Latest / Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast / Chief in Tech S1E43 - Sarah Touzani : Beyond Automation – How AI Reveals Hidden Team Performance
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to the deep dive. I mean, I really want
- 0:02you to think about this absolute, almost feverish
- 0:07obsession the business world has right now with
- 0:09artificial intelligence. Oh, it is everywhere.
- 0:11You literally can't escape it. Right. Specifically,
- 0:15it's this frantic race to just automate everyday
- 0:18tasks. Like, we are all being bombarded with
- 0:21the same questions. You know, how can we do this
- 0:23faster? How can we get a machine to write this
- 0:25email or summarize this 15 -page report? Or instantly
- 0:29generate the code for a new software feature.
- 0:32Exactly. Yeah, it's entirely focused on speed,
- 0:35efficiency, and just pushing the go button faster.
- 0:38But what if that entire collective obsession
- 0:40is actually missing the point? Like, what if
- 0:42the business world is sprinting in the totally
- 0:44wrong direction and completely ignoring AI's
- 0:47actual superpower? Well, the thing is, we fall
- 0:50into this trap with almost every single revolutionary
- 0:53technology. Do we? Oh, absolutely. We take something
- 0:56that has the power to fundamentally alter our
- 0:58reality, and our first instinct is just to use
- 1:01it to do our old inefficient habits slightly
- 1:03faster. We stare at the output, you know, the
- 1:06final product, instead of actually looking at
- 1:08the underlying system that produced it. And that
- 1:10brings us directly to the mission of our deep
- 1:12dive today. We are exploring some incredibly
- 1:15compelling excerpts from a recent session. It's
- 1:18titled The Waggle Method, AI and Invisible Team
- 1:22Flow. Right, which is just a fascinating read.
- 1:25It really is. The source material outlines the
- 1:27work of Sarah Tuzani. She's a chief operating
- 1:30officer who has basically pioneered this radically
- 1:32different approach to artificial intelligence
- 1:34in the workplace. And this approach has absolutely
- 1:36nothing to do with turning AI into like a glorified
- 1:40digital assistant that just does your chores.
- 1:42No, not at all. It requires a complete paradigm
- 1:45shift. I mean, the text asks us to stop looking
- 1:47at AI as an automated worker that just sits at
- 1:49a desk and churns out content. Instead, we really
- 1:52need to to start looking at AI as an organizational
- 1:54MRI machine. OK, let's unpack this. Because we
- 1:58desperately need to transition away from the
- 2:00standard AI hype, all those exhausting buzzwords
- 2:03that are probably flooding your LinkedIn feed
- 2:05right now. The endless listicles of prompts.
- 2:08Yes, exactly. We need to move past that and dive
- 2:11deeply into what this source material reveals
- 2:14about the hidden dynamics of how we actually
- 2:16work. Because doing tasks a million times faster
- 2:20really does not matter at all if you are driving
- 2:22a hundred miles an hour while completely blind
- 2:24to the road ahead of you. And that blind spot
- 2:26is the core concept of the text we're analyzing
- 2:28today. While everyone races to automate the creation
- 2:32of documents or code, they're just leaving the
- 2:35greatest potential of artificial intelligence
- 2:36on the table. Which is what exactly? Its true
- 2:39power is revealing how work actually flows through
- 2:42an organization. Yeah. you know, the complex,
- 2:45often really messy reality of how human beings
- 2:47interact to actually get something done. Think
- 2:49about it like this. Imagine you run a hospital
- 2:52and you just spent millions of dollars buying
- 2:54the most advanced state -of -the -art diagnostic
- 2:57machine ever created. It can scan the human body
- 3:00at a cellular level, predict illnesses, map neural
- 3:03pathways, all of that. But instead of using it
- 3:06to diagnose patients, you just wheel it into
- 3:08the back office and use the computer attached
- 3:10to it as like a fancy calculator to speed up
- 3:13the hospital's payroll accounting. Yeah, that
- 3:16is the perfect analogy for the current state
- 3:19of enterprise AI. The patients are still sick
- 3:22in the lobby, but the CFO is just thrilled because
- 3:25the spreadsheet loaded a few seconds faster.
- 3:27I do want to push back on this premise just a
- 3:29little bit though, because I know what you listening
- 3:31might be thinking. Sure. If the goal isn't just
- 3:33to crank out work faster, What is this MRI machine
- 3:37actually revealing that we can't already see
- 3:40with our own eyes? I mean, companies are practically
- 3:42drowning in visibility right now. That's the
- 3:44assumption. Right. We have project managers.
- 3:46We use massive software suites like Jira or Asana.
- 3:49We hold daily stand -up meetings. We track every
- 3:52single hour. We know when a project is behind
- 3:54schedule, right? We know who is logging on and
- 3:57who isn't. So what exactly is this supposed hidden
- 4:00layer of work? What's fascinating here is Sarah
- 4:02Tuzani's surprising discovery regarding that
- 4:04exact assumption. Oh. Yeah. According to the
- 4:08text, she found that AI can identify behavioral
- 4:11patterns that reveal critical performance problems
- 4:14a full six months before they ever show up in
- 4:17any of those traditional tracking tools you just
- 4:19mentioned. Wait, six months? Half a year. A full
- 4:22half a year. I really want you, the listener,
- 4:25to pause and visualize your own workplace for
- 4:28a second. Think about the last major catastrophic
- 4:32project failure. Or think about the last time
- 4:35a crucial, high -performing team member completely
- 4:38burned out and abruptly quit. It happens all
- 4:41the time. Exactly. Or think about a major product
- 4:44launch that missed its deadline by a mile. How
- 4:47often are the metrics your company relies on
- 4:49just a postmortem of a disaster that actually
- 4:51broke months ago? ago. In traditional management,
- 4:54it is almost always a postmortem. We have to
- 4:56draw a really hard line here between two radically
- 4:59different ways of measuring reality, which are
- 5:02lagging indicators and leading indicators. Right.
- 5:04Break that down for us. So everything we currently
- 5:07rely on to run a business, like quarterly revenue,
- 5:10the number of support tickets closed, employee
- 5:12turnover rates, or even the timeline of a product
- 5:15launch. Those are all lagging indicators. Because
- 5:18they measure what already happened. Exactly.
- 5:21By the time that data appears on a manager's
- 5:23dashboard, the reality it describes is already
- 5:26locked in. The quarter is over. The revenue is
- 5:29missed. The employee has already signed an offer
- 5:32letter somewhere else. It's basically the ultimate
- 5:34rear -view mirror management style. You are driving
- 5:37down the highway looking only at the road you've
- 5:39already passed. Duzati's key insight here is
- 5:42that while the final outputs are lighting indicators,
- 5:45the behavioral patterns of the team are the ultimate
- 5:47leading indicators. Okay, so how people are actually
- 5:50interacting day -to -day. Yes. How different
- 5:52departments communicate. The specific points
- 5:55where bottlenecks form during a handoff. Even
- 5:58the variance in how long it takes to get a simple
- 6:00approval. Those are the early warning signs.
- 6:03If you deploy AI to read those specific behavioral
- 6:05patterns, you are effectively looking into a
- 6:07six -month crystal ball. Let's make that crystal
- 6:10ball tangible. Because a terrible financial quarter
- 6:13doesn't just spontaneously generate out of thin
- 6:15air on a Friday afternoon. No, it never does.
- 6:18Let's trace that six -month decay. It starts
- 6:21today with a tiny, almost imperceptible breakdown
- 6:24in communication rate. An engineer asked for
- 6:27clarity on a design feature, and instead of a
- 6:30quick huddle, it turns into this confusing, sprawling
- 6:33email thread. Right. And next week... Because
- 6:35of that confusion, someone has to wait three
- 6:38extra days for a security sign -off. Exactly.
- 6:40And the week after that, people start scheduling
- 6:42massive hour -long meetings with 10 people just
- 6:46to untangle the original confusion. The calendar
- 6:48bloat is a massive indicator. It really is. And
- 6:50then a month later, the engineering and design
- 6:52departments get completely frustrated and just
- 6:54stop collaborating entirely. They retreat to
- 6:57their silos. Yeah, the classic us -versus -them
- 6:59mentality sets in. Three months later, the product
- 7:01is built, but it doesn't match the original vision
- 7:04at all. and then a full six months later, the
- 7:07product launches, the customers hate it, and
- 7:09the revenue drops. And traditional management
- 7:12only notices the problem at month six when the
- 7:15revenue actually drops. They completely missed
- 7:17half a year of behavioral degradation. It's wild
- 7:20when you look at it that way. It is. But to be
- 7:23fair, it is not necessarily the manager's fault.
- 7:26Human beings simply do not have the cognitive
- 7:28bandwidth to process the sheer volume of subtle
- 7:31behavioral data flowing across, say, a 300 -person
- 7:35organization. Right. You can't be everywhere
- 7:38at once. Exactly. You cannot track the time decay
- 7:40of every single Slack message or the metadata
- 7:43of how many times a single JIRA ticket bounced
- 7:46back and forth between two departments. But an
- 7:49artificial intelligence model absolutely can.
- 7:51Because it doesn't get tired. Right. It does
- 7:53not get overwhelmed by the noise. It simply maps
- 7:55the network, establishes a baseline of normal
- 7:58interaction, and immediately flags the anomalies
- 8:01where the workflow is suddenly degrading. But
- 8:02that raises a huge practical question for me.
- 8:05I mean, human workflows are notoriously messy.
- 8:07We leave these chaotic data trails, like some
- 8:10people prefer email, some prefer direct messaging,
- 8:13some people have chaotic overlapping calendars.
- 8:15Oh, yeah. Total chaos. How does the system make
- 8:18sense of that noise without just handing a manager
- 8:21a massive spreadsheet of false positives? Like,
- 8:24is this just academic theory? How do we know
- 8:27this six -month prediction model actually survives
- 8:29contact with the real, unpredictable business
- 8:33world? Well, we know it survives because of Sarah
- 8:36Tuzani's operational background. Right. She's
- 8:38actually done this. Exactly. The source material
- 8:40emphasizes that she did not develop this framework
- 8:43in some pristine university research lab. As
- 8:46a chief operating officer, she leveraged these
- 8:49exact principles to scale a fintech company through
- 8:52a period of explosive, chaotic growth. What kind
- 8:55of numbers are we talking about here? The metrics
- 8:57in the text are substantial. She helped secure
- 9:00a $50 million plus Series A funding round and
- 9:03scaled the platform to over 200 ,000 customers.
- 9:06Wow. Okay, that kind of hyper growth is exactly
- 9:09the proving ground you want. I mean, anyone who
- 9:11has ever been within a 10 -mile radius of a startup
- 9:13knows that hyper growth is usually held together
- 9:15by nothing more than duct tape, sheer panic,
- 9:18and a lot of late -night pizza. Absolutely. It's
- 9:21a miracle anything works at all. Right. So scaling
- 9:24a fintech company to 50 million dollars and hundreds
- 9:27of thousands of users isn't just about having
- 9:29a good app. It requires a flawless, incredibly
- 9:33resilient operational engine. A single bottleneck
- 9:37in compliance or customer onboarding could just
- 9:39tank the entire company at that speed. The stakes
- 9:42couldn't be higher in that environment, which
- 9:44is what makes her findings so critical. The text
- 9:47details that navigating that extreme pressure
- 9:50cooker actually led her to a profound realization.
- 9:54Here's where it gets really interesting, because
- 9:55the core philosophy she pulled from that hyper
- 9:57growth experience essentially flips the entire
- 10:00script on modern management. It really does.
- 10:02We are so conditioned to view management as this
- 10:05forceful act, you know, cracking the whip, setting
- 10:07artificial deadlines, pushing the boulder up
- 10:09a steep hill through sheer willpower. But her
- 10:12premise is that high performance is actually
- 10:14a team's natural state, provided you actively
- 10:17remove the elements that are blocking the current.
- 10:19When work flows naturally, performance improves
- 10:22automatically. And the text gives a specific
- 10:25diagnostic name to those hidden blockages. Calls
- 10:28them invisible friction. Invisible friction?
- 10:31I like that. Her entire methodology is built
- 10:33around helping organizations identify and eliminate
- 10:37this invisible friction so they can stop fighting
- 10:40against their own internal architecture. Let's
- 10:43ground this concept of invisible friction for
- 10:45you listening. Think about the plumbing running
- 10:48through the walls of your house. Invisible friction
- 10:50is like a microleak hidden deep behind your drywall.
- 10:53You can't see it. Right. You literally cannot
- 10:55see it. Your water bill, which represents your
- 10:58traditional lagging metric, looks completely
- 11:00normal for months. So you assume everything in
- 11:03the house is structurally sound. But meanwhile,
- 11:06water is slowly, persistently dripping. Ruining
- 11:10everything behind the scenes. Exactly. The insulation
- 11:12is soaking it up, the wooden studs are starting
- 11:14to rot, and the foundation is slowly being compromised.
- 11:18By the time you finally see a dark wet spot forming
- 11:20on the living room paint, calling a plumber is
- 11:23no longer enough. You need a structural engineer
- 11:25to rebuild the wall. That structural rot is exactly
- 11:28how invisible friction operates within a corporate
- 11:31team. It is almost never one massive obvious
- 11:35failure. It is the micro delays. The little things
- 11:38that add up. Yes. It is a critical handoff between
- 11:41sales and legal that has no clear owner. It's
- 11:45an ambiguous approval process, where three different
- 11:47managers think they have veto power. These small
- 11:51points of friction compound daily, and they slowly
- 11:54erode the foundation of a team's productivity
- 11:57and morale. But I have to play the skeptic again
- 11:59here. Because if a process is truly that broken,
- 12:01like if an engineer is waiting four days for
- 12:03a routine compliance check, shouldn't a competent
- 12:06manager know about that? You would think so,
- 12:08right? Yeah. Why does the source material place
- 12:10such heavy emphasis on the fact that most companies
- 12:13are completely blind to where their flow is blocked?
- 12:16Like, why is the friction invisible to the people
- 12:18whose entire job is to oversee the work? If we
- 12:21connect this to the bigger picture, the blindness
- 12:24isn't actually a failure of individual managers.
- 12:27It is a fundamental flaw in how modern organizations
- 12:30are architected to view themselves. What do you
- 12:32mean by that? Well, almost every company on earth
- 12:34is structured exclusively around outputs and
- 12:37nodes. They look at the individual employees,
- 12:40you know, the nodes in the network, or they look
- 12:42at the final polished product. The questions
- 12:44they ask are always binary, like, did John finish
- 12:47drafting his report? Did the marketing campaign
- 12:50go live on Tuesday? Exactly. It is entirely binary.
- 12:53The checkbox is either ticked or it isn't. The
- 12:55node is either functioning or it is broken. But
- 12:58here is the critical blind spot. They never look
- 13:01at the space between the notes. They do not measure
- 13:04the behavioral flow of how that specific piece
- 13:06of work moved from Jane over to John through
- 13:09the legal department and finally to the launch
- 13:11pad. Management is blind to the space between
- 13:14people because historically that space has been
- 13:17impossible to quantify. Right, you can't put
- 13:18that in the spreadsheet. You cannot drop a column
- 13:21for natural team flow into a standard financial
- 13:23document because it couldn't be measured, it
- 13:26simply wasn't managed. Therefore, the agonizing
- 13:30friction occurring in those transitional spaces
- 13:32remains entirely invisible to the traditional
- 13:35managerial eye. OK. That makes perfect sense.
- 13:39If you only measure the final output, you are
- 13:42willfully blinding yourself to the grueling,
- 13:45friction -filled journey your team actually took
- 13:47to produce that output. And this happens all
- 13:50the time. Constantly. A team might hit their
- 13:52massive Q3 deadline, and the traditional metric
- 13:55dashboard flashes green. It screams success.
- 13:58Everyone celebrates. Right. But to get that green
- 14:01light, the team had to work three weekends in
- 14:03a row, navigate six incompatible software platforms,
- 14:07bypass a toxic middle manager, and manually enter
- 14:10data because the API was broken. The output looks
- 14:13like a victory, but the behavioral pattern underlying
- 14:16it is screaming imminent burnout and systemic
- 14:18failure. And that failure will eventually arrive.
- 14:21The green light on the dashboard is really just
- 14:23masking the structural rot behind the drywall.
- 14:25And this gap, the inability to measure the space
- 14:28between the nodes, is exactly the problem Tuzani
- 14:30is tackling with her new framework. So if the
- 14:33fundamental problem is that companies cannot
- 14:35see where their internal plumbing is blocked,
- 14:37and traditional metrics are essentially just
- 14:39an autopsy report of a failure that began half
- 14:42a year ago, what is the actual practical solution
- 14:45being proposed here? Well, according to our source
- 14:48material, the solution is the platform she is
- 14:50building right now. She is actively pioneering
- 14:53a new category of organizational intelligence
- 14:56through her current venture, which is called
- 14:58waggle AI. OK, waggle AI. What exactly is the
- 15:03waggle method doing to find these micro leaks?
- 15:06Because we talked earlier about not spying on
- 15:08people. How does it map the flow without becoming
- 15:10like this creepy surveillance tool? The text
- 15:13highlights that waggle AI functions by measuring
- 15:16and improving how work actually flows purely
- 15:19through operational metadata. Metadata, OK. Right.
- 15:21It is not reading the content of your private
- 15:23messages or tracking your keystrokes to ensure
- 15:25you are glued to your desk. It is analyzing the
- 15:28velocity and structure of the work itself. Oh,
- 15:30that's a big difference. It's a huge difference.
- 15:33It looks at the metadata of a project life cycle.
- 15:36So if an asset typically takes two days to move
- 15:39from the engineering node to the quality assurance
- 15:41node, and suddenly takes seven days, and it spawns
- 15:44three unexpected calendar invites with 10 attendees
- 15:46each. The AI flags that variance. Exactly. It
- 15:50flags it instantly. It is actively helping leaders
- 15:53spot those specific structural blockages months
- 15:56before a missed deadline ever materializes. It
- 15:58is finally putting a highly sensitive diagnostic
- 16:01sensor on that unmeasurable space between the
- 16:04nodes. The invisible friction finally becomes
- 16:07visible data. This raises an important question,
- 16:10however, about the human element of leadership.
- 16:12Oh. If you deploy an AI capable of continuously
- 16:16mapping your team's behavioral patterns and highlighting
- 16:19exactly where the current is blocked, it forces
- 16:21a massive, really uncomfortable mindset shift
- 16:23for the people in charge. Uncomfortable in what
- 16:26way? What do leaders have to give up? They have
- 16:28to give up being task managers. If the artificial
- 16:31intelligence is giving you a real -time topographical
- 16:33map of the workflow, your role fundamentally
- 16:37changes. You must transition from a task manager
- 16:40into a flow facilitator. A flow facilitator?
- 16:43Right. A traditional manager looks at a dashboard,
- 16:46sees a red light, and asks, who didn't do their
- 16:48task? Why isn't this done? The blame game. Exactly.
- 16:51But a flow facilitator looks at the AI insights
- 16:54and asks a completely different set of questions.
- 16:58They ask, Why is there sudden friction between
- 17:00the engineering pod and the design team? Is the
- 17:03new intake form we introduced last week causing
- 17:05a bottleneck? How do I redesign this environment
- 17:08so the work can flow naturally again? Wow. That
- 17:10really requires stepping back from the micromanagement
- 17:13of individuals and stepping up to become an architect
- 17:16of the environment itself. I want you, the listener,
- 17:19to run a mental diagnostic on your own daily
- 17:21workflows right now. Think about a typical Tuesday
- 17:24morning. Everyone loves a Tuesday. Right. Visualize
- 17:27the endless email chains, the hour -long sync
- 17:30meetings that could have easily been a paragraph
- 17:33on Slack, the constant waiting for access permissions
- 17:36to a single document. Where is the invisible
- 17:40friction hiding in your Tuesday? It's everywhere.
- 17:43How much of your finite time and mental energy
- 17:46is completely wasted just fighting against bureaucratic
- 17:48blockages instead of actually riding the natural
- 17:51flow of your expertise? We have normalized a
- 17:54culture where people spend vastly more energy
- 17:57navigating the friction of their workplace than
- 18:00executing the actual work they were hired to
- 18:02do. It's so true. Imagine the exponential leap
- 18:04in a company's performance when that wasted energy
- 18:07is suddenly reclaimed. as Tuzani's Fintech scaling
- 18:10experience proved. When the friction is removed
- 18:12and work flows naturally, performance is not
- 18:14just inch upward. It improves automatically.
- 18:17You do not have to force it. It is an incredibly
- 18:19liberating concept. You do not have to squeeze
- 18:21more blood from the stone. You do not have to
- 18:23demand 80 -hour work weeks. You just have to
- 18:25clear the debris out of the river and let the
- 18:27water run. That's beautifully put. Okay, let's
- 18:30unpack all the layers we have covered today.
- 18:33So what does this all mean? We started this deep
- 18:36dive looking at the massive global distraction
- 18:39of basic AI automation, you know, the relentless
- 18:42push to make a machine write emails faster while
- 18:45completely ignoring the system generating those
- 18:48email in the first place. The blind spot. Right.
- 18:50And we discovered through the source material
- 18:52on Sarah Tuzani and the Ragle method that the
- 18:55true revolutionary power of artificial intelligence
- 18:58lies in its ability to see the invisible. It
- 19:01is the unprecedented ability to map the behavioral
- 19:04flow between human beings, analyzing operational
- 19:07metadata to predict systemic failures a full
- 19:09six months before traditional lagging metrics
- 19:12even register a problem. A six -month crystal
- 19:14ball. Exactly. And we learned from her proven
- 19:17success in hypergrowth environments that the
- 19:19ultimate secret to high performance is surprisingly
- 19:21simple. remove the invisible friction, design
- 19:24an environment where work flows naturally, and
- 19:27the metrics will take care of themselves. It
- 19:28is a brilliant necessary paradigm shift for the
- 19:32modern workplace. It fundamentally changes how
- 19:35we view efficiency. However, it does leave us
- 19:38with one final lingering thought to consider.
- 19:41What's that? Well, If artificial intelligence
- 19:44eventually becomes flawless at mapping our behavioral
- 19:46patterns, if we successfully utilize these tools
- 19:50to eliminate every single piece of invisible
- 19:53friction, every bottleneck, and every miscommunication
- 19:56in our daily workflows, at what point does optimizing
- 19:59for perfect frictionless flow start to eliminate
- 20:02the chaotic, unpredictable human friction that
- 20:05often sparks our most brilliant out -of -the
- 20:07-box innovations? Wow. That is a phenomenal point
- 20:10to end on. Does perfect efficiency ultimately
- 20:13kill the happy accident? Does a perfectly smooth
- 20:15river ever carve a new canyon? That is definitely
- 20:18something for you to chew on this week as you
- 20:20navigate the invisible currents of your own workplace.
- 20:23Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep
- 20:25questioning the standard metrics, keep an eye
- 20:27out for those micro leaks behind the drywall,
- 20:29and we will catch you next time.