increasingly complex workloads from BI tools per se, but also to build the data center that's going to provide support for AIML. This is why SuperCloud is not just hybrid, non-prem to cloud and across cloud. It has to stretch out everywhere and that's why it is a metaphor for the future of what we call cloud. But the way we think about cloud as a remote set of services is changing. Joe, thank you so much for coming in for SuperCloud 3. So Cloud 4 is going to be all about AI which is right up your wheelhouse, compute and AI. I don't think that those two things are going away anytime soon. I'm glad you flew in. Yeah, thank you. Well, I appreciate you guys having me and hopefully next time Vikram can make an appearance. Yeah, be great. Compute.ai, I mean again, love the name, love the domain name. Those are two things that are going to be more and more abundant and important. And of course SuperCloud 4 is coming with all about AI. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with SuperCloud 3 with Matt Garmin from AWS's exclusive video where he shares the master plan for how they will be competing in generative AI. We'll be right back.