200: ‘A Framework for Digital Transformation’, with Nathan Miller

200: ‘A Framework for Digital Transformation’, with Nathan Miller

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Nathan Miller back to the podcast. Before we get into it, I just wanted to say that this is episode 200 of the podcast that is 200 deep, long form conversations with the people shaping the future of the AEC industry. I didn't plan anything too celebratory for this milestone, but it just feels right that Nathan's the guest for this one. His ability to cut through hype and surface the real work behind innovation is exactly what this show is about. Nathan is the founder and CEO of Proving Ground, a digital design agency and software company focused on transforming how AEC firms work through data-driven tools, strategies, and services. He's also a well-known voice on LinkedIn and in industry conferences for bringing clarity and nuance to conversations around computational design, digital transformation, and more recently, artificial intelligence.

Nate's last appearance here was nearly two years ago, and a lot has changed since then. Or has it? While AI has flooded every channel of communication in the industry, Nathan and I explore why the real challenges aren't about the tools, but about the strategy... or more often, the lack of one. We talk about the uncomfortable reality that 90% of digital transformations fail not because of technology, but because of misalignment across leadership, culture, behavior, and incentives.

We talk about the hidden costs of ignoring that misalignment. And the long tail of change management work that begins after a flashy launch. Nathan also shares his "Smarts, Health and Fitness" framework that offers a clear way for firms to assess their readiness for real transformation, not just more tech.

A key takeaway from this conversation for me is the high cost of misalignment in digital transformation efforts. I have lived this. When strategy, culture and measurement are pulling in different directions, even the best tools and tactics will fall flat.

As usual, there's an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes. So be sure to check all of that out. You can find it directly in your podcast app if you're a paid member and if you're a free member, you can find them at the website, which is trxl.co. Lastly, you can really help the podcast by sharing these episodes with your colleagues and by commenting and sharing on my LinkedIn posts. Which is a topic you'll hear more about in this episode. You can also leave a comment over on YouTube and engage with me and the other listeners there. And I really thank you for listening and for your support, and I hope Episode 200 not only adds value to you and your thought space, but it also reminds you of why you tune into this podcast.

So now without further ado, I bring you my wide ranging conversation with Nathan Miller.

Nate, welcome back. It's been almost two years since you've been on the show. Can you believe it?

Nathan Miller: has it been almost two years? Like. Of

Evan Troxel: of 2023 already. Insane.

Nathan Miller: Yeah, I, um, I've lost track of time

Evan Troxel: Well, well, me too. And, and so, and just, what's cool is this is episode number 200, which also, I can't, can't believe it's pretty, that, that, I mean, it's a number, let's just say it's a number. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: a lot of talking, Evan.

Evan Troxel: It's many, many numbers of, many hours and hours of talking, that's for sure. Yeah. So you're doing the Lord's work, I think I mentioned that in the last episode.

Uh, I'm trying to do some of that here on the podcast, and it's great to have you back.

Nathan Miller: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It's been, um, it's been a good couple of years. Um, I, I, I don't, it's hard to take stock of what has happened, um, in just a couple of years time. It se it kind of seems like everything's happened, but happened. You know, there's things that are different, but a lot of things that have just sort of stayed the same

Evan Troxel: Same old, same old. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: and, um. And of course the, you know, the world keeps turning and, you know, we can't, we can't, uh, we can't diminish that. We can't diminish that fact that the

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: here and it

Evan Troxel: So

Nathan Miller: and it keeps on going,

Evan Troxel: it's amazing when you think, when you'd actually step back and he was like, where are these tiny little things on this one little planet in the, you know, right there. But, but in our worlds, like, it's everything. Right.

Nathan Miller: yeah, that's right.

Evan Troxel: Okay. So here's what's happened in the last two years. Two letters, Nate, and they're probably, you're not, not your favorite letters, but AI has happened may pretty much in the last two years.

Nathan Miller: right. That's right. So you know how to provoke me. Um,

Evan Troxel: Poker.

Nathan Miller: yep. So, so, you know, if I think back to 20, like last time we spoke, and I'm not entirely sure if we, my, if memory serves, if we covered this, but I, I do know that when Gen

Evan Troxel: Hey,

Nathan Miller: was kind of hitting the scene, go

Evan Troxel: I, I'm just gonna use chat, GBT to summarize that episode real quick. Hang on. No

Nathan Miller: okay. Yeah, you can go right ahead. Get, get right into it. Um, you know, we, we, we've certainly seen the explosion of artificial intelligence enabled features, tools,

Evan Troxel: marketing. Lots of marketing. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: of marketing, um, a lot of internal research initiatives happening in architecture firms. Um, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, a lot of hype, um, and a lot of maybe perhaps, uh, overzealous enthusiasm for, for, for the tech.

And at that conversation, whether, uh, we, us at proving ground have asked for it or not, um, is definitely part of the, the dialogue that any kind of organization that. Or a creative professional or anyone in the AEC industry, if you're, if you're part of the dialogue around tech, you're having to engage in, in the dialogue around artificial intelligence,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: um, and by extension, uh, machine learning and, and the associated, uh, capabilities. And, um, you know, the, the thread that we're trying to, um, I guess guide, uh, through the needle, um, and in, in many ways it does feel like we're, you know, trying to, trying to thread a needle here is find, um, the kind of real world, um, meaningful, um, results based discourse around the capability. 'cause there's, there's a lot of claims around what AI can do for a company, what it can do for a creative individual. A lot of discourse around what it might do for jobs. Um, either make new jobs. Remove old jobs, um, things of that nature. Um, but you know, it occurs to us, and, you know, this is a through line that we've started to kind of promote in a lot of our strategic work in, in a lot of our, you know, dialogue that we, we try to have online and through our blog and whatnot, is the idea that, um, the, promise of AI is not sort of a self realizing thing. Um, just because technology does exist doesn't mean it's going to change things in the way that the creators of the technology are claiming that the marketers are claiming or that, um, anyone in the kind of media is sort of spinning it. Um, it really does take concerted effort, um, and a very directed. Um, thoughtful, meaningful approach by people their organizations, to lead the, the lead a transformation that they want.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: Um, and I think that that level of intentionality that, um, that kind of is involved in that really where the genesis of a, of a, of an AI strategy should be.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: I think, I think another thing that's important to know, and understand is that the, the, it's been a couple of years since 2023, right? But you know, I have yet to see, and maybe you can correct me, or maybe some of our listeners can, you know, correct me on this. I have yet to see a, a definitive study on business. Um, and, and, and, and by business I mean sort of maybe the impact, the, the impact on business that AI has had, um, in sort of a measurable way. Um, we're certainly seeing kind of claims around, you know, anecdotal claims around things like productivity increases or the amount of output.

One, you know, we can move faster on certain tasks. We can, you know, remove certain wasteful activities by having, you know, Che GPT or, um, any number of, of LLMs summarize meeting like this. Right.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: Um, but you know, it's, it's interesting that we, we still are seeing, we're seeing a lot of discussion about adoption ai.

Um, but we have yet to sort of see like, ah, this is where the value actually is,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: you know, and that's, and that's another area that we're very much invested in helping organizations. is like, okay, you we're going, this is inevitability. We're using it, it's part of our toolkit, it's part of our, um, you know, day-to-day operations.

Now, I mean, it's on our phones, it's on, and so it's part of our lives. So like out where, where it can take us and what kind of impact is it, is it going to deliver? And can we guide ourselves towards something that sort of a form of impact that we want.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. My first thought is like, I just thought something came out with open AI this week where they, they've added in like mental health breaks where it's like, take a break. I, I, I personally can't imagine anybody using, I mean, I, maybe Revit needs that too, right? I, that, that's a tool people actually use for hours and hours and hours a day.

I can't imagine people actually using. Something like chat, GBD for hours, an hour, but I, I assume it happens. I mean, or, or maybe they're just being proactive about that, but be, and, and, and there's different context, right? I could see somebody actually using it, like as a, as a psychotherapist for six hours a day in some way.

Um, or, or, you know, some version of that maybe, but not for like productivity type uses. I can't imagine. But maybe,

Nathan Miller: Yeah. So, um, that, that's, that's really interesting that I, I hadn't read that, um, that they're actually adding in those guardrails

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Nathan Miller: their own platform, but it, it does seem to be in response to a number of reports that have come out in the, you know, the last, you know, kind of recent weeks and into months of people having psychotic breaks.

Um, and, and kind of mental breakdowns through the use of these platforms and sort of a level of dependence that's being cultivated on,

Evan Troxel: Really? Wow.

Nathan Miller: Yeah, and it's, it's, um, it, it is, it is one of those things where. The, and you know, we've, we've seen this, and we're kind of familiar with this just through the, the various, the lens of social media,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: and the impact that social media has had on our, I guess, our culture. And, and, and we kind of are, are familiar with the effects of algorithms, you know, curating what we're seeing when we're seeing it.

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Nathan Miller: made comments on sort of visibility of this podcast,

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Nathan Miller: based on how

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: change under our, under our feet and, um, you know, exposes to certain content. It, you know, hides other content from us.

It creates social bubbles, and so on and so forth. And the, the impact that ai, you know, could and, and will and is having on kind of our cultural sensibilities, um, and how we interact with information and data, uh, certainly, um, I think plays a big role in that. Um.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, it's interesting just to think about how when you use a tool like that, that. It always ends with, would you like me to do something else? And so it prompts you, right? Like you prompted it, now it's prompting you. And it's like, use it some more. It's, it's like that feed where they're all, all of these things that are out there, like what you were just talking about with, with social media, you know, suppressing or exposing certain posts, everything that's linking somewhere else doesn't get boosted, right?

Because there's a, a risk for that platform to lose your eyeballs, lose your attention, because you want, if I wanted you to go to my website or my podcast, your podcast app to find my podcast, I'm taking you away from, from the, the thing that you're looking at. And so all of these tools are now designed for this quote unquote engagement, you know, and, and that is, that is a behavioral thing that we've witnessed the downside effects of seriously on so many, in so many ways.

Nathan Miller: Yeah. En enga engagement farming,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: is kind of what it's called. Like how do you, and we, we, we see it in headlines. We see it in, mean, if just you need only go to LinkedIn

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: how, um, people structure their posts to get engagement on their posts. Like

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: it's really interesting. You go to any post and, um, they'll structure, uh, the, their hook to be the first line and you have to click to read more in

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: the full thing.

And then it's also very clearly a lot of it's AI generated

Evan Troxel: Well, and, and LinkedIn makes it so that people have to do that if, if you want to read more than three lines and not just what's above the fold. Right. And so, and so there's a, a gameification of it. Like, I have to play that game if I want somebody to actually get to the part that I think would matter to them about my post and.

Yeah, it's pain. So, so it's, it's just, it is a game. Like these are all games that we have. We can choose not to play them. And, but at the, at the, you know what, what's the ultimate like, uh, attention is difficult to get these days too.

Nathan Miller: Sure, sure. I mean, there, there is something to be said about being able to take stances on these technologies and de like, and, and, you know, the choice to play the game or

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: Um, can, in fact, I think some be somewhat of a differentiator for, for practices. So if we, if we go back and think about a, a, a design practice that is, you know, hearing a lot about artificial intelligence and the, the plethora of tools that are being, uh, provided and made available. Uh, using AI technology in the backend. And, you know, you have a practice that has established a sort of e you know, ethos, um, about design. Um, there's a sense, you have a sensibility, um, about the kind, like what makes for a good space and, you know, what makes for a, an experience that people want to have in their home, in their workplace, um, at a

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: venue, so on and so forth. Um, the, the choice that you have as a professional with regards to all of these tools is selecting ones that will help you amplify the, the message, the ethical positions, the, uh, the design culture that you've cultivated, and use that to, to enhance. Um, don't need to grab every tool, uh, that's out there.

Um, and you don't need to chase tools Um, and I think that's, that's, that's kind of where a

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: attention is right now. Or a lot of

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Nathan Miller: is on, on LinkedIn. It's like, oh, you've gotta, you've, you've gotta go for the, the, the tool that turns your sketch into a 3D animation. If you're not doing that, you're, you're gonna be left behind.

I mean,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: the case. Um, you would select such a tool if you think it's going to enhance your ability to be a good storyteller and enhance your ability to, um, uh, uh, deliver a better product.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: And I also think that if there's a tool that, uh, or a platform or a service or something that is, that, that may suggest or be a, or, or, or might promote a design sensibility that you are fundamentally or foundationally against, um. Then you have, I think, every opportunity to, you know, reject that tool, um, or, and, and, and talk about it.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Right.

Nathan Miller: and we shouldn't be afraid of doing that either. Um, there's a lot of tools out there where I look at it, I'm like, yeah, I would, you know, if I, if I rewind the clock and go back to my time as a designer, I would never, would never be interested in it. But, you know, uh, there, there is high, you know, FOMO is a very powerful motion that

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: might, you know, jump at such a tool and,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: for it, right?

Evan Troxel: I, I see people who are like the, the chasing the tools, they're, those are tool chaser people. Like, they're, they're not chasing tools to actually find the value. It's like, it's like, uh, it's like reactive news stories, right? It's like the, the, the journalists need to be first, whatever that means, right?

Be first to be in the feed. And I see that with tool chasers too. It's like, oh, I'm trying out midjourney this with runway that and, and what, and whatever. And it's like, but there's never this settling on a workflow or, and I, I know these tools are changing a lot, so, uh, maybe this is easier said than done, but there's not like this, oh, here's something that works in this way that drives these kinds of results.

And I'm putting my name behind that

Nathan Miller: Right.

Evan Troxel: rather than I've tried out this new tool. Here's, here's what it looks like. I've tried out this new tool, here's what it looks like. I've tried out. And it's just like the, the conveyor belt just keeps moving and. So that doesn't add a lot of value other than just show, maybe it positions somebody as a, as a tool chaser.

Right. Or, or somebody who's on the bleeding edge. But what firms actually need are things that work when, when it's difficult. Right. And I think that's kind of what you're pointing at. It's like you need a tool that doesn't blow up because there is literally always a deadline. Right. Like, that's how our industry works.

Nathan Miller: Well, the, the high reliability, I mean, you know, we work in an industry that requires, I think a level of, of high reliability behind the, the technologies that we, that we operate in

Evan Troxel: Yeah,

Nathan Miller: and, and I think that's, that's also another kind of, kind of danger and I think something that, uh, firms grapple with, especially if you're, you are on this early adoption curve with a, a technology subset like ai. Um, you know, I, I would venture that many of the services that we see today are not gonna be there a year from now, um, or two years from

Evan Troxel: sure. Of course. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: be, you know, you're gonna see acquisitions, you're gonna see, um, tool sets radically evolve in different directions. And so you, you, you want to figure out which are the, uh, you know, what are the, the platforms that might yield a higher, a high level of reliability for you in the future? Um, and. Can you depend? Are you gonna be able to depend on them?

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: actually one, you know, an area that if we think about our own software development, some of the tools that we make and the, uh, you know, some of the, the product work that we might do, or if we're guiding a client on a custom solution, we always kind of put an emphasis on like, yeah, we could go down this route, but, here are the risk factors if we adopt this API that hooks into this ai. Um, or if we kind of build on top of this library over here, um, you know, we have to weigh, is this gonna be there? Um, after your investment, after you've made an investment in kind of bringing this on, adopting it, or customizing it in some way. You, you want to have that, that, that, uh, sense of certainty around

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: to be, I think in some ways a tool chaser. Um, at least, you know, casting a wide net, you know what's out there. You kind of need to do that to figure out, you know. You know what's gonna work and what's not. But

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: want to, you do want to have, you do want to have, I think, in the back of your mind, a sense of purpose to it.

A purposeful, um, you don't wanna do it just to do it. Um,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: influencer and that's like your, your

Evan Troxel: Your job.

Nathan Miller: to get

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: hits and, you know, kind of get engagement again. Engagement,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: um, unless you're doing that, you, you do want to have sort of a purposeful approach to, uh, this level of exploration.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I see, I see it from both ends being useful in a firm, right? Where it's like the, the part that you're talking about with the strategy that you were referencing earlier on in the conversation, it's like you gotta figure out where you want to go and then figure out how you're gonna get there. But you gotta really know where you want to go.

And then on the other end of that spectrum are these tools where like these are unlocking potentially new ways to go somewhere else. And, and so you kind of do have to keep your eye on both of those and continually reflect on those things and, and iterate on those to make sure you're, you are, but, but I think it's really important to always keep in mind, like, you cannot get somewhere.

You don't know where you're going. Right? And so this whole idea of tool chasing. Just for tool chasing sake. Like to your point, it it's not useful unless, unless it meets some criteria that actually will, you think, and again, you can prototype, you can totally experiment, right? But it's gotta, it's gotta give you an idea that, oh, maybe we can achieve this thing that we are trying to achieve already.

Um, or we need to modify our plan because that is so compelling. But I feel like a lot of that doesn't happen with, well first of all, small firms don't have time for that kind of thing. They don't have somebody on staff, right? And so maybe they are just kind of keeping their eye on somebody's YouTube channel for that.

Nathan Miller: Uh,

Evan Troxel: Um, but larger firms do have those resources where they can have some r and d and people can be playing with things and vetting them and then putting them through the paces and through the process and then saying, well, here's some potentials for these things. And that makes its way back into the strategy feedback loop to say, because where you're going.

Nathan Miller: you're going

Evan Troxel: You should always be trying to figure out where you're going. You don't just, no, nobody makes a five-year plan and then completely sticks to it. Right. I don't, I don't think that that's, that's not a way to think about it either.

Nathan Miller: Sure. Yeah. You don't want to, I mean, there, there is an organic nature, uh, you know, the term digital transformation, any form of transformation, transformative, um, you know, think something that is gonna like change the way you work. It's, it's not gonna be, um, uh, over, over the course of five years, you're gonna take side quests.

You're going to

Evan Troxel: It's not

Nathan Miller: that

Evan Troxel: finite.

Nathan Miller: Yeah. It's not finite, but there is an aspect of having a bit of a North star.

Evan Troxel: Yes.

Nathan Miller: Right. And I think you said something that's really important there. It's like, and it's, it's actually the har Well, I think one of the hardest parts of a strategy, and for an organization to define is like defining what you want.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: Um, because that's gonna tell you, that's also gonna sort of imply what you don't want,

Evan Troxel: Totally.

Nathan Miller: And that, that kind of level. And it's gonna establish for you a critical foundation of being able to say, Hey, this new capability that, that is kind of emerging, is this going to take us where we want to go? Um, or is it going to hold us back or is it going to be, neutral and it's not going to make a difference one way or another? And that, that's, that on in itself is, is going to kind of help you figure out where to make the investment because this stuff isn't, I mean, some of, some of it's free right now, um,

Evan Troxel: yeah.

Nathan Miller: certainly the,

Evan Troxel: that reckoning is coming,

Nathan Miller: That

Evan Troxel: right?

Nathan Miller: is coming, but, you know, but you know, if you look at some of the more powerful stuff that's coming out, there's, there's some expensive stuff out there.

Evan Troxel: 250 bucks a month. Yeah. Right.

Nathan Miller: if we were looking in into different tiers of implementing copilot on Power bi, there were there, there's like different ways.

There's, there were some demos that were going around of like, Hey, we need to, um, uh, you know, that, that kind of showed that, you know, using prompting, you know, generate dashboard layouts, generate DAX functions, you know, understand your model. I was like really compelling stuff. But the tier of entry, uh, for do, using some of those capabilities, uh, is almost the equivalent of having FTE on staff,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: you know?

Um, so there's,

Evan Troxel: It might be more effective than an ft. You never know.

Nathan Miller: my, you never know. You never know. But at the same, but it's not, but you can't just say like, oh, this is,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: is cheap. You know, the stuff is getting more powerful. It is getting more expensive. There are massive amounts of investment that's

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: in, you know, data centers and, and resources and, you know, it, it's just a whole other conversation.

There's a whole other, I think, dialogue around, is the juice really worth the squeeze here? And, um, when it, when it comes to the level of investment that has been made in AI globally, a big debate there. But, you know, you have to, you know, if you're making an investment as a, as a company, you want to know where you're gonna go with it.

Um, you're not gonna do it just because.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I heard there's something like 12 different versions of copilot, so

Nathan Miller: Well.

Evan Troxel: it's not easy to like wade through all that either, especially for larger organizations and, and who needs access to what and what the capabilities they need are. So it's, uh, that it, it, it kind of reminds me of like the whole licensing thing that's happened over the last 10 or 15 years, right?

Like you actually need someone on staff to manage that or to manage access, to manage permissions, to do all those things that nobody used to have a position just for that kind of thing. When you have a large staff, right, when you have a large production staff, it's a, that's a full-time job. And, and so now it's like wading through all of these different models and what their capabilities are and what the different levels of.

This and that, and enterprise copilot and, and there's just so many versions of it, um, that yeah, it's, it's really confusing and, and most people just have fatigue when it comes to technology already, so, yeah.

Nathan Miller: yeah, I mean, I mean we we're a technology company, we're a technology

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: and we get tired. Um, you know, and I can only imagine what, um, you know, uh, your average professional that may not be as. Engaged in the tech conversation might be feeling when they're going to a, say an a i a national conference or a regional or, or state conference.

And um, you know, the impact of AI is just being like, you know, kind of pushed in various presentations or, you know, they're getting vendor emails from vendors like Autodesk and uh, others, uh, about new tools and, and processes and, you know, it's, it's coming at you from all, all different directions.

Then, then you go on LinkedIn and it's just a continuous scroll of, of, of different kinds of, click bait, um, around the subject. And it, it comes very, very confusing very quickly, I think.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: you wanna find, you want to find the North star. You wanna find like, okay, where, what is it that we want?

Where is, and, and how can we direct ourselves in a, in a productive way?

Evan Troxel: This like existential threat around ai. So, so you mentioned digital transformation earlier, right? And digital transformation, like you, you mentioned is like this ongoing transformation doesn't stop. Like it's just, it's a constant thing. And I've seen even from like top people at a, i a talking to architects about like, you've gotta use ai, like you stop, drop everything you're doing, you should be doing this.

And I think, you know, there, the motivation behind that is, and, and so I'm curious from your point of view, because your boots on the ground helping companies through your practice of consulting and technology do digital, like actually transform into what, what their version of digital practice is gonna be.

And, and for every firm that might be a little bit different. And then there's like this.

Nathan Miller: like this,

Evan Troxel: This push, like, you should be doing this. And I'm just curious what you, what you, what you would tell firms, because you, you are telling firms like, like we, we've already kind of outlined it. It's like, figure out where you're going and then figure out how to, how to get there.

AI might be a piece of that strategy might be a piece of that puzzle. It might not be, it might be something else. Um, but I'm just curious kind of what, how are you seeing those kinds of, that kind of, uh, messaging coming from these top level organizations in our industry? And what do you think the effect of that is?

Do you think it's, do you think it's actually making a, a, a meaningful difference for anybody?

Nathan Miller: Um, there, there, there are a number of components to that question. Um, do I, um, let me think here. So I have yet to see a defined mandate from an architecture company that everyone should, like any kind of a very blanket way that everyone should be ai

Evan Troxel: Yeah, no, I'm seeing this more from like the a i a, not, not a specific company.

Nathan Miller: Yeah. I, so, um, I, I, I think, I think that sensibility is. Is is kind of silly. Um, in a lot of ways it, it, it doesn't, it, it lacks a level of specificity that would allow for artificial intelligence to have an impact. I mean, the, the fact that, so there's a couple of tenets that, that I like to kind of refer to when talking about particular subject. Um, AI an inevitable part of our toolkit? Yes. We already see that. Um, whether you realize it or not, you're probably using some version of artificial intelligence on a day-to-day basis. Um, I think it's been that way since, well before the hype ai, as in sort of explicitly called out thing has come, has kind of made its way into the mainstream, uh, dialogue.

Um, we've been using forms of a, you know, artificial intelligence, um, passively for a really long time. I mean, if you've, if you've ever shopped on Amazon or, you know, gone with a Netflix recommendation or any of that.

Evan Troxel: engines. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: recommendation engines, like predictive tools like that.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: just the, the way that the world works.

And um, and I think, uh, you know, when it, when it comes to sort of the day to day, you know, there are very kind of productive sort of everyday tools for that, that are AI power that, you know, we certainly find benefit in, um, you know, doing automated meeting summaries, um, being one. I mean, this is like sort of super mundane kind of use, like you don't have to have a note taker in the, in the room anymore, you know, takes notes, sets the

Evan Troxel: How many, how many AI bots do you need in a Zoom meeting, right?

Nathan Miller: That's, that's exactly right.

Evan Troxel: Everyone's got their own.

Nathan Miller: yeah, so, um, you know, and, and I also think there's a, a very, there's a problem with such a sort like, you know, claims that you might be hearing and through venues like the a i that's like everyone has to be using ai. Well, that's a very, um. That's AI is such an umbrella term.

Like what do you mean? Like,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: mean by

Evan Troxel: And why? And I think, I think the fear, the fear there is that like a, AEC quote, I'm using famous podcast, air quotes, has been, has slowed to adopt technology behind the curve compared to o And so I think that's kind of where that's coming from. But I'm, I'm curious to hear where you're going with this.

Nathan Miller: yeah, I mean, um, so there, there's a, there's a couple things that I think, so there's, there's, there's sort of an inev, there's an inevitability to it, and you sure I'll use ai, but, you know, to what end? To what, to what degree? Um, and you know, what, you know, what AI are you really talking about, I think is another question.

I also think there is a, there is an under, there's, there's a need to sort of distinguish and understand that there are different types of. AI capability that will, IM, that can and will impact practices differently. It's not gonna be kind of this even, impact that occurs like, yeah, you, an AI enabled practice is gonna look like X, Y, and ZI, I don't, I don't see that as being a reality. gonna have artificial intelligence that affects project management in a vastly different way than it will affect a creative process, uh, where you're, you know, tasked with, you know, the active design. Um, and that also will look very different than the, the business development sector that needs to synthesize data and, and figure things out about, you know, their tar, you know, the target, um, know, target clients leads and, and things of that nature. So is a, there's a highly, I think, nuanced conversation that a, a firm needs to have about like, Hey, we have a business, A business is very com can be a very complex and, um, multifaceted, organism. And we're talking about introducing a capability that could have impact on all a portion or none of it,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: on where you want to go. And so you, you, you, you start to wanna break down that, that problem's like, okay, what did we really mean by AI having an impact? And in what, you know, to what degree and in what com? In what, in what part, um, are we, are we really, are we really talking about here?

Evan Troxel: Yeah, super thoughtful. I, I mean that's one of the reasons I love talking to you about. It's because, and I I've noticed with your post too, it's like, are are we sure? Like, have you read the license agreement? You blew up LinkedIn this week.

Nathan Miller: right?

Evan Troxel: Speaking of that, uh, you mentioned it earlier to me before we hit record and I was like, oh, I haven't seen that.

And then as we were talking, I'm like, oh, I did see that.

Nathan Miller: Okay,

Evan Troxel: So, but like in those are, those are really like, like the fine print kind of side of this story too, where it's like you're hearing use AI and, and everybody knows, like nobody reads the license agreements and then it's like, well here's what's actually happening or could be actually happening with that when you just go right into it and you just jump into the deep end.

Nathan Miller: Yeah. You know, and, and this is where, this is where there, there is a, if we can maybe get into the specifics, some of the specifics around, around, around that, uh, set of LinkedIn posts I did recently. Uh, for sure. But I think as a basic kind of premise here, is that you have technology and you have these capabilities.

Um, to some degree. capability on its own is a pretty neutral thing. Um, it can do really good stuff, it can do really bad stuff, and it's sort of up to the user or you know, the, the, the creators to kind of guide what, what that might be. Um, then you have this layer of, um, I guess legalese of, of, uh, organizational bias, of, of agenda that can, that gets layered on to how some of these tools get promoted and somehow these capabilities get promoted.

So I, you know, I have, I don't know about, about you, Evan. I, I, I just, I just have an, an inherent distrust for, very big corporations, um, and, and, and, and how they might, may or may not have the, the best interest of their users, uh, in mind when they

Evan Troxel: VC funded or public, it kind of doesn't matter. Yeah,

Nathan Miller: That's right.

Evan Troxel: they don't have to be big. They don't actually have to be big.

Nathan Miller: don't have to be big. There, there, there are, agendas in play and those agendas impact how, um, these tools can be, uh, adopted and used by, by users. Um, they can limit, uh, a user's ability to do certain things, um, in, in, in, in ways of, you know, in ways that might not be anticipated. And think we need to take a critical look at that, you know, back in 2023, and I think that that was the year I did the blog article about terms of service for tools like mid journey instability and, you know, a lot of hype around the generative image making still quite a, quite a bit of, of hype there as well.

And the, those tend to be getting more and more powerful, but it's also like, hey, if you read the fine print. Um, you know, there are questions about intellectual property ownership, um, from the user and how maybe the underlying training data was

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: in Intel. Uh, concerns about, you know, ethical sourcing of, of information.

There are concerns about, um, exploitation of labor on who labeled the data set and how it was labeled to get to a very, sort of into the powerful state that it is today. And all of these things, I think, are important facets of the dialogue around any technology. and you know, more recently in looking at.

In terms of service with regards to say, Autodesk, are limitations in play on what you can and can't do with a piece of, you know, tech, you know, you can do it, but you're, you're kind of going against what they've defined as a sort of an acceptable use policy. know, there's a, there's a very clear, and I wanna make sure I quote this correctly, so

Evan Troxel: Yeah, let's hear it. Let's hear it.

Nathan Miller: Um, I can't say for sure when these terms and conditions entered into

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: the Autodesk terms of use, so that's just full disclaimer.

Um, so they, they have what's called an acceptable use policy and, and their software and anytime you use one of their offerings, um, as they refer to it, um, so Revit or platform services, things like that, you are kind of accepting these, these terms of use and there is their acceptable use policy, a number of terms, uh, that you agree that you will not, um, do certain things.

And sure enough, um, under this acceptable use policy, you are basically saying you will not use any offering or related output in connection with the training of any machine learning or artificial intelligence algorithm, software or system.

Evan Troxel: Hmm

Nathan Miller: Which is very interesting to me

Evan Troxel: mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: you know, on its face, you know, there,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: there, you know, you could probably argue about, okay, what, what is the spirit of the acceptable use policy? How, how enforceable are some of these things, you know, a, a, you know, terms of use in some ways, or like, you know, it's a Swiss Army knife of all different kind of things that they're trying to cover in case for any reason they may need, need to take action to protect their, their, their stuff. For sure. But you know, if I read this and I'm like thinking, oh, I want to use Autodesk software to train, you know, I want to use a rev, a set of Revit models to train a machine learning algorithm to

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: and Z. Well, according to the acceptable use policy on its face, um, I can't do that. which is kind of crazy, right? If we

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I mean, you authored, obviously you, you used a authoring tool to create that thing, but you are the author of that, and I think that is interesting, especially when, okay, so let's just for, for the sake of argument, assume that you are interpreting that correctly.

Nathan Miller: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Um, I mean, with the Autodesk AI announcement at Autodesk University, I guess it was two Aus ago, um, it was like our users are opted in automatically right to, to this and they can opt out, which when you're doing a lot of training, I mean that, that I think makes sense as a for business for them to do it that way and to let people know at au whoever's there, whoever happened to catch that and however else they decide to message that to people, I'm sure they don't, it's not a hundred percent coverage, right?

So I'm sure there's a lot of people opted in who don't know their opted in and they're not reading the fine print here to find out that they're opted in and, and that they, that they would need to do something to opt out and then to find out that,

Nathan Miller: that,

Evan Troxel: well, not only am I opted in, but I'm opted into this where I can't then use it for my own training purposes on in my organization.

Nathan Miller: That's right. Yeah. It, it, it does it. And, you know, assuming kind of the interpret again, like that the interpretation is correct and kind of holds up, um, it's, it's very concerning. You know, especially since we're living in an area where not only are we looking at a a, an era where architects and creative professionals, people in the construction industry in general, are looking at ways of leveraging this technology in business specific cases, which requires you to think about, okay, how can we train algorithms, train our own mls, train our own ais to leverage our business data?

Our business data

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: be comprised of DWGs, it may be comprised of RVs, right? Um, so we want to use these, we wanna be able to use these capabilities. Um, but there is. if we're, if we're, if we're trying to also be a compliant organization with the, the technologies that are our disposal, um, there are things here that are like, whoa.

Um, by doing so, we would not be complying with an acceptable use policy. the, and then, and then you start playing a game of, well, you know, what is the likelihood that that term comes into play? And there would be action taken

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: that. But, you know, that's not really the point. Um, in, in my view, it's like, yeah, maybe, maybe not.

Um, but you're still kind of playing kind of a, you're doing a calculus

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: you know, are, and, and I think, I think the bigger point here is that you have a dialogue that occurring through in terms of use. And what I'm trying to kind of promote with the LinkedIn post is that, um, starting to see a trend and, and I think similar terms exist with within Adobe, um, in Salesforce, uh, that. Start to suggest that there is a, um, you know, a, uh, a protectionist, approach to, for these companies, um, wherein they're trying to lock down their capabilities and then, you know, what they're able to do with, uh, their offerings and data to per perhaps protect themselves against a potential competitor coming along and doing something powerful with RVs,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: files it before they can, and by having that in there, they're able to sort of be, protect themselves against that. And, and, you know, in, in some ways, I think about the, the, the idea of the, if you've heard the term, the walled garden approach, you know, it's like the early days of the internet where you had like a OL

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Nathan Miller: uh, you

Evan Troxel: Compu serve. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: the walled gardens of like proprietary internet that. Um, just created, you know, information silos and further, you know, you know, just, just made integrations and interoperability untenable. And this kind of seems like, okay, well if, know, if, if we start creating a protectionist, uh, approach to these capabilities in, you know, through software vendors like Autodesk and, and others out there, then we're all of a sudden kind of taking I, in my view, a step backwards on the interoperability front and the ability to have integrated, an industry that is more integrated than it was in the past.

Evan Troxel: Yeah,

I, I think about this recent example and so I may not be getting all these details correct, but there was, there was a case I believe brought against Meta for training their model on books. And they argued again, if, if I have the company wrong, I, it kind of doesn't matter, like the version of, there's a version of the story that, that is correct.

And the company name is a big company, right? So, um, whoever it is. But they, but basically the argument was like, because individual writers, publishers were like, no, you, you, they used the books without permission. They had a giant library of these things to train their model, but the argument was that the books on their individual offerings, these individual books have no value because they're so small.

But together

Nathan Miller: there's,

Evan Troxel: of value. And so now it's interesting to kind of see that playing out almost in reverse here, where it's like,

Nathan Miller: like,

Evan Troxel: you can tell that Autodesk sees a value in the work product of those models, and in aggregate there's a bunch of value. But even in the small version, there is value there because it's the piece of the larger thing that they, they are using to.

Train their models with, and they don't want somebody else doing something. Some version of that for themselves.

Nathan Miller: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: you know, it's, uh, the, you know, there, there is, there, it's sort of like AI wars, isn't it? Um, we saw it earlier this year with, with, uh, when Deep Seek, uh, came out,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: where all of a sudden, you know, you, you've, we've had, you know, we've had chat GPT, we've had, you know, various versions of, of the, um, you know, the prompt, you know, text, you know, prompt text, you know, chat prompts, things like that. And, you know, Deepsea comes along and, and says like, oh, you know, we have, and you know, it's a, it's a Chinese, um, uh, originated AI platform it was trained more cheaply and performed better and did all these, you know, all these different things and people got really excited about it. I haven't heard too much of it in like, recent,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: weeks or months,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: Um, AI then made claims. And, uh, that says like, well the only reason it's, it's, it's so performative is that it, it trained, it trained itself off of our ai.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: And, and then they, they, you know, made a claim that, Hey, you know, this is, this is, this isn't, this

Evan Troxel: This is theft,

Nathan Miller: this is theft. This

Evan Troxel: right?

Nathan Miller: stolen, but open ai, you know,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: did your data come from?

Like, well,

Evan Troxel: That's not what we're talking about. That is not the issue. Look over there.

Nathan Miller: Look over it. Exactly. And so, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's, it's like, it's, it's, it's just a level of, of silliness and it's like, Hey, we took a lot of, a lot of data without end user permission over here to make this really powerful thing.

And then this other entity over here, you know, took our thing and made an even better version. And, and it, it, it, it, it's, it's a, it's a comedy, isn't it?

Evan Troxel: It is, it's, uh, what's interesting is like I, it was years and probably decades ago at this point, Kirby Ferguson came out with this idea, everything is a remix. Have you heard this? Everything is a remix. Literally everything. Like, it's, it's funny. It's like, you can't use this to do that. It's like, well, that's, that's what architects do.

That's what everybody does. They, they, you cannot. Cut off your, the experiences you have and come up with a completely original idea that's, you have all of these input senses that are constantly taking things in and remixing them in your brain. And if you come up with a novel idea, it's really, it's a, it's like pieces of a bunch of other things, right?

It's not, and so in that way, it can be quote unquote original. Um, but, but it's also made up of non-original parts in many, most mostly non-original parts, right? So,

Nathan Miller: Uh,

Evan Troxel: uh, and, and then to see all of the fighting about that, like this whole,

Nathan Miller: you,

Evan Troxel: you, you could probably imagine how much copyright and patents have held back innovation because they're all about protecting quote unquote, innovation, right?

So, uh, it what a, what a what a weird world that we actually live in when it comes to all this stuff. It's like, it's like

Nathan Miller: like

Evan Troxel: the lawsuits are absolutely insane. And at the same time, all of the companies that you're talking about here are, are literally. Trying to get away with as much as they can possibly get away with

Nathan Miller: That's right.

Evan Troxel: and protect it at the same time.

Yeah.

Nathan Miller: At the same time, get, and you know, you're pushing the boun, you're pushing the boundaries of, you know, what you can source and use to enhance your own offering.

You are also putting limitations in place and pushing, you know, pushing the boundaries of how far. You can limit a set of your own users from, uh, and potential competitors perhaps of, of kind of getting a leg up on, on where you're at. Um, said something pretty interesting, the idea of everything being a remix.

And I wanted to maybe add a, a, dimension to that conversation with regards to, uh, the idea of authenticity.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Nathan Miller: I think, you know, the, the term authenticity is one that I've been referring, you know, coming back to as I really ponder both from a strategic sense, what it means to have kind of a meaningful implementation of technology.

What does it mean to be the organization that you are? What does it mean to be, you know, what does it mean to have the kind of opinions and, you know, what sets us apart from ai? Uh, you know, when we think about what can, what, what can AI not do? Um, and I think it's interesting that to think about, yes, everything is sort of a remix.

You know, we're all informed by experiences. That and, and source and, and, you know, information sources that we've been exposed to, uh, since we've been born. Um, the creative process and the evolution of aesthetics from, from aesthetics to the engineering to, uh, the functionality is informed by this kind of incremental, um, drive forward over time. But there isn't, there is an aspect of like, out of everything happening in the universe and all the potential multiple dimensions that may be occurring in parallel with what's happening to us right now. This conversation, for example, is happening right now, right here between you and I and that is not happening anywhere else in the universe that, you know, we know of the probability of that. If it happening, it's exactly the same way, is, is very low. and the probability of it happening in parallel dimensions, it's very low. So even though everything that's brought us to this point is, you know, informed by all of these other things, the idea that it's something is happening right here, right now, um, and that we are directing ourselves in, in, in this manner is quite, sort of an authentic thing.

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Nathan Miller: I think the same is true of creative processes. And the same is true of, um, know, the, the ability for us to choose to use or not use artificial intelligence. And I think that's something that, that sets, sort of, sets the dialogue apart. And I think it's also something that, know, uh, organizations and people, creative people should meditate on.

You know,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: what is it that makes voices, um, important? Um, and the conversations that we're having right now relevant, um, in, in, in a way that isn't just thought of as the regurgitation of

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: everything that's happened prior

Evan Troxel: The whole idea of a fingerprint or a soul or, you know, it's like one of, it's those, like that's the level you're talking about. It's like, it's unique and, and like this conversation, I don't know the word I'm gonna say next. I actually,

Nathan Miller: actually

Evan Troxel: I haven't planned it out, it's not written down. I'm not reading from a script.

I don't know what's coming next. It's completely informed by all of those experiences, which are remixes, but also, you know, so many other dimensions to it at the same time. And, and so the thing that you're actually talking about is like WW. Who are you and what matters to you, and what are your values and what do you want to see in the world?

Because design is a responsibility as much as it is a process that you go through. And so I think what's really interesting about what you're saying, and this is my favorite thread of all the things that you talk about, is like this authenticity because it actually forces you, like you said, meditate on it.

I think it takes that deep introspection, like what actually are my values and what is going on in my world that's not aligning with those values, and how can I get rid of that, right? So that I can get more pure to my fingerprint, right? Of, of what actually matters. And then how can I put that out into the world in a responsible way?

And, and by doing so, attract clients that align with that, for example, in a service industry, right? Um, I think that that is. The, the conversation that really matters because there's a lot of firms out there who are just trying to be everything to everybody. They're just trying to be competitive with their peer group, whatever it is.

You know, they're trying to not be left behind. They're, and that is all

Nathan Miller: reactive,

Evan Troxel: like that is all very wide angle lens. And I think what we're talking about here is like macro, right? It's like what is, or, or even, I don't know what the lens is that forces you to look back inside, right? But this is like the exploded Exxon metric, like what's going on inside there and why does that matter?

Like, and, and that to me is, is a super, super important conversation that should be had in all of these organizations.

Nathan Miller: Yeah, I mean, and it's, it's kind of interesting to think about, like, I think there, there's maybe a bit of surprise, you know, when we, you say get in a room with an organization like, uh, leaders of an organization about a technology strategy and then. And because when we think about technology strategy, we think about the nuts and bolts of like, okay, what

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: need to buy?

Evan Troxel: What and how and yeah. When, yeah.

Nathan Miller: train? Who are we gonna train? What kind of skill? You know, the sort of hard skills that, you know, how do we, how do we get the smarts in place for our technology strategy? But you know, when, when, when you actually like then confront group with like, okay, yeah, that's part of it. But, um, if you want to have a meaningful and lasting change occur in your company, there's gonna be all of these other factors and it's gonna require you to think about who you are, um, and who you want to be that you're maybe not currently

Evan Troxel: Or, or, or encouraging them to be really comfortable with who they actually are. Be because, because it's, I think a lot of times PE people want to be anything else, right? And it's like, well, you're always trying to be something else. You can never be who you actually are. Okay.

Nathan Miller: Well, it's the, it's the anxiety of, you know, I think, and I think this is, this is, this is what AI has done. I think, I think this has actually probably been one of the more healthy aspects of AI anxiety. Um, AI makes people anxious. Um, people get anxious about, you know, what is this gonna mean for my job?

What is

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: my career?

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: gonna lose my job? Um, in the future is, are architects, um, obsolete? You know, these are all things that we've, we've heard. Um, and, you know, someone that is comfortable and confident who they are and the value they bring. Those questions don't really come into mind.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: what they do is they see that there, um, that there is this capability now in front of them, and that capability Uh, they can evaluate to see is this going to enhance my ability to be the best me that I possibly can be? Or is it going to, uh, take something away that I never want to give up? And I think that's, that's, that's, that's, that's sort of the, the crux of it, isn't it? It's like, you know, is this, is this the thing? And how I implement it is, is it going to be done in a way that supports or enhances or my ability to be, uh, I am and who I want to be?

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: Um, Strat strategy should, strategy should off, you know, ask those questions. I think fun, uh, you know, those, those kinds of fundamental, uh, questions. And whether it's a technology strategy or if it's just you're engaging in a general business, uh, strategy or assessment or, um. You know, or you're looking at a very kind of small area or, or one business sector in your business.

It, it kind of needs, I think it needs to ask those, those things, um, for it to be effective. And, and I think that has also an effect on how you bring people in your organization on board

Evan Troxel: Yes.

Nathan Miller: with the strategy and the approach.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: You know, if we look at digital transformations there, the, the statistic is, is that 90% of them fail,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: outright. And it comes down to this inability to change the behavior of the people that are on your team there. They might be locked into certain ways of doing things. They might be locked into certain biases,

Evan Troxel: Incentives. Yeah. What kinds of, sure.

Nathan Miller: you know, the, company may not be. Um, incentivizing people in the right way, or, you know, they might be measuring performance in certain ways, but by, I think reaching in and finding these, these reasonings for why a change is important, how it, how it might tap into the essential nature of your, of your professional attitude or the, the, uh, the attitude of your business. Tapping into that can all of a sudden create a, a very powerful motivator for bringing people on board and, and communicate a thing like AI or machine learning or building information modeling or computational design or any of these things are important.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: Um, and, and it, it gives, it gives them something, something to kind of latch onto that isn't sort of superficial,

Evan Troxel: You're talking about these new staff members coming on, and, and I'm curious how you think of this, because to me that could mean like the next version of a company potentially, if they're able to retain those people for some meaningful amount of time. But then there's the people who are there, right, who have maybe those incentives and those set those set ways of doing things.

And those are the hard ones to actually change, right? Because if new people come in where there are new expectations laid down at the very beginning, okay, like, okay, that that's what I'm gonna do, because that's what I heard, right? But then there's this other one, it's like they know three versions old, they know five versions old, they know, you know, multiple versions old.

And it's like, well, that's what I was told. And I am not, I don't need to change that because, because the other layer to this is. Leadership in a firm, and people who are actually invested in digital transformation are strategizing for future state.

Nathan Miller: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: And often there's a disconnect between them and the people who literally have the deadline this week and the way that they do things and the way they're comfortable doing things and they don't have time for training.

And it's, it's complicated, right? The machine is very complicated. So when you, when you're talking about this, like bringing new people on and kind of talking about where we're going and why we want to get there, I totally get that. But what about the people who are in, have been there?

Nathan Miller: yeah. Well, I mean, I

Evan Troxel: Do you, do you operate different versions of your company all in parallel at the same time?

Nathan Miller: I don't think so. I

Evan Troxel: That's really hard.

Nathan Miller: I think, I think I, I think the premise is the same. And I think in some ways the, the motivator for change for those individuals and kinda shows a level of seriousness, um, when you start getting into kind of fundamental reasoning of why we're doing something.

And is this making, is this something that is. The essence the essence of our company. So the people that have been with an organization for a long time probably understand the essence of the, of, of the business they that you're operating in better than, you know, some of the leaders in the company.

Um, you know, 'cause you, you have leaders enter into companies all the time that

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Nathan Miller: to grapple with, um, people that have been there for longer than they have. And so I, I think when it, when it comes to motivating change at that level, you have to, um, you have to display a level of, of seriousness around, um, the, the, the reasoning, um, uh, in terms of why something's happening.

'cause I think the cynical, like there have been studies done, you know, in the similar, in the similar kind of vein of 90% of digital transformations fail and it's a failure to change behavior. While some of the behavior becomes very difficult to change because they'll look at. Their comp, they've been with the company so long, they can look at it in cycles.

Like, oh, we've got a new CEO and

Evan Troxel: The,

Nathan Miller: this, the thing

Evan Troxel: the thing that they'll say too is like, well, 90% of 'em have failed, so I don't need to pay attention to this one. Right.

Nathan Miller: I don't need to pay. Well, that's exactly it. They, they will see that a change is like being proposed or is being, uh, dialogued and discussed. Um, but they'll be like, well, if I just wait this out for two or three years, I,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: know, I, I don't, I don't need to, um, I don't need to engage with this.

Or

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: with it superficially and

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: out. It becomes the kind of, the cynical approach. But, um, when it comes

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: there is a demonstration of, this is where change management comes. Such a powerful component of any strategy. You have to have a change management approach. And by change management approach, I mean, you, you don't simply roll out a set of initiatives in an organization and say, well, here they are. We will see it. We'll see. We'll, we'll be checking in on you in, in a few years. There's, there's, there is an aspect of this where you have to constantly engage in the change that's being propo, uh, proposed. So like, you know, we're fond of saying like, if you're, if you feel like you're talking about something like a, a change in your company too much, you need to increase the frequency with which you're talking about at tenfold.

Evan Troxel: Totally

Nathan Miller: So you,

Evan Troxel: in so many different ways, right? 'cause people receive things in different ways at different times. They're paying attention better at different times, and yeah, it's all of those things.

Nathan Miller: so, so there's an overcommunication side of it. There is also a, you, you want to give people on-ramps to how they can participate. that's another aspect to this is like if you have individuals in your company that are disengaged from the change that. It's in

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: the change that you want to see. It could be that they don't have the right on ramp. and so you think about it both in terms of, uh, you know, uh, you know, well, so and so over here feels like they're not, um, you know, might feel that like, oh, well I'm not an AI expert. How, how can, how, how can I participate in this? Well, even though you might not be an expert in something, doesn't mean you don't have something of value to contribute.

So you start to create kind of forums or, you know, it could be, uh, ways for them to contribute, like their experience, um, and, and what they see and let their voices be heard in the change. Um, and such that, you know, people that might be charged with during certain forms of implementation may be able to say like, oh, you know, we never thought about the fact that so and so sees the most effective way of doing. Solving X problem for a client. We never saw it that way. Maybe our implementation needs to adjust to, to, to satisfy. So you start to almost think about the, the, the hardest nut to crack in your office when it comes to like maybe a certain personality or an individual that, you know, might be stuck in their ways, may actually have the most to offer in terms of like insight in terms of, uh, uh, for why they've done things the way that they have for so long, and why they've been a successful professional for so long in that respect.

And if you kind of nudge a little bit towards them, they might actually then say, well, maybe I need to confront my own biases because actually starting to, to show movement that's addressing something I'm interested in. So maybe I need to become a little bit more interested in what they're interested in.

You start to meet halfway and then the, those can, those can become pretty powerful. I think motivators for. You know, really starting to, to see a level of participation. And then there's, of course, there's other things you do like incentives, like are there forms of training that you, you implement that, that give people a chance to, to try the new capability and see how it's going to impact them? Do you start to, um, like, Hey, uh, you know, if you're, you know, if you're, if you're giving this, uh, new generative tool a try, um, and you do something productive with it, you know, maybe there's a, a, a, a budget that goes into them being able to attend a venue or, you know, some event that, you know, lets them learn more.

And then you're investing in someone's professional,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: Right?

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: So, you know, those, those are all change management tactics, like creating incentives, creating, um, ways of on, on, you know, giving people an on ramp, um, in stakeholders. In, in a wide capacity, giving stakeholders that may not be experts in what you're talking about, a way to and contribute and be part of user groups. and then just ensuring that your message doesn't disappear into the ether, and that you're constantly talking about

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: something is and why it's important.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I think one of the, the biggest walls that that transformation comes up against is this idea that like, launching something is, is okay, we're done. And because that, it does takes a lot of work to get to the launch, right? But I, I really believe, like, just to underline what you were just saying, like that's when the work actually starts, because implementation is the hardest.

Implementation, adoption, use whatever word you want, like inside your firm is, is the hardest job for digital practice, for leadership, for anything where you are trying to go somewhere and you need everybody on staff to pull in the same direction or to push in the same direction. To make that happen. And to get back to where we started this part of the conversation about like what is the why behind that is super, super important for top, top leadership to get people on board with.

Because if people don't understand why we're doing this and, and actually align themselves with, oh, that totally makes sense. If they're, if they, if it doesn't make sense to them, that's where like hard conversations need to happen, right? Because if you have a company consisting of people pulling on all different directions because of incentives and personal biases and all these things.

Like you can't effectively go the place that you have decided that you want to go. And so, and, and a company is a company like it's a, it's a business. It, it, and it, you need to have those values driving the culture, the decisions that, that kind of team effort behind it. If you don't have that, you're never going to get there.

And so what then, then you're just stagnant and you are actually, if, if you're, if you're not growing, you're dying. Right? So that to me is, is like, these are, that's, people want to be leaders and I call leadership a burden. Like it's got, it's hard. It's, it's difficult. It's not necessarily responsibility that people should be signing up for because it is very difficult to actually make change management, for example, happen inside of a company.

And there is a ton, a ton of work and it, and it, and that level of consistency you have to bring to the messaging. Across the board in lots of different ways and to keep doing it on and on and on so that you literally are, the broken record is, is like it does wear on people, but it is actually what's required because human psychology is real, right?

Nathan Miller: Yeah, I mean, marketers have learned that, you know,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: to like the AI marketing hype engine that is, I mean, you know, we hear the same thing over and over and over, but it's always framed maybe a little bit differently. And, you

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: why, why are, why am I getting so many newsletters on the same subject?

Why am I, well, it's because not everyone's opening up that, that email at the same time, um, not, uh, everyone is, might be interested in that sub subject right then. So you have to like, you know, uh, it's, it's, it's why Pepsi and Coke still have to market,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: it's, it's part of, it's part of that game.

And, you know, I think, you know that as, as you were talking about, about, um, you know, the, the idea of why and, um, you know, motivating people, um, you know, we can think, we can, we can see areas where that might be misaligned and Um, reasoning why, maybe I'll, it's good to maybe illustrate this by example.

Like, if you're a design company and your, um, your, uh, motivator your business is focused heavily on quality, like design quality, you have a certain sort of a, uh, set of aesthetic, uh, um, uh, criteria or, um, sensibilities that you're very adamant about and you are, you know, um, form teams up in a certain way because of certain, uh, creative sensibilities, um, in different markets. And this capability comes along and that capability's main advantage is how it enhances efficiency. And you get really excited about like, oh, efficiency, that's interesting. Like I, my people are gonna work faster and they're gonna be able to do more with less time. But your business is calibrated around this idea of quality.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: Um, and is, are you really going to reap the rewards of something that's going to yield higher efficiency if you're not measuring your people based on that at this point in time,

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Nathan Miller: right? So you think about like, oh, well efficiency, that means I'm gonna be spending less hours on X task. And, you know, the, the way with which you measure the success of a capability needs to be kind of aligned with the way that you're measuring the performance of your business and the, you know, so may, you know, people like efficiency, but it may not be how your design culture is, is is

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: So you might want to think about, oh. Do we need to, to look at capabilities from the, you know, you wanna look for capabilities that enhance, again, that, that reason why you're doing what you're doing. Like if quality is a thing, you wanna look at ways that are going to help you improve on your quality of output. if efficiency and these metrics for productivity are important and for your people and that you're, and, and people are motivated by that, um, you're gonna look for certain capabilities that are gonna help enhance that. Um, back to maybe in some ways to summarize this, I gave a talk on Friday, uh, at USC Bimbo and I, I summarized this notion of, of, uh, you know, uh, measurement of kind of culture and the implementation of tech in, in terms of three. Tier, uh, three pillars or, or three circles of a Venn diagram that

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: a, a, an a, a healthy strategic model or a strategic model that can yield results. And that is under the, the framing of smarts, health and fitness. So smarts being things like, you know, investing in tools, investing in skills, investing in, um, you know, the, the data and the workflow and, and really developing those that can only be used in a productive way if you have a healthy business, a healthy organization or healthy culture that is accountable for, for such capabilities.

Um, you have leaders that are spearheading initiatives that can see those capabilities implemented in, in meaningful ways, and that you're also, uh. Build, uh, building in with those capabilities a set of ethics that kind of can govern productive uses throughout your organization. And then you have fitness, which is the way with which you measure the, whether or not an initiative is or a strategy or something is successful or not. And those kind of three things in tandem, um, become the three pillars with which you can start to build and design a strategy around, um, and a deficiency in one area, or a misalignment in one area. And like you're measuring something in terms of efficiency, but you're design culture is based around quality and your, your, your, your tools and skillset, um, are kind of all over the map.

And you're not gonna, you're not gonna have a, a cohesive approach. So you need to like really start to think about how you dial those, those three areas in.

Evan Troxel: It, it really speaks to this idea of, of things working together, right? Like you, you'll have individuals in organizations, you could have teams in organizations that are pulling in a completely different direction. So you, the firm could be about quality, right? Design quality, and they could hire a chief operating officer who is all about efficiency and that person has a seat at the.

Best table in the house and they've got a voice because they've got a role that supports it and they start pulling in a different direction because they were effective at that, at their last place. Right. And that's maybe what attracted the, this organization to that individual. Oh, they were super effective and, uh, they got a lot of stuff done.

And it's like,

Nathan Miller: like,

Evan Troxel: and it's really bad for morale of the company because the company cares about the value is quality, design quality. And so this, like, these things really have to work together for it to be effective. And, and I like how you've kind of distilled it into these basic elements of health, fitness, and smarts and the idea of, of.

Still having misalignments with staff members or teams is a total real probability in there. And, and, and so the organization, the leadership has to stay on top of that, right? Because if you let it go and people start leaving because the alignment

Nathan Miller: is

Evan Troxel: is off, like you'll know it immediately because people will start going somewhere else because the alignment is no longer there.

Like you have to recognize, and I recently, uh. Actually, I think after this episode, I, I've had a recording where we talked about this, like, people are, are working not for you. They're working for themselves. When they work for your organization, they're looking for a certain quality of life. They're looking for certain values to be this.

We keep coming back to the word of alignment, right. And if there's not that alignment, they will go try to find that alignment somewhere else. Like many, I think people are just done suffering with misalignments in, you know, and it's a generalization, but,

Nathan Miller: but,

Evan Troxel: but I think people are pretty much done with suffering through these misalignments and they, because it's easier than ever to find, I'm not saying it's easier to get a new job, but it's easier than ever to look for a new job for sure.

Right? So, um, it's, it's those kinds of things that happen. It's like, oh, why are people leaving? And so you gotta get ahead of that. Leadership's responsibility is to make sure that that alignment between these three different pillars that you're talking about are happening. I think there's a great way to frame.

And really like, these are not high tech words, right? These are, these are things that everybody totally understands. What, what is, what is healthy, what is not healthy? What is fit, what is not fit, right? What is smart, what is dumb?

Nathan Miller: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: that, that's a pretty easy thing for people to start, like putting things into those buckets and then saying where do they overlap and, and how is that actually us?

Nathan Miller: Yeah, exactly. And you know, you think about, and going back to the, the, those three things, and you know, wrapping all of that together is, um, you know, in some ways the, the fourth component, which is again, I think they all contribute to the idea of like, what makes for an authentic organization, right?

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: And the alignment of these components in a way that, can help, uh, support you are or who you are, who you want to be. Um, is that, that, that perhaps the ultimate outcome out of, out of the strategy? Right.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: you know, and I think, and I think the, the, and I think, I think to your point, um, it, it, it's, it's, it's, I think it's a fair way to look at, um. Your kind of job and your role, like, you talk about people leaving, um, the clarity of purpose that you have as an organization. People might find that, oh, um, I'm not, I'm not with that. And they leave. And that's okay because you, uh, they, you know, not only are they not aligned with you and you maybe you don't want to, but maybe you, you don't wanna change as an organization with respect to what they're expecting. So knowing who you are will help you decide who's on your team and who isn't. And people on the team can decide, do I wanna be a part of this or not?

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: that's, and that clarity, like, but I, I think people, I, only they, they've done suffering, but people are looking for experiences that are meaningful in their

Evan Troxel: Yeah, yeah,

Nathan Miller: And people can decide and define what that is for them and. You as an organization can, are in, in a, in a position to set out what that is

Evan Troxel: yeah.

Nathan Miller: that crystal clear what people are getting signed on to do.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: and you don't want to misrepresent what that is, um, because you're gonna bring in the wrong people, or gonna bring in people that are gonna believe sooner than you would want them to, right?

Evan Troxel: And that's an expensive endeavor. It's a, it's a useless, expensive endeavor, so it's super expensive to deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. I, this is, I I'm glad that you had that bim bop at the bim bop, um, that, what do they call that? They call it a bop, right? Uh, it's five minute presentation because you don't need to make this into, um, a thought leadership piece, right?

Like this is literally a concept that is a framework that is so simple, and I love how you've just been able to distill it down to that simplicity because it, oh, it's super approachable. Oh, I can do that. That's what I think when I, when I see something, I'm like, oh, it's a great way to think about this.

Nathan Miller: Well, thanks. I mean, that's, that's, that's hopeful. Like, and, and that's something we can't, we can't overlook when it comes to what makes for a strategy. Like a strategy needs to be able to communicate the its components to a wide variety of stakeholders, um, for it to be a strategy.

Otherwise, it's, it's very tactical and, you know, it might have a very limited audience, but we were talking about something that's organizational wide,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: wide. Um, and you're talking about a digital transformation. Something that's gonna affect a wide variety of people. It has to be put into a, a, uh, a, a language that is going to encourage. and engagement from non-experts as well as experts.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: And so having the, a simple Venn diagram that, that communicates like the pillars of, of your approach becomes critical

Evan Troxel: And what is actually in those pillars, right? Because that overlap in the middle, I think, ultimately is your messaging to the market that you're in. And you are really able to then craft a precise message around your offering in the marketplace. And it's very easy for people to choose to work with you then, because it's specific on in that way.

And I, you know, you don't have to have a specific offering. We only do this kind of project and we, it's like,

Nathan Miller: like,

Evan Troxel: no, this is how we do it. This is why we do it. And then people choose to hire you to do that thing because you know why you exist and you know why you're.

Nathan Miller: you're

Evan Troxel: Participating in the market. And that's a great place to be because it makes the marketing team's job easy to talk about yourself, but it also is easy for clients to talk about you and talk about just creating levels of alignment there.

It's like you're not 80 different things to 80 different people. No, you're, you're this thing and, and then it's, it's, and the internet obviously makes it easy for people to find you because we all can gravitate towards those values that that matter to us, because it's never been easier to find weirdos like us out there.

Right. So, I mean, I think that's a, it's kind of a beautiful way to, to think about it because you don't have to blank carpet bomb the everything, right? It's like, no, you, you put, you just consistently put out what matters to you. And people will find that because I, I would hope hopefully there's not a lot of,

Nathan Miller: hopefully

Evan Troxel: you know, the algorithm will boost.

Nathan Miller: doesn't, doesn't quiet you, and, um, yeah. Or, um, it'll find you so long as you, uh, pay LinkedIn to boost your,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: Um, which is, you know, there's probably a whole other podcast we could do on,

Evan Troxel: Totally.

Nathan Miller: on just that, that subject.

Um,

Evan Troxel: you ever done that? I've never done that.

Nathan Miller: done that.

Evan Troxel: It's just kind of against my, my values. Right? It's like I screw you.

Nathan Miller: Right.

Evan Troxel: Come on.

Nathan Miller: Yeah. The, you know, I think, I, I have to believe that, I mean, it to your point of putting yourself out there in, in, in an authentic and meaningful way. Um, yeah, you're, you're kind of at the mercy of, of, of the algorithm to hopefully you hit the right keywords and it's gonna, and you hit the right hashtags and it's gonna boost you, uh, and get you in front of eyes might be looking.

But I feel like the people that are out there that you want to work with, um, are probably already actively trying to look for someone like you.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Nathan Miller: and, and by putting yourself out there in a, in a, in an honest way and talking about the things that you're interested in and you're, um, really trying to be thoughtful about your, um, your ideas and,

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I, I totally agree. Because

Nathan Miller: are gonna find it,

Evan Troxel: the, the another way to, so, so a lot of people are interested in like gaming the algorithm, trying to figure out like what's, what's the latest change with the algorithm? How can I get my stuff, you know, so the algorithm is favorable to me and just replace the word algorithm with audience.

Like it do something interesting. And the audience. If audiences are looking for interesting things, and if you can just consistently show up and be interesting, do something interesting, do something useful, valuable. I always told my kids like, be useful. Right? Like that. That's like, that would be so valuable to me.

If you can just be useful, just do the things like you see the thing, do the thing, just do it. Don't, don't ask for permission. Just, just do it. I feel like we're in that position too, with the world, right? And trying to find our audience. Be valuable. Do the thing that really matters to you and, and do it well.

And there, like you just said, there are people looking for that. They're actively looking for that. And because that's gonna set you apart immediately. The in the world of like LLMs and just, just dispersed mediocrity everywhere. Premium mediocrity, it's everywhere, right?

Nathan Miller: That the signal, the, the noise to signal ratio is very out of whack right

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: And, and you know what I've found the, the most, you know, if we, you know, engagement isn't really a thing that I seek, I will say that the stuff that tends to get the most attention on places like LinkedIn, at least from the content that I've put out there, are the things that are, um, very clearly from kind of my voice, my

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I shouldn't say opinionated. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: yeah. And people engage with that in a way that they're not going to engage with an AI generated,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Nathan Miller: marketing narrative or something that, you know. You can look, I can, I can find certain people in my feed where I'm like, you've got a bot

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Nathan Miller: kind of on a schedule, putting out certain narratives that they're not coming from, from you.

Um, or they're coming from a place of that's more cynical. Like, I'm gonna say this because I know it's

Evan Troxel: Click bait. Yeah.

Nathan Miller: bait.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: And you know it if you, if you get your, if you get your thought out there, your ideas out there, um, it, it cuts through the noise like a knife through butter.

If you, you know, if you, if you've got, if you've got something to say, people will notice. Um, it, it it sort of, it joles you, um, when you're, you know, doing a quick scroll and you're like, whoa, wait a minute. What was that?

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Miller: And there might not even be an image attached to it, but you see someone actually having a, an original thought and you're

Evan Troxel: Right.

Nathan Miller: I wanna read, I want to, I wanna hear what that person is saying.

Evan Troxel: How rare.

Nathan Miller: That's right.

Evan Troxel: Awesome. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up this conversation. Uh, I guess I'll, I'll see you in two years,

Nathan Miller: Yeah. And may the algorithm find our podcast together.

Evan Troxel: may Yes, please. Algorithm gods. Yeah. Get this out there. Um, if, if anybody wants to know who this Nate Miller guy is, uh, I'll have links to him on LinkedIn and proving Ground website where there's an amazing blog for people who are interested in digital transformation. You make a lot of tools. We'll have links to some of those in the show notes as well.

Is there anything else that you wanna help point people toward you?

Nathan Miller: I'll just say, um, to everyone out there, be authentic and read the fine print.

Evan Troxel: Nice. All right, man. Till next time.

Nathan Miller: All right. Take care. Thank you.

Evan Troxel: All right, don't leave. I'm gonna hit stop.

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