#EdInfluence
In his inimitable style, Nick unearths the secrets of good leadership from his guests.
Trusted by thousands of education providers across the country, Browne Jacobson is an award winning national law firm helping clients and partner organisations shape and influence education policy.
#EdInfluence
S05 - E02 Paul Estes
Paul Estes joins us to trace a line from a high school election loss to leading teams at Dell, Amazon and Microsoft. His lesson: “innovation isn't about the idea - it's about the how”.
We explore what makes organisations perform: a clear mission, an operating rhythm that works, and success signals sharp enough to guide decisions. Paul argues for practical AI experiments - prompt labs, cross-functional hackathons and shared libraries - that build literacy and judgement. We discuss why most AI agents stall at the last mile and why borrowing expertise beats reinventing it.
Paul believes that what keeps leadership human is ritual and care. Real leadership shows up in small acts: recognition, pizza at 9pm, a personal card for a well-earned dinner. Listen to this episode to learn more.
Let us know what you think of this episode - drop us a message and connect via LinkedIn.
Welcome to the latest episode of EdInfluence. I'm Nick MacKenzie from Browne Jacobson, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Paul Estes. Paul has over 20 years experience in big tech with Dell, Amazon, and Microsoft and has helped numerous startups and is currently consulting on AI solutions for organisations. Thank you, Paul, for joining me today. I wanted to start by inviting you to tell me a story from your life that would give me a picture of who you are.
Paul Estes:I thought a lot about this when you sent the mail. And you had something in there about leadership. And so I kind of wanted to tell a story from there. I was in my freshman year of high school, and I wanted to run. There was, we were running for student council or whatever it was called at the time. And I remember vividly, it was one of those things where everybody put their name up, and I'm like, hey, I want to do this. And I put my name in the hat. Teacher wrote it on a on a board with chalk. That's how old we are. And we all put our heads down, and then you put your head up and you say how many votes you got, and that's who won. And you know, I voted for myself. And I got one vote. I got one vote and I voted for myself. And and I tell that story, and I remember it so vividly because I didn't give up. I didn't look at that moment as, hey, I feel bad about myself, or hey, I failed, and oh, I nobody likes me and I should never do it. I looked at that moment and said, hey, I just need to try harder. And it was sort of a motivating, crystallising moment that helped me not only get through the sports that I did in high school, uh, in college and in my career, but it sort of signified to me that, oh, this is how it works. You try things, they don't work out, and you try again. And in fast forward to college, I tried again. I ran for student body president of a very large college, and I won. You know, I won by one of the largest margins of, you know, in the history of the school. And it all came from that, oh, you voted for yourself and lost, which by the way, when you're in high school, is a pretty embarrassing moment, you know. And so I don't know. I remembered when I was reading your your questions, I remembered that moment. And it's something I try to instil in my daughters, is that this is how it works. You're gonna fail a lot, it's gonna hurt, but it, you know, it's the mindset you bring to it and how you look at it. And so, you know, all through my life, I've tried a lot of innovative projects. Some have worked, some have not worked, but I've learned from all of them. Uh, and it really fostered that sense of curiosity. Well, why did that not work? Okay, let's try again.
Nick MacKenzie:I wanted to talk to you about innovation in big tech people. A lot of experience there. Is it possible?
Paul Estes:I think it's possible, and I think it comes to down to a couple of things. I think everybody talks about culture, and and one of the things that I learned or experienced when I worked at Amazon was their leadership principles. When you read them, their mission is very clear, and their leadership principles, the how, the how things get done at the company and how to think about things, are crystal. They're not confusing. People in meetings actually quoted the leadership principles, and everyone should go and and take a look at them, you know, be wrong, uh, you know, be right a lot, and and things like that. Um, and so I think the culture has to allow for experimentation in the pursuit of whatever the mission is. And I think that's, you know, if you have that sort of culture, uh, it's possible. The other thing that makes it possible is the operating system of the company, how it's run. You know, I did I was a chief of staff to a lot of in big organisations, engineering organisations, RD organisations. And what people didn't understand about that job and started to realise, and now chief of staffs are you know all over the place, and you know, of course, in the military and in some other organisations, is that air traffic control aspect of being able to land the planes and take off the planes and make sure the planes are refuelled and make sure the food is on the planes and all of those things that go into a complex system, the operating system of making that run is extremely important. And I think a lot of times the mission isn't well understood, the how is not well understood, and the operating system of organisations is broken. And I think a leader's job, a really good leader's job, is to sort of bring those things together. And the last part I would posit is you have to know what success looks like. I remember I was at Microsoft and they, you know, KPIs and OKRs were the big management thing, and everybody was creating them and big meetings. I mean, I don't know how many millions of dollars were spent in people in rooms with whiteboards trying to figure out the OKRs, and this word matter. And finally, the executive vice president released the OKRs to the organisation and the KPIs. And there were 40. There are 40 of them. This big long list with numbers, and everybody was included, nobody was left out, every organisation, every team was represented. And you looked at it and you're like, I have no idea what success looks like. So I mean, if you go back and think of it, the mission and the how, the operating mechanics of an organisation, and then like, what does success look like? Um, and I think even Facebook was one of those examples. You know, if you have seven friends, we know that you're going to be you know addicted to the platform and and become a very valuable part of the product. And that's a good example.
Nick MacKenzie:I think we could all recognise that that long list, Paul. What have you learned about how to distil it to something really clear and simple that you can get?
Paul Estes:It's the how. You might have a really great idea and innovation, um, but how it's going to get done is is the important part. And then those are just bullets, you know, under that. You need to consider them. But are they all into the, hey, everybody's got a great idea? It's kind of funny when you talk to somebody who's got a startup idea. And we all have friends. You know, you're out of the pub or you're hanging out, or you know, wherever you are. And a friend's, I've got a great idea, but I don't want to tell you. Like, man, the idea is a dime a dozen. It it's the how and the persistence and the energy you put behind it that makes the difference.
Nick MacKenzie:And and thinking about the successful teams you've been part of and led Paul, what what have you learned about creating an environment that's conducive to innovation, whether it's in big tech or elsewhere?
Paul Estes:If you understand what the innovation is, and and it's a real problem, you look at the look at the metaverse. That was kind of it's an interesting one, right? It was technology looking for a problem to solve. If you look at the science behind AR, you know, companies like Magic Leap or even Meta with VR, and the technology is amazing. It's mind-blowing when you put those goggles on and you can see the future, and it's very clear, and there's some really interesting use cases. Um, but when it actually goes out into the real world to try to solve the problem, it all starts to fall apart for a lot of different reasons. The friction, or you know, I you talk to a bunch of people that that are in the VR space of keeping a goggle on for you know an hour during a meeting is just jarring and gives you a headache. So it's not not possible. So, you know, I think the when you look at technology, and especially around AI right now, it's the per it's an amazing technology, but understanding like, can it really solve the problem and being honest with yourself about that? And teams that are honest about it, that understand, like, hey, we're kind of we really understand the problem we're trying to solve, and we also understand the technology and being able to work through that dissonance of amazing technology and oh, it's not quite ready yet. And well, maybe we we try a different path to get there, uh, is what makes those teams, I think, successful.
Nick MacKenzie:You mentioned AI. I think the AI messaging that we're all coming into contact with only seems to be increasing. If you're a leader right now and you have very you're not techie at all, and you have very limited understanding of AI and and beyond hearing the sort of the headlines in the news conferences, the rhetoric out there, the buzz, as it were. What would your best advice be to get a grip on what you should be thinking about, how you should approach AI?
Paul Estes:I saw this great interview with interview or it was a video of Tiger Woods. And somebody came up to Tiger and said, Hey, I just want one tip. You could just give me one nugget of how to be better at golf. Like, what's a tip? And he just looked at him and said, Stop watching YouTube. And I think, you know, for me, it's it's one of those things, and and he meant like go out there and hit balls, like go out there and actually practice. And you have a lot of folks in my experience, and I'm I'm have this AI prompt lab that I've kind of started, because I think the challenge that people are having is time. So I have this organisation, uh, the executive team wanted to do a prompt lab. Hey, we need to do this. We know that we all need to learn, you know, get our hands dirty with AI, learn how to prompt better, learn how to use the technology. And so we had a time schedule. And they're like, Oh, well, we have two all hands and we have to prepare for that. It's like, okay, cool, we'll do it next week. And then another all hands, you know, and in this meeting. And so the urgency was there. The leadership wanted to and knew that they and their teams needed to go and explore use cases beyond maybe just updating an email, but they weren't able to find the time. And that this goes back to that urgent versus important sort of balance when you're a leader. Um, I think finding the time to do some experimentation as a group, low-cost experimentation. I'm not talking about redesigning your marketing department and using it, like there's all this push. You know, some executive, I heard it from my buddy who works at a large company, you know, the other day. His CEO came down and said, I saw this video and we need to do this. And so he, you know, took it to his team and they tried it, and then they went back to him and said, Well, look, it's it's interesting, but you know, you kind of the algorithms got you, man. Like that you kind of bought into the hype a little bit. And so the idea that, you know, this is Simon Senec saying of you know, start small, but start. I think a lot of people are missing that part of, hey, what does it mean to take the team, you know, 45 minutes every other week or an hour and just just experiment together, share use cases, create a depository of prompts that the teams can go and try, have everybody collaborate, create a Slack channel that's you know, our company at AI and let people share, you know, videos that they create or images or whatever, you know, whatever things they want, or or let maybe somebody builds an agent. You know, I'm a big fan of hack-a-thons, like the concept of, hey, we have a problem to solve, let's go see how AI could potentially do that. And, you know, get a group of people from different disciplines, you know, legal department and somebody from HR and somebody from the product team and get them together at the same table to hack around, you know, a problem and let them all learn and go on the journey together. Because introducing AI into your organisation is a it's a big change management feat. I mean, AI is is scary to a lot of people because of all the hype that says if you touch this thing, it will replace you tomorrow. I mean, that's sort of what the hype cycle is saying, and the more you use it, the more you start to take a deep breath and realise that that's not true, and you start to understand that technology is always evolving, and you know, it wasn't that long ago we didn't have computers on desks. It wasn't that long ago we didn't have the internet. You know, this is a pretty massive technological wave, but as you start to experiment, you start to see where it can be valuable and in many ways where it can be helpful.
Nick MacKenzie:You mentioned hack-a-thons. They seem like a really great way to be curious, to learn together. Are there other observations you've had of things along the way in your career and the organisation you've worked with that have you found helpful with promoting curiosity? Because the world can feel so fast-paced. Finding that time to stop, think, be curious can feel difficult sometimes. What have you learned about good ways to do that beyond things like hack-a-thons?
Paul Estes:You know, it's funny, I I've had teams where we and I think Amazon did this pretty well, is where you write stuff down. Because there's a lot of talk. I mean, how many you know, I you're you're a lawyer, you know, and there's a lot of talk, and you go to meetings and everybody's talking and saying a lot of words, and but Amazon had a structure by which you wrote the six-page document. Now you you can argue they kind of took it a little too far, but but the idea of writing narrative papers versus a PowerPoint or going to a meeting and just expand, you know, the idea that everybody collaborated on a document and solidified it and said, we wrote this, we wrote this down and we believe it to be true, no matter what it is. You know, whether it's a problem you're trying to solve or a team you're trying to build, or you know, it's an innovative product. Um, I think that the idea of writing things down is getting lost because we want to be able to put it in a tweet thing and just be able to say words in a meeting and somehow magic is gonna happen. And and that's just not how it works. It's it's kind of one of the things when people ask me, hey, I feel stuck, or hey, how do I you know ignite curiosity in my brain? And I use that same sort of thing that Tiger Woods said, put down your phone. Like step one, put down your phone and get a book. One of those things that takes about six hours to read because there's a lot of space that you need to think and short form algorithmic content is junk food for the brain. It's it doesn't, it's not gonna help you get unstuck. In fact, it's probably gonna increase your fear and in other factors that are bad for kind of where you want to go. So I don't I think that there's you know, the fight against technology in and of itself, and our desire to sort of innovate and do all these things is is a really interesting balance that you have to consider.
Nick MacKenzie:And that fight against technology brings to mind, you were showing me in one of our conversations, the pad you keep on your your desk that helps you plan your week, your day. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Paul Estes:I've been doing it for like 15 years, and I tried every digital thing, you know, I've been in tech, I've tried every to-do list app and all these different things. And it's life can get overwhelming. I mean, I've got you know two kids, a bunch of clients, my wife, you know, she has a high-tech job, and so we're busy. Um, and I was trying to make sense of the world, you know, how like how do I balance all these things? And um, it's a pad, it's a very, very simple pad. It's divided into three parts. One part is kind of a to-do list that is scoped in what I think I can get done this week. One is long-term projects that I sort of know that I want to make progress on. And then the other one is personal things that I need to get done around the house. I have some yard work on here. We have some a garage project that my wife just, you know, those because they the list encompasses all of those things, both my work life and my personal life. I don't have two lists, I have one. And the constraining factor of having the pad allows me to look at it and say, hey, I understand that world. I mean, those are things that I've committed and I think I can do, and I've made commitments to others that they will be completed. And as I go, if I make progress, I highlight it, which makes me feel like I'm making progress. I scratch stuff off, which feels very good. Uh, and every day I rip it, I rewrite it, and I crumple it up as kind of a ritual that just keeps me in the flow of this is what I'm committing to do, checking in with myself and sort of constraining it to what is possible. And it, you know, the world's not any bigger than the list.
Nick MacKenzie:I love that. It's that of boundaries, the constraints, and that idea of ritual pool. The I think it's probably worth saying as well as the pad's not very wide, so actually you can't write a lot. The thing is not an A4 sheet of paper you can put a ton of words on. It is, it is constrained.
Paul Estes:Yeah, it's a five, it's it's a seven by what 21 centimetre pad, three inch by eight inch. And that's by design. I tried all sorts of I used to have a big notepad, and it would get unwieldy, and and that that idea of constraint and making the world, which seems so big, especially if you, you know, are algorithmically infected and use your phone too much. Like the world becomes so big, it can become overwhelming, and it's you know.
Nick MacKenzie:Yeah, I was just thinking what you're saying earlier about those 40 OKRs. It's just too much.
Paul Estes:I looked at it and I was like, I don't, I literally now know less about how to go and do my job or innovate or do the mission. Like it all got lost. And I know they were trying. And what happened in that room was that every you couldn't leave anybody out. So it really wasn't a set of metrics to drive the organisation for it was just, hey, let's measure the work that's already going on.
Nick MacKenzie:Thinking of taking some of those learnings, I think it was about six or seven years ago you wrote the your the book, The Gig Mindset, where I think I think you described earlier to me it was a bit of a manifesto of some of the thinking that you'd had from some of the things you'd learned through your career, particularly in in big tech. What are some of the insights, learnings you you took from leading in a fast-paced environment such as big tech that can actually be universally applied?
Paul Estes:I'll tell you why I failed. The thing that I didn't realise, and I go back to the pad, is how important taking care of mental health was. I mean, a lot of times we talk about all the tactical parts of leadership and innovation, and we're gonna drive this forward. And I didn't, you know, sort of like when you get on an aeroplane and they get up and they give you the safety thing, and they're like, hey, make sure you put your oxygen mask on first. Like that concept, I didn't know that I fully understood. I got caught up in, especially in big tech, matrixed organisations and lots of very brilliant people getting paid lots of money with pressures, you know, business pressures and internal political pressures, and their person, like they're bringing their whole self to work, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and and that complexity. And I wasn't good at separating myself from it. I wasn't good at saying, hey, let me put my oxygen mask on. What do I need? Oh, I may need a break, or how do I look at this? And I think that is one of the things when I when I see really good leaders, they have that balance, or they they at least exude that balance, right? They they come to the table with a clarity and balance of who they are as a leader. Uh, and I wasn't as good as that. I was very focused on the outcomes or the dopamine of getting to the next thing, or maybe there was a time that I wanted promotion or money, or I got caught up in the politics. And I think those are the you know, taking that that breath and taking care of yourself and putting your oxygen mask on, especially in today's environment, um, is is really critical for leaders. Because I've I've worked with some amazing leaders and I've also worked with some leaders that the impact of the job to their personal lives would just wasn't worth it. Yeah, you just look at them and it just wasn't wasn't worth it.
Nick MacKenzie:What would your reflections be off or examples? Have you seen this done well where how how leaders can signal to their teams that balance is important, even in those high pressure environment scenarios?
Paul Estes:There was a leader a long time ago, Ed Dell, he since passed away. He was an amazing, well-respected leader. And and we did a a project, a very strategic project on the pro, you know, team. And he came to me and he goes, Hey, Paul, I want you to lead this thing. It's a very strategic project. You and I are gonna work on it. And I was, you know, three or four years into my career, and you know, here's this larger-than-life leader coming to me saying, Hey, let's go do this thing. So it was exciting for me. And so I had a small little team. And the way he interacted, you know, he it was little things. There aren't these. He was always the first one to say, Hey, I know you're working the extra hours, and we were working crazy hours, right? It was fun. Um, and it was a really great innovation project. He always recognised it. It was simple, it was free for him to come by and say, Hey, I know you put in the hours and I appreciate it. So that was impressive. He he always came and said, How can I help? I remember the day that he like literally bought the whole team pizza. It was like nine o'clock at night and pizza showed up, you know, and he didn't have to order his pizza. He was a you know, EVP that reported to Michael Dell, and he's you know, buying a small little team, you know, pizza. Um, and I so I think people are looking for these like grandiose leadership things that they can do, and they forget the small, simple human things that they can do. And at the end of the project, we we presented and you know it went fairly well, and we were kind of excited, and he came up to me and never forget, he opened his wallet and he gave me his credit card, his personal credit card. He says, I know you haven't seen your - the girl I was dating, I know you guys haven't had time to spend together. I want you to go and have a nice dinner on me. And I don't know, I've I think I spent maybe a couple hundred. I was, you know, I for me, I didn't know how much to spend. I said, you know, but it was those little things that leaders can do that recognise when people are burning the midnight oil on something, and they're able to that goes back to, you know, they're able to centre themselves and say, okay, heck, what can I do to just recognise the work that people are putting in? Or what can I do to recognise that the team's going through a bunch of layoffs and and what can I do to bring peace to you know a chaotic situation the best I can? And those things are usually free and don't cost the organisation a ton of money, but represent, I think, real authentic leadership. Thank you.
Nick MacKenzie:Going back to the gig mindset, I think I think one of the core concepts, saying to the author, you might put me right, is around individuals and companies should focus on their core strengths whilst outsourcing specialist tasks to others that excel in those areas. It it seems to me, at least anyway, the world is is more complex. Solutions that many organisations are having to come up with are getting complex, and that so to be successful, organisations are increasingly likely to have to embrace strategies based on ecosystem thinking. So seeing your organisation as a participant or a convener in a network of partners, customers, suppliers, and stakeholders. I was just wondering whether the thinking from your book and what got you there, just that more complexity. I suppose AI sums it up as well in terms of it seems to bring this complexity quicker and faster. What you've learned, any observations you would have. Because organisations often want to wanna they want to own everything or have it all themselves. And it's just like, what would your observations be there?
Paul Estes:We we all do. It makes us feel safe. I mean, control or the even the perception. I mean, the fact that you control or own anything, that was one of the things that I always, you know, somebody would go and say, Well, I own this. I'm like, actually, you work for a company and they own the IP that you're creating. So you actually don't really own anything, but you're responsible for delivering. And so when we're responsible for delivering, let's talk about how this is delivered. And let's talk about the parts, you know, and let's talk about the parts of this delivery that you're really good at. And let's talk about the parts of delivery where technology or maybe a another expert can be helpful. And when you look at it in that way, you take this word I own, because you don't, um, out of the scenario and you and you talk about it differently. You talk about outcomes as a system. And then when you when you think of it that way, when you apply just very basic systems level thinking to it, and you do the task of, well, here's all the different parts, and here's kind of how it works. Oh, cool. All right. So so maybe we can get an expert here that that helps do this because we're being asked to scale something that we don't have there. Okay, well, let's, oh, that's where the maybe a freelancer could come in. And same, same thing with AI, right? Oh, well, maybe AI could could help us here because the last I checked, everybody's being asked to do more with less. So it's not like there's less work going on. And and throughout history, the more technology and strategies have made people more efficient, the more people are being asked to produce. So there's not like, hey, you know, once we get this, there's going to be less work. In fact, the more productive them, the more work. And so I think a lot of the you know, change management or adoption of AI or even, you know, using a freelancer, because I know this, you know, acutely from trying to drive change management, is getting people to understand the deliverable or outcome that they're responsible for. It goes back to the initial conversation around innovation. Like what is what is the problem we're solving? What okay, that's very clear. Now let's talk about the how. How do we go about solving and and then it just has pieces and parts and tasks and hey, we should use this technology, maybe AI. What if we got you know somebody who is an expert at doing this part of AI or this, you know, it there was a OpenAI just announced that they have their new agent platform. And having tried to build or having built a number of agents, you realise that, hey, that's really interesting. But when you try to get into production, that last mile requires some real expertise. And I couldn't do that. And I bet a lot of organisations don't have it. I bet there's a ton of organisations that have a ton of agents laying around that were great ideas until they got to that last mile to solve the problem. And now they're gonna need some expertise that may not exist and probably doesn't exist on their team. And so, you know, I think that's where the gig mindset, that idea of understanding the problem to be solved, taskifying it, understanding what to delegate, whether it's to technology or to an expert from around the world, and freeing yourself from this idea that this false sense of ownership creates some sort of career safety for you, um, is what I was exploring. You know, what I felt that if I kept this information, if I shared this information, I wouldn't get the promotion, or I might, you know, Joe or Jane or whoever might, you know, come after my and and letting it go. That was the kind of cathartic thing I was exploring as I wrote the book. Because when you realise that the planet has billions of people on it, you start to look at it as opportunity, not some sort of chipping away at your own agency or your own value in the world.
Nick MacKenzie:I don't know whether you can share. I believe you're writing another book, Paul. Where are you going next with the thoughts you want to share?
Paul Estes:It's a you know, I have two projects, and in one is sort of a personal passion around, you know, how do we how do we exist in the algorithmic world? I have a core belief, you know, you just look at what's happened in the elections here in the states and even in the UK, um, and the algorithmically infected, and I've been at levels of that infection, um, are creating a lot of problems. And what does it mean to fight back? And what does it mean to sort of take control of your professional and personal destiny? And that's one of the concepts I'm exploring. And the other is kind of a follow-on to gig mindset of saying, hey, you know, before I was exploring the idea of what does it mean to sort of give up ownership and create a system and bring in sort of freelancers that can do these amazing things and have these skills and bring in new ideas that make things better? And that's an analogous, very analogous to what's going on with AI, right? You what parts of the system can AI be helpful and where can it not? And by the way, how do you create that system? Like, how does an organisation start to, you know, you might have people out there like, have you is your organisation written down their workflows? Like how they do? No, they probably have not. Well, AI is not going to be helpful unless you actually understand the how of how things get done and where you can leverage this technology and help you understand clearly where you cannot leverage the technology. And so exploring that idea, a continuation of exploring that idea of you know, companies and even schools or law firms, and their systems. And those systems are made up of people and technology and all sorts of different aspects. Um, and AI is really pushing on that. Um, some companies are going all in and going to learn the hard way and it's gonna be messy, and some are gonna, you know, lag behind, and you know, that'll be a different type of hard.
Nick MacKenzie:What what are your current reflections? I know you're interested in in the school districts and AI and what schools are doing over there. What's your reflections of what can we learn from what's happening over there? What maybe from what we're saying, what's not going so well over there?
Paul Estes:I think when I look at my daughters, I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. And I look at them and I look at the future, and just in my experience, in your experience, right? From when we were 10 and 12 to now, like it's just a drastically different world. And so I spend a lot of time thinking like, hey, part of my job as a father or a parent is to advise them on how to navigate the world the best I can. And by the way, I'm gonna be wrong, try my best, um, but maybe a few things stick that that help them as they go out into the world. And I think understanding this technology responsibly, understanding the responsible use of it is critical. You know, I go and I look at what's going on, and you know, it's a global workforce right now. I look what China's doing, and they're mandating it, and they're, you know, they're they're every school is having to do some you know type of AI literacy. And then I go and I look what we're doing in the US and and even in what's happening in the UK, and it doesn't exist. And I fully respect the complexities of education, how hard it is, like on the ground. I'm a member of the PTA here in at my daughter's school. And so I don't believe that the schools need to go all in on AI because there's a lot more complexity that goes into educating kids than this piece of technology. But it goes back to what I was saying early. I do believe that you have to have at least some inkling of a track that says, hey, we're gonna do uh, you know, an annual hack-a-thon on this topic, or hey, we're gonna do, you know, one hour per quarter of fun experimentation with this technology. But I also respect I was parent-teacher conferences, and my daughter's language arts teacher was awesome. She goes, hey, I how many people have heard of AI? And everybody's with, I don't want kids writing with AI. I think it's and she went to the whole thing about how important it was in this brain development at their age, which I completely agree with. And she goes, I found a way to solve that. In my class, we use paper and pencil so that when kids write their stories, and I fully agree and embrace that approach. And so it's it's really important to think through, like anything else, with a company and their workflows or a school and in educating children, where this technology is and how responsibly it fits in. But don't let all of that thinking and ethics and bias stop you from getting started, stopping you from, you know, uh, I was over in the UK last spring with an education trust, and we did a hack-a-thon, and they're doing another one, I think, in a in a couple of weeks. Just that of getting the idea of AI, there were uh, I think 60% of the kids had never touched a chat model that were in the hack-a-thon. And then there was a group in the back, the finance team had a table, and the HR group from the trust had a table. And they were having more fun than anybody else. And anybody who's driven innovation, seeing a finance team and an HR team getting excited about innovation is was mind-blowing to me. Nothing personal against HR and finance. But um, but that was just an example of a leader coming in saying, Hey, I know that I need to do something. Uh, and I and and I need to start the journey versus overthinking, you know, all of the other aspects of it.
Nick MacKenzie:I'd like to go back to a story you you shared a little while ago about your experience at Dell, and just just thinking, I suppose, about being human and human communication. Tech, the speed we seem to live lives at these days makes really connecting as humans harder. What what've you learned over the years about ensuring maintaining that good human human communication?
Paul Estes:I the one thing I think there was a woman who worked on a team I was on, and I was not really big on meetings, like these recurring meetings and staff meetings, and I just I felt there wasn't anything that I would communicate in there that couldn't be handled via email, and I was highly respectful of other people's times and wanting to get work done and not working late and having families and stuff. And so I was really religious about recurring meetings, and I even wrote a LinkedIn article encouraging others to cancel, like look at their diary and cancel as many meetings as possible, um, because it stopped you from actually sitting down and writing down things and doing the deep thinking that that helped organisations. And I found it a colossal waste of time in a lot of scenarios, not all meetings. But she came to me and she goes, Hey, you cancelled this this meeting, and it was the only way that I actually got to to connect with Jeff on the team. I said, So the meeting was how you because I we had the meeting and it's kind of a bunch of people talking about topics. So I went to the cafeteria and I got lunch cards for everybody. And I handed out lunch cards, and on the lunch card, it had everybody's name paired up. I said, Hey, I want everybody to go have lunch with each other. And I think a lot of times we talk about human connection and then we pick up our phone, and maybe the dopamine hit says that we've connected with people because we looked at somebody's progress on LinkedIn or Facebook or TikTok or Instagram, whatever it is, and we forget that you know, putting down the phone and texting somebody to meet up, or you know, spending five or 10% of your work day just catching up and having lunch with no purpose, with no, like, hey, let's go, we got this pro, let's just have lunch. I think that's what we lost during the pandemic. I think technology sort of accelerated through the pandemic, and now we have to unwind ourselves from it a little bit and actually put it down and actually be more mindful about spending time together. Um, but I hold myself to having five conversations per week with people that I think are interesting or that friends of mine and and and get out there, especially working from home. You know, it's it's really hard when you work from home and you don't have those serendipitous, you know, the air quotes water cooler, you know, type of experiences. And so, which has actually been great because it forces me to say, okay, on my list, did you reach out to five people or did you have coffee or did you have lunch? Or um, and I think a lot of people have forgotten that because the pandemic just accelerated this always-on, you know, always in the dopamine factory, whether it's you know, work and meetings and nonstop Zoom calls and and Slack instances, and then you pick up your phone, and now I'm you know in the social media world, and you know, you have to fight it. And it's hard. But once you sort of get a framework and reconnect with people, it becomes addictive. That that part becomes addictive. Going to lunch with people or going for a run or a walk or playing golf or whatever it is that you like to do, if if you practice it and are mindful about it, it I think it becomes as rewarding and as addictive from a dopamine perspective as you know, staring at the black mirror or sitting on Zoom calls.
Nick MacKenzie:I love that insight of building a framework and getting in the habit of it, Paul. Um, we haven't got long left. I was just curious to reach into your mind about the sorts of things that you're thinking about. What issues, trend are you personally keeping an eye on that isn't really headline news yet, but you think perhaps should be?
Paul Estes:I think it's it's what we've talked about. I mean, technology is the problem. I think, you know, especially being Gen X, like there was a time that technology was fun. Like there was a, you know, you created some clip art things, or like I it wasn't advanced technology when I got my first computer. And oh, you could send an email. And I remember walking around, I had one of the first Wi-Fi cards in my notebook, you know, in I think 2005 or something. And you know, Dell, I was walking around, and that was amazing technology that, you know, I wasn't tethered to my desk anymore. Um, and I think in a lot of ways it's become the problem. And so we're having to all first say we have a problem. You know, first we have to admit that, hey, this this technology, while it serves us well, and it's it's creating some some downside, some significant downside in our ability to connect and our ability to be productive and our ability to be mentally healthy, and our ability to show up at work and do the work that the companies want us to do. And you know, and I don't think that I think it's getting buried in sort of the onslaught of you know the AI hype cycle, the get hardcore at work stuff, and I think it's I think it's gonna be one of the things that you know you look five years in the future and it's gonna be the big reckoning. And I think the people who are able to understand how much the technology is controlling them or causing downside and how to use it, how to use it in a productive way, will will find balance, but also be very successful in the true sense of the word, successful. And I think that's uh, you know, I think that's the thing that's the heart. People would come to me for career advice, and I was like, well, what do you you know? I'm happy to give you career advice. I'm happy to, I'm on my own journey, so I you know maybe this conversation helps me. But defining what success looks like is a very personal thing. And by the way, it's a very hard thing to figure out.
Nick MacKenzie:So I don't know if that a nswers the question, but no, I think that's a great insight. I want to finish where we started. We started on on you, Paul. I want to finish on you. I was just wondering what's the mission that drives you.
Paul Estes:I've always been the mission that drives me is the thing I don't know that I'm gonna learn tomorrow. And I think I've always been curious without without attaching expectation to the curiosity. I think a lot of times we all go into this world and we try to learn something because if I learn this, this will happen. Or if I do this, this will happen. Um, and I try as much as I can, and it's not it's not perfect. But I think the thing that keeps me going is I know I'm gonna wake up tomorrow, and there's something I don't know, and I can't wait to find out what it is.
Nick MacKenzie:That's a brilliant place to leave our discussion, Paul. Thank you so much for joining me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, and I hope our listeners have as well. Thank you, Nick.
