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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation—unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
Money Ball's Endgame
KP Unpacked is the #1 podcast in AEC—and for good reason. In this episode, KP Reddy and Jeff Echols start with baseball and end up somewhere way more urgent: the death of innovation-as-edge. From Moneyball to AI, from power drills to predictive hiring, they unpack what happens after everyone catches up—and what firms should do next to keep their advantage.
KP drops insights on fast feedback loops, tech resistance in AEC, and why real innovation today comes from judgment, not just data. They also explore how AI is rewriting the rules in venture, recruiting, sports betting, and founder evaluation. If your firm is still calling BIM “innovation,” this one’s for you.
“The thing about building an edge is… you rarely get to keep it.”
🔗 Resources & Mentions in This Episode
- 📘 Book: Creating the Intangible Enterprise by KP Reddy — Available on Amazon and Audible
- 📽️ Movie Reference: Moneyball (2011) – starring Brad Pitt, based on the book by Michael Lewis
- 🧠 KP’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kpreddy – follow to predict next week’s podcast topic
- 🎤 AEC Summit Archives: YouTube Channel – features past Summit presentations, including from unicorns like Anduril, OneTrust, and Greenlight
- 🧰 Tools Mentioned:
- ChatGPT / AI (for resume filtering, betting models, etc.)
- PipeDrive CRM
- CrowdStrike, Microsoft Cloud
- Sam.AI (voice-based CRM mentioned indirectly)
Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/
Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers
Hope to see you there!
Hey, welcome back to KP Impact. Today we're going to talk baseball. Well, we may start there. My name is Jeff Eccles. I'm the executive director of Catalyst here at KP Ready Co. I also co-host this podcast with our CEO and founder, kp Reddy. Hi, kp.
Speaker 2:Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1:Jeff, it's going well. I mean, you got me excited. We're going to unpack a post about baseball Probably not actually about baseball, but that's a thing around here so I'm looking forward to that. For those that have joined us in this episode, for the first time ever.
Speaker 1:How's that even possible? We do this every week. Kp and I do this every week. We go over to his LinkedIn. We look at everything that he's posted usually a couple, maybe three things per day and we look for the things that are garnering the most engagement, let's say it that way and we spend 30, 40, an hour, maybe unpacking those particular posts. Today will be no different. We've got a post that we're going to unpack about the movie or the book Moneyball.
Speaker 1:If you're not following KP on LinkedIn, you should be. You can't connect with him. I would say that's a pretty exclusive club, but the reason is you have maxed out your LinkedIn connection, so I'm not sure how exclusive it is. It's a broad and narrow club perhaps, but you should be following KP at KP. The letter K, the letter P, ready R-E-D-D-Y on LinkedIn and maybe guess what we're going to talk about in the next episode. Maybe you should use AI. You should use AI. Take all of the posts he's written over the past week and ask AI to predict what KP and I are going to unpack next week. Would that be a good use? For what? Would you vibe code around that? Well?
Speaker 2:there's a lot of fun things happening in the world of vibe coding, and all my technology friends hate me for promoting vibe coding, by the way.
Speaker 1:I'm sure, I'm sure they do.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like when I tell my architecture friends that AI can design a building better than they can. It's like I get the same look.
Speaker 2:It's like don't diminish my entire career saying that a 20 app can replace me, sure, and like my therapist tells me like that's their problem, it's not me, it's them. When people react negatively to my posturing around anything AI or robotics, I was like, yeah, why do people react so poorly? My therapist is like, well, they have some things they need to work out. It's not you, it's them. Is your therapist a human or an AI? He's funny, though. He's an ADHD performance coach. Okay, and it's funny because people always ask. People always ask like you probably wonder like when do I sleep? How do I do the million things that I do? Adhd is a superpower for me. That's how I do all the things.
Speaker 1:There you go, you're wearing your ADHD cape.
Speaker 2:So but yeah, like I feel like I think we're going to have some fun news coming out on vibe coding and different things we're doing around that. But back to, I think, our last episode we talked about how do you get the compute the human and the compute closer and closer, and how do you get the humans that actually have expertise and know what they're doing closer and closer to the compute.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, the episode that I think it was the last one that was published, at least as we record this that that's created some buzz and we're going to create some more buzz in the future around this. So, everybody, keep your eyes and ears peeled for that. Maybe we'll talk more about vibe coding today in this episode, but, as I said, we're going to talk baseball today. As usual, I'm going to read KP's post and then we will. It's not a terribly long post, so I'll read the entire thing and then we'll start to unpack, maybe what inspired it, but then obviously, the message behind what he says in the post. And again, if you're not following KP on LinkedIn, you should be. I always have fun with these episodes, as we record these episodes, because this is my opportunity every week to say, hey, kp, what were you thinking? What inspired this particular post? So let me read it out, and then KP and I will unpack it. Here's how it goes. Did you ever watch or read Moneyball? If you didn't, you should, says the baseball guy. Kp goes on to say great movie, I don't read much for pleasure.
Speaker 1:I don't hear much about Moneyball anymore. There's a reason for that. I have heard about Torpedo Bats. The thing about building an edge is that you rarely get to keep the edge. Ai and automation is the same way. I'm sure a contractor with the first power drill must have been amazing. I'm sure a bunch of folks on the side complained what do you do if you don't have power on the job site? Your labor will become weak from not turning screws anymore. If it breaks, then what? It's too expensive and my labor will just break it. Oh, we are still making power tools for human hands, aren't they just end effects for robots soon? We don't hear about Moneyball because everyone got it. It's no longer an edge. What's your edge? So I resonate with all of that One, yes, moneyball baseball fan. Son that just graduated, that played college baseball, I played baseball, just went to a game last week.
Speaker 1:Love the Moneyball movie, the whole story behind it, and you go on to talk about you know the realities of the construction industry, let's say the power drills, the pneumatic nailers, all of these things. I'm sure we'll get into this. But same as being said right about AI tools. Oh well, you know, I'm sure we'll get into this. But same as being said, right about AI tools. Oh well, you know kids. Kids shouldn't be you be able to use AI, you know, in their writing classes or something like that. Remember when they said we shouldn't be able to use calculators in math class? All those things keep coming up over and over and over as themes. So where do we start?
Speaker 2:So tell me, Jeff, what is one of your favorite phrases that you hate about this industry that's used in this industry.
Speaker 1:Oh, well, the most hated phrase. Yeah, I think this feels like a setup. You know that. I believe that the most dangerous phrase, not only in this industry but in our society, is because this is the way we've always done it.
Speaker 2:Right, and guess what? In our industry, you can say that and still be productive and still make a living. Right, to some extent. Yes, in the world of technology, that is not the case. Right, you are. You know a next version release away from not getting there, right? So when you look at what Zuckerberg's done with you know, meta stuff and trying to do this metasphere, whatever he was building and spent billions at it and then pulled back. If you look at him offering $200 million pay packages right, so one fun intersection right, we're talking about sports. We're now talking about trading players in tech and getting $200 million pay packages. Right, I mean, think about that. Right? So there's lots of intersection to sports. Talk here, right, sure, but for some reason, the AEC industry you can still survive. You can still muddle through and make a living doing it the way you've always done it. So you don't need an edge. You don't need an edge, right, you can still design a building in AutoCAD. There's people doing it.
Speaker 2:Or by hand. There's people doing it, it right, um. So I think the point is that has changed, that's changing in our industry you do have to care about it.
Speaker 2:And I think when you know, in my book I get into this about moneyball, the whole moneyball effect and and what that meant and what that means for the future, and then the reality is like the money ball doesn't work anymore because it's not relevant anymore. I was out with a friend of mine that runs a hedge fund and he said something super interesting. He's like look, ai is better than me, which you don't hear people say, you hear everybody. So you're either like half his glass empty, half his glass full right.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot more people that believe that AI it's not ready, it's not ready. Oh, it hallucinates, it's this. And those people are destined for failure. 100% right, it's the people that say it's not perfect. You show me a perfect human, and then let's have that conversation. It's not perfect. You show me a perfect human and then let's have that conversation. It's not perfect. However, here's where it's 100x, 1000x, anything a human can do. And so in the world of hedge funds, his point was that, as humans, I can look at three sets of data and correlate a trend. Right, I can look at hey, it turns out when it rains, people buy generators because they're worried about their power going out. So if a storm's coming through, home Depot will benefit by selling more generators, right? If there's more storms, we sell more generators. Therefore, let me buy more generator company stock, right, that's not a huge leap.
Speaker 1:No, his point is Not to make this political, but are you saying that Home Depot is trying to control the weather?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm on another point. What was his point?
Speaker 2:So his point is I can now put 100 sets of data into AI that I think have nothing to do with anything. Nothing to do with anything and it can correlate things.
Speaker 1:that I had no idea of.
Speaker 2:And that's where you make billions and trillions. He's like I'm going to make billions and trillions because AI is good. You know, I can take a hundred variables that I think are disparate, drop them together and it'll connect the dots. It's kind of like butterfly effect. Right, butterfly flaps its wings and then a storm happens on the other side of the planet, right, it's those ideas, right. Well, can we actually track butterfly effect? Can ai track better? Probably probably a little bit of finite element analysis and some ai you're, you're there, right. So when we think about it, about that, like, what are the correlations between things? And his whole point was like we as humans cannot do these things, right, right, it's a superpower and, yeah, maybe we could do it. Maybe some computer science lab somewhere could have done it. He's like I am no computer science person.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right. And so it's super, super interesting when you shift to this optimism around, like using the technology versus I'll give you another good example. Technology versus I'll give you another good example. Someone I know was younger, one of our young mastermind members, our early and mid-career mastermind members. Their boss made them go to a career fair because you're young, right, Like, oh, go back to your alma mater, stand in front of a booth and help us recruit people.
Speaker 2:And he said they sent me like 1500 resumes. They sent me a resume book to review ahead of career fair.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:So he's like that's insane, right, it's insane that they sent me this file of all these resumes. And so he's like I'm not going to sit here and look through all these. So he went to his boss and asked his boss something. He said if you had to describe what you think a great hire is, can you describe it to me? And so his boss told him he had his recorder on right. He dictated the whole thing. He dropped all these resumes in the chat GPT and said find me the candidates that meet my boss's requirements and, by the way, his boss's requirements were not must have this degree. It was very little tactical stuff, skills-based stuff. It was more esoteric stuff like creative thinker, blah, blah. You know that kind of thing, thinks outside the box. You know stuff like that which you tell me where that's written on a resume, right?
Speaker 1:these job?
Speaker 2:well, maybe it's in the job description, I don't know or maybe it's in the cover letter, maybe, right, sure, sure. But in most, I mean, these are college students. Right, it's like I was in this club. I was in that club and apparently every college kid loves reading because hobbies reading, which is so funny because I know these kids, none of them read, they listen to podcasts and audible. Right, they're not reading. But someone told them that reading is a good that gets picked up by the AI systems is you must be very smart because you read for fun. So he does all this. It narrows it down to three resumes. So he sends an email to them Be sure to come by my booth, I'd love to meet with you. And then they hired one of them and he was like they were as advertised. But then when he looked at the resumes, he's like how did AI know? I don't see it, I don't see the pattern. And. But there were patterns, right, that the day I could figure out that like, oh, if this person's in this type of club, they grew up in this area, like all these things that matter.
Speaker 2:A VC friend of mine told me the other day he's like I stopped talking to founders anything about their plans in future. I talked to them about their upbringing, because then I can use AI, I dictate that call. Ask them about their childhood, how they grew up, blah, blah, blah. And I've got AI dialed in to know that this is a high potential person. Based on their story. They tell me about their childhood. These people will be successful at any business idea because of how they were raised. And I ask about their parents and their step parents, and at what age did their parents get divorced? Like their entire life story. And he believes that the single correlation to success as a founder is how they were brought up. So I think that's when we start thinking about it. You were asking me like well, how would I use my? Look? I know these kids.
Speaker 2:Like, by the way, every child out there, when I say child under the age of 30, is sports betting, especially boys. They're all sports betting. Like let's just, hey, parents out there, your kids are sports betting. You know, if you think they're doing shady things on the internet, it's not the things that you think they're doing. They're too infatuated with their fantasy football team. Like it's like all of a sudden, your kid loves women's basketball. When you know it's like because they're betting on, oh, all of a sudden, they're following cricket. That's weird, because they're betting on every sport that's available on the apps. Right, they're using ai. They're using ai because they're dropping in. What does the roster look like? How they? You know what's the trend of the players Like. How are they trending? Right they're. I mean, I think if you're a sports book, you're in trouble because they're looking at the spreads. They're finding little anomalies in the spreads, right? So so my point is like Moneyball now, like the tools and the capabilities left for us mere mortals, right?
Speaker 2:to be doing this stuff, and it might be that AI gets us 90% of the wear and the other 10% is maybe judgment. Right, human judgment does matter, but I think that's the whole point is, the playing fields get leveled. And back to your most dangerous phrase used in our industry. You got to have an edge, like it's happening quickly, right, and you got to keep up with the edge. And I think our industry I mean, how many firms do we talk to? Oh, what are you doing with innovation? Oh, we're doing BIM, bim.
Speaker 2:From 20 years ago, 20 years ago BIM yeah 25 years ago, 20 years ago, bim, yeah, 25 years ago.
Speaker 2:But like, oh, we're using drones, like what? Right? So I think if you want to believe that you're insulated from this stuff, you're wrong. And if you believe you can sit back and like, call it in and not have an edge, you're wrong. And you know my work ethic, right. If you're like I get a Slack from you at 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, 7, like, when are you sleeping? I'm a selective sleeper, but, um, half the stuff I post in our slack isn't like hey go do this, hey go do that. It's like hey, here's what I learned. Actually, we have a slack channel called what did I learn today. Yeah, a couple that everybody posts in and and people are like why do we have that? It's like because if you didn't learn anything today, you have no edge yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I always tell them, like all you do is like listen to my podcast, learn something every day. But so that's like what did you learn today? Right, what did you learn today and how are you applying it? Right? So I think that's the thing that our industry is not comfortable with and maybe doesn't have the skills right. There's fast twitch muscles and slow twitch. This is true, right.
Speaker 1:Our industry is more like the run a marathon type, versus do a bunch of sprint types sure, yeah, I think moneyball is, you know, outside of my obsession with baseball um, I think moneyball is a really interesting example for this because, and for those of you that are not familiar with money ball story of the oakland a's billy bean was the um, was he the general manager? I think maybe um at that point, but they came up with a data-driven approach to trading, to promoting, to playing. You know how, basically how they dealt with um, with all of the players in their system. Right, they were a low budget team at that point. Um had very few resources and ended up, not long after the, the idea of money ball came up, they, they ended up winning the world series and the movie.
Speaker 2:It was that same season.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was a movie the but if, if you, if you understand how all of that went down, right, he, he hired a data scientist to help him with this. And of course, who hated it? The sc hated it, the coaches hated it. Oh, you're doing things, you know, you're taking our job, essentially. Have we ever heard that in the industry? I don't know. And so there was all this resistance to it. But it turned around an organization that had little resources, had little tradition, at least in the recent history, of winning, et cetera, et cetera. Now, a little while ago, you said Moneyball is no longer relevant. I would say it's not that it's not relevant anymore, it's just not the edge anymore, because now everybody is doing it. And, in fact, moneyball, the story of Moneyball or the concept behind it, the data driven approach behind it, has led to all kinds of on the field tech, has led to all kinds of tracking, because we need data right for the data driven.
Speaker 1:It's led to all kinds of tracking of different statistics. It's led to the way that ballparks are designed. If you've ever been to at least a AAA, if not an MLB, stadium lately, you look at the scoreboard you go what the heck are all those numbers? It's all of these stats. It's exit VLO. It's not just the velocity of the pitch anymore. Right, it's all of these stats, stats which, as you mentioned, leads to sports betting. Right, there's all different kinds of ways that you can bet on on sports. Um, it's led to wearables.
Speaker 1:It's led to the way that that, um, we think about, um, substituting players and and managing players, and it goes on and on and on and on, and so so to your point, you know the last question in your post what's your edge? Right, if you are an AEC firm, an architecture firm, an engineering firm, that says you're innovative because you're using BIM 25-year-old BIM. I was the head of the digital transformation team when we switched from AutoCAD to Revit, when it was like Revit 1 or whatever it was right. After Autodesk purchased it, I said Autodesk, autocad would be gone in five years. Apparently, I got that one wrong. But if you think that's your edge, it's not right. Everybody's participating in that edge. So what's next? What's next after Moneyball? The entire Major League, baseball and their farm systems are using Moneyball now. So what's?
Speaker 2:next.
Speaker 1:That's why I love this example that you've used, because I think it's really really understandable Once you gain the edge, you have to be looking for the next edge.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting I mean that's what I kind of walked through in my book right? Is this idea that, like here's money ball, but a lot of this data stuff is very tangible, right, so you know part of it. You know, I call it the intangible and creating the intangible enterprise for a reason. Right, I didn't say create the data-driven enterprise. My assumption is the data-driven enterprises. That playing field is leveled now. So what's different? Like, what are you going to do different? That's not data-driven to create your edge, right, and I think that's where, like, that part of the brain in business, like I don't think business in corporate America has been very creative right Now, all of a sudden, you've got to get really creative right.
Speaker 2:You have to think very differently about this stuff and it's interesting because you know as we think about. You know the CEOs we talk to and the companies we talk to on any given day you know, the challenge to CEOs is like you can now execute on so many ideas.
Speaker 2:I mean, think about when you first started working with me. Whenever I had an idea, it was like, oh yeah, we'll get to that, we'll get to that, we'll get to that. Now we have a little bit larger team, we're using a lot of AI, we have a lot of really smart people. That it's like created so much capacity for me to execute on so many ideas. Right, versus like before, I'd be like, hey, let's do this. Yeah, let's do that next year. We don't have time, right. But now we're just working at the speed of thought constantly, right, and some things work, some things don't. Some things work, some things don't, and that's fine, right. But, and you're getting feedback so much faster. You know, I did this project for a large beverage company in Atlanta and they had me come in and say, hey, like, give us an edge.
Speaker 2:We need to be innovative and, um, they had this big idea, that, this really big idea, that, um, of creating products. So their biggest innovation funny enough, there are two big innovations they told me about one was that during pride week they were going to have diet coke boxes that had rainbows on them. That was a big innovation, okay, because they could do on-demand printing and like they could get it out in time, right, I'm like, okay, that's interesting, uh. The second one was the little mini cans, the little four-pack mini cans. Those are like very high margin, the and they're also there's a reason why they're at the front of the checkout register, because maybe you don't keep their beverages in your house all the time because they're very high in sugar and the cause of diabetes and globally that you might impulse purchase a four pack of mini cans to have for dinner. Like, oh, we're getting pizza tonight, let me get that versus getting the case or the six pack or whatever that sits around the house, highest margin business that they have, right, something like that. But I told them, like the problem you guys have is your brand is so strong so you could can cat piss. That's literally what I told them. I'm very popular with things like that you could, can cat piss, you would sell a hundred million dollars of it before people figured it out. Right, because the brand these sales channels all of it. You know, all of a sudden it's on the end cap at walmart, like, like a failure is a hundred million dollar business because you can, can't cap this and make a hundred million dollars, right, right. And so the thing is they don't get great feedback loop because it takes time. It took too much time, right? So before you know it's a failure, you've already sold a hundred million dollars and maybe you're making decisions around that being, but it hits a hundred million and then goes back down. But the world that most of us live in, we get feedback pretty quickly. We get feedback pretty quick and we can adjust very quickly. That's why, like, culturally, you know, you know we've, I've been working on and I'll be publishing our core values, which will be interesting to see who quits.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that we start to realize around, like how we operate, is we don't change people like, oh, we always change our mind. Why do we keep changing our mind? I was like because we get feedback, not because, like, yes, I have ADHD. We've already determined I have ADHD, but I'm high functioning ADHD. So there's that, and if you ever want to talk to me about that stuff, like it's been a 25 year breakthrough for me. It's taken a lot Everything from diet to caffeine and meditation, all this stuff. Always have fun talking about that stuff.
Speaker 2:However, we change. We're always changing our mind, not because we're just chaos monkeys here, it's because we listen to customers, right, it's because we actually listen, and I think that's like one of those things that us as a team I mean, you know like we teach customer discovery we eat our own dog food on that stuff We've never said this is the way we've always done it. I was actually looking back. I don't know if you know this. We've had three unicorns present at Summit over the years Anderle, onetrust, greenlight and this was when they were nothing. Anderle was a four-person company. Now they're on 60 Minutes, right. They're multi-billion dollar, right.
Speaker 2:So go check out our YouTube channel. You can actually find all the videos of these things from previous Summit. And so people are like, oh, so you have speakers. I'm like we don't do speakers and people are tired of sitting there watching people on stage talk about nonsense. Have a couple speakers that are going to expand or blow our minds and then the rest of it. Let's have discussions, let's talk about specific things, right, so we constantly relate, but does that mean we changed our mind? How has Summit changed, even since you've been here? How has Summit changed?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's different every year. Right, it has been yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I have ADHD.
Speaker 1:No, it's based on feedback. I mean, and you know, I know at times I will create friction in the organization because I, you know, I have a very direct feedback loop through our, our incubator, through our um, our mastermind groups, etc. And sometimes I'll say, hey, this is direct feedback that I've received through those channels, right and um and, and we respond to those things and I listen to you right, because one of the things you said is hey, we're tired of talking and just talking all the time.
Speaker 2:Can we start solving problems? Right? And what did I come up with?
Speaker 1:We've got some activities.
Speaker 2:Some activities right. So I'm in the side point. Yeah, you know, jeff, like I don't have to believe you. In many ways You're just messenger. I don't care about what you think exactly. I want to know what the customer thinks right. And when you're like, hey, here's some of the feedback, I'm like great, let's change things right, let's change it up. But I think culturally in our organization that has to be viewed as positive, not like oh my god, what are we? Doing we're doing it different. Yeah, no, I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're doing it differently. Yeah, I am curious what their feedback about Mellow Yellow was, though. Oh, that's, that's a different product.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I will tell you this. What I learned is that, apparently, um, their Xero brands are all targeted at males because real men, early men, are all targeted at males because real men, early men, don't drink. Diet drinks okay, but they will drink a zero drink okay, and that what?
Speaker 1:no, but it's you know it's real. They have all the data and facts, right, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah I've never somehow like. Only women drink diet drinks, and big burly men drink zero drinks well, that's that's why they're big and burly. They're big and burly and probably are diabetic because of non-zero drinks. I was wondering if that's is that a synonym, oh boy. By the way, you're in that same company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I find this fascinating, right? They're the largest cold chain provider in places like Africa, Because you have vehicles going out and delivering their beverages cold. They can also put things like insulin in their supply chain and get medical stuff, I'm like oh my God, how ironic is that. Circular economy. You need our beverage or you need the insulin. Which one do you need? I got both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, speaking of trends, we've spent the past two episodes making sure it's impossible for our sponsorship team to find anything Any sponsors?
Speaker 2:Poor Ian right Like let me cross another sponsor off the list. Kp just talked trash about him. Great, but you know what? Though sorry one of uh, our potential sponsors, that I was kind of giving a hard time last episode. They listened to the pod, all these folks listened to the pod and they sent me nice little notes. They're like. You know I can't endorse what you said. However, it was funny well, at least we've got that like okay, like as long as I made you laugh, like I don't care welcome to the comedy hour yeah I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 1:Don't forget to tape uh tip your server yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe that's our edge, but that's gonna be the takeaway for all these. Like pour you in, yeah, and cross another one off the list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we're making it harder and harder. We're innovation is the or no? How's that quote go? Innovation is the, what's the mother of all, of all innovation. I forget the quote now Necessity, necessity, the we, necessity, necessity, the we're. We're changing necessity, making it hard let me tell you something.
Speaker 2:We're on this whole money ball thing, right. I was talking to a guy today down in palo alto who works for a big real estate company and he's created something. Right, he's created something on his own and he's like, I right, he's created something on his own and he's like, you know, kind of a money ball type deal, right, and he's like I have created this thing and I looked at trying to sell it to the industry and then I said, forget about that, I'm going to use it as a weapon to take down the industry and I think that's the thing that our industry has to understand.
Speaker 2:It's no longer this technology, adopt that technology. The technology companies are figuring it out pretty quickly that they can be like if you're not going to adopt the latest thing, they'll just go take your customer right, they'll just go do it themselves, right? So I don't need to sell software to architecture firms, I'm just going to be an architecture firm. So what's starting to see is I mean, I think it's a very interesting trend what the industry is getting from all these startups a lot of times is actually mediocrity. The really good good stuff, the good good they're going to get disrupted by.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean we're seeing that we're seeing to get, they're going to get, disrupted by. Yeah, yeah, I mean we're seeing that we're seeing that attitude more and more. I think you know, and I think it it reminds me of a conversation we had in a mastermind group a while back.
Speaker 1:You know, here's this, this I'll say head of innovation and they were asking other mastermind members in the room about adoption rates. Right, they've got this great new innovative technology that they have purchased, they have access to. It can fundamentally change the way they do this, that and the other right, and they were complaining and asking others what kind of adoption rate and what their process was, because they're talking about 4% or 7% is a really low number, a single-digit percentage of the people in their organization who are, quote-unquote, supposed to be using this new technology that they're onboarding and they've got single-digit adoption. And other people in the room are reflecting similar numbers. Right, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, well, if you are a startup that has a software, this is what you're facing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here's what's interesting, right? So a friend of mine was at the Built Worlds event and a CEO of a construction company was up on stage talking about some innovation role that they had. That was very successful. That's the whole point, right? You pay to play. He paid to be up on stage to talk about all the good stuff and to talk about himself. You know what guys? You don't have to pay me to come, be on stage and talk about myself, so I'm happy to do it for free. But he basically got up there and talked about this great innovation that they deployed and everybody's like really excited, and a friend of mine was there. He was like it was a great case study. The thing that everyone missed was he said it took 24 months. Yeah, I'm like what, like, you know, like, and you know, of course, everybody's like cheering, right, everybody's check clapping. They missed that one nugget 24 months. It took you 24 months to deploy anything Like nothing should take 24 months?
Speaker 1:Well, especially not in that arena. No, how many new products came out in 24 months?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, maybe if you're deploying SAP or Oracle Financial, some big account, maybe right, like, maybe right, yeah, but like some niche tool product, like we got to start thinking like minutes and hours, yeah. Not months, 24 months. World's moving faster than that, and by the way, here's a good test, right when these executives talk about their CIO and they refer to them as their IT guy that tells you everything that tells you everything.
Speaker 2:So I think big takeaways from this pod one. I think all this innovation, all this technology, I think IT departments are kind of going away. Can you tell me what IT departments do these days?
Speaker 1:I have no idea.
Speaker 2:They're procurement engines. Let me go buy Microsoft Cloud. Let me go buy CrowdStrike, let me go, let me manage, even like the printers, right, they hire companies to do managed printing services. They basically deploy technology that's managed by others. So they're procurement vehicles and then they're always good for a free conference to attend. They'll come attend your conferences and come boondoggle with you. Go up to Napa and hang out and learn about your latest cybersecurity platform.
Speaker 1:But it's become a lot of vendor management.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to understand. They're not maintaining servers. If it's a Mac, and I mean it's a Mac environment, they're probably doing nothing to maintain the desktops, right? And if it's a windows it's still not that bad these days. Microsoft has their act together. So I do wonder, right when you talk about it takes 24 months to deploy something new, why did it happen or why did it take 24 months?
Speaker 1:as you were talking, I was googling because curious. Going back to the, to the oakland a's and money ball, how long did the a's have the money ball advantage? Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2:So I was, I was googling here a little bit and, as best I can tell, two seasons maybe four, but yeah, within a couple of seasons almost everybody started to figure out it probably took one season to help people understand what a data scientist was, and then it took another year to fire all the scouts that were culturally resisting the change. I think that's one of those things too.
Speaker 1:Like everybody wants to talk about change management year to fire all the scouts that were culturally resisting the change.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, yeah, I think that's one of those things too. Like, everybody wants to talk about change management, right, I think it's change leadership. I think that's the shift. It's not change management, it's change leadership. Ceos have to say here's what we're doing. Guys show up, do it. Don't show up, go do something different. Right, and I think this idea, this granularity around change management, is just such a nonsense management consulting thing. It's really change leadership that you're really looking to do.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, there was one of our mastermind members recently hired for a firm represented by one of our mastermind members recently hired a dedicated change management person. It's an interesting story and one of the things that they said is that it's as much change communication as anything else what they're doing, and that ties back to a lot of what we've already talked about in terms of innovation and firms.
Speaker 2:But I think that's why people might listen to this and go well, kp, that's cute, you don't get it. These are big organizations. I've run big organizations, I've run public companies. I know all about big organizations and I will tell you that this, this idea that, like, things are different these days because I don't need IT. I don't need IT to build an app, I don't need IT to do anything for me, right? So I don't have these weird obstacles in my way. I was telling someone the other day it's kind of like, you know, when you hire a subcontractor, they show up with tools. I think we're more and more like here's my set of proprietary tools to do my job. It's not the company's tools, they're my tools, right for me to do my job. And so I think everybody's like oh, kp, you know changement, you don't get it. I'm like, if that's your reaction to what I'm saying, go ahead and retire.
Speaker 1:Well, Ian, I would cross the National Association of IT Managers off the list and also they have no budget.
Speaker 2:They have no budget because nobody's a member anymore.
Speaker 1:We're losing sponsors left and right.
Speaker 2:Anybody else want to go for it?
Speaker 1:Join us next week to see who else we alienate on KPM Packed.
Speaker 2:Did I tell you we're looking for sponsors? You think that this high production value, this podcast app, is like free? Like what are you talking about? That stuff costs money. Jeff's got like a $300 mic over there. Who pays for that free? Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:it's cost money, jeff's got like a 300 mic over there. Who pays for that? Like what are we doing here? We need some sponsors, everybody and all the hamsters that are powering it. I mean, come on, yeah, ping ian well, I think I posted about summit.
Speaker 2:I was like the summit website's up, we're open and ready to take your money. That's how good I am at marketing. Click here, we'll take your money.
Speaker 1:Sponsorship opportunities available. Available, I think they're on the summit site too, so you can click on them and we can take your money.
Speaker 2:We've e-commerce, everything. You don't even have to talk to us. We don't have to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants to talk to each other anyway. Just click on things and give us your credit card. There you go, and in reality, what's happening is we aren't really alienating sponsors, potential sponsors what we're actually doing. This is our version of product placement.
Speaker 2:That would be funny.
Speaker 2:You know, that's actually funny, right? If people sponsored us and all we did was trash talk their company, they would probably get more brand like a visceral brand reaction than us talking good about. Like, I love using Figma. I love these guys. If you listen to TBPN, right, the Tech Bros Podcast Network they insert like they have like 100 sponsors and they're very good at inserting like without like in a very good placement ways. They're very good and they move fast, they're very fast and they just like. Next you know they're telling you about figma in the middle of a conversation. Right, we're like the opposite of that we talk about mellow, yellow and cats yeah we'll.
Speaker 2:We'll talk trash about your brand and uh, people will walk away remembering it. They will.
Speaker 1:they will, donovan, have a cat. Yeah, the one that's saying meliel. Anyway, you, you, uh, you mentioned your book earlier, um, in in the you know conversation about um, about money ball and and the tie to your book. So for anybody out there that is listening to this and go oh, what's, what's this book? Kp's latest book, um, which is it's a year old now, yeah, yeah, but, but a year old um. Creating the intangible enterprise is the name of the book. Uh, you can find that wherever you purchase books it's even on Audible now or wherever you listen to audiobooks, which is how I consume books. But if you ever hear us talking and we mention, or KP mentions, his book, something like that, it's Creating the Intangible Enterprise is his latest. You can get it at Amazon. You can get it in print at whatever bookstores still exist. I forgot the last time I was at the airport to see if they had it in the bookstores there at the airport Probably do.
Speaker 1:You should pick it up and read it on the plane. We have been talking about KP's post on LinkedIn. Again, if you're not following him, you should, because you'll find nuggets like this. Let me read it to you again as we fade out with all of our sponsorship post roll here. Did you ever watch or read Moneyball? Great movie. I don't read much for pleasure. I don't hear much about Moneyball anymore. I've heard about Torpedo Bats. We should do a whole episode on Torpedo Bats.
Speaker 1:The thing about building an edge is that you rarely get to keep the edge. The A's did not. Ai and automation is the same way. I'm sure a contractor with the first power drill must have been amazing. I'm sure a bunch of folks on the side complained what do you do if you don't have power on the job site? Your labor will become weak from not turning screws anymore. I like that one actually. If it breaks, then what? It's too expensive and my labor will just break it. Then what? Oh, we're still making power tools for human hands, aren't we? But aren't they just end effectors for robots that are coming soon? We don't hear much about Moneyball anymore because everybody got it. Yes, everybody in the league got it. Everybody's using it. It's changed the way baseball is announced, the way it's viewed on the scoreboard, the way it's bet on. It's no longer an edge. So the question is what's your edge? Think about that. Think about what your edge is If it's been from 25 years ago maybe there's questions.
Speaker 1:Maybe KP. This has been fun. I've enjoyed it. Thanks for bringing a baseball topic this week.
Speaker 2:Just for you, just for you I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:All right everybody. Thank you for listening to all of our sponsors. We hope you enjoyed your product placement today and we'll be right back again next week with another episode of KP Unpacked. My name is Jeff Eccles, I am joined by KP Ready and we will place more products in next week's episode. Thanks everybody, see you next week.