How do you guys think about that territory? And what does that vision evolve into?

We think the best way to manage AI is to manage it as an asset.

So think of it as an asset within your enterprise.

And I suppose we could expand this discussion as well and say, do you manage it as an asset or do you manage it as an employee? I mean, they're the two big conversations people have.

For us, we think you manage it as an asset for a number of reasons.

The first is...

If you manage it as an asset, you get to do all the other control elements that you do around an asset.

Tell us, what can others learn from your journey? Because you're both living it internally and obviously selling it externally.

And Dave, maybe you told us so well earlier today, maybe share the IKEA story that kind of balances what they were focusing on and then how they expanded into the unknown to generate new value.

So there are a few cases like this.

The IKEA one's probably the best story that I've seen of it.

We said right at the start of this that your AI strategy shouldn't be about AI.

What you should do, you should say from a business perspective, what do we want to achieve as a company? And then look at the resources, the budget, the people, the time that's going to be required to achieve that.

And then understand whereabouts you can use artificial intelligence in your organization to create the bandwidth to be able to do that.

So you could go and speak to a customer and say, what's your AI strategy? And they would say, we want to automate customer service.

And so with that said, Dave, take it away.

So for the leader who's been handed a AI mandate and a stack of new tools, uh, where do these transformations break down? And, uh, more specifically, what separates the companies that get real change from the ones that frankly just get busier?

So, so I split it in, or, or we split it in the book into, into two mindsets, uh, and we call it, we call it mode one and mode two.

Mode one is iterative, which you just described, where it's people, "Hey, let's do more of it.

Let's do it faster." Mode two is innovative, where, where it's, "Hey, let's do something that we, we couldn't do before," or "Let's, let's, let's use AI to create space for us to do something we couldn't do more from, from a business perspective." So it's the difference between...

I'll see people in a, an iterative mindset where they'll say, "Hey, you know, we've got all these customer service tickets coming in, and we're gonna use AI to summarize how we fix them and maybe create some knowledge article off the back of that." That's interesting.

It's a valid use of, of AI, but, but you could also do that with, with people.

I mean, you could, you could just outsource the, the, the summarization and, and call it a day.

Um, how does that, how does, uh, that, uh, run into this concept of, uh, of stewardship, the urgency to adapt or fall behind in the AI race? How do, how do I continue to be a steward, uh, of the business and, uh, and a- and adopt, uh, artificial intelligence?

processing? Oh boy, you just dated yourself.

I was an MBS sysprog back in the late 80s.

So...

So I've seen that side of it.

I've seen the implementation side of software.

I've seen the support side of software.

I've seen the pre-sale side of software.

Can AI bring down the barriers somehow? Working together, you know, all that.

Can you tell me a little bit about why that is and what it means?

Yeah.

So all an org chart does is define a hierarchy.

It defines which people manage which people.

So, so who's responsible for, um, orchestrating how that organization works.

What...

When you think about it as, um, as rather than looking at an org chart, looking at a, a work chart, now you're looking at how value flows through the organization.

Yeah

And Dave, please, uh, please build on that.

So I, I think, I think one of the challenges that I see with companies is, um, most companies are designed to run around a series of workflows that were created based on scarcity of resource.

So most companies are constrained by people, so they put workflows in place to try and make sure everything's done the same way, to try and optimize that process flow so they get as much value as possible out of the, the, the limited human resources they've got.

But if you suddenly swap that eq-- uh, equation and say, "Well, what would happen if I give you infinite resources? What would happen if I give you agents that could do those jobs?" Would, would those workflows still be relevant or, or is this the opportunity to say, "Well, let's not define a workflow based on scarcity.

Let's redefine it based on abundance"?

You might not be able to talk about the specific names of the companies, but give me an example of how a company gets stuck in that iteration trap.

So, so they either, they either just automate part of a job where they haven't really thought about it, so they're not gonna be able to remove any headcounts because they haven't fully automated the job.

They haven't got a way to redistribute the work, so, so they're, they're paying for the AI, and they're not seeing any reduction.

about?

I said, explain, explain the concept.

And he said, I'm implementing AI across the enterprise.

And all that's happening is everyone's saving 20 minutes a day and they're just taking the dogs for a longer walk.

So I'm spending millions of dollars and the winners are this or the dog.

He said, I want a way to concatenate this together.

And that got me thinking in a different way.

what's

Yeah.

I mean, look, I'm not too sure.

Am I allowed to mention names, but you've got, and this is, this is actually not, you know, an aggregator is say in the paddle world, something like Playtomic.

If you're familiar with Playtomic and I use Playtomic all the time.

Because as a consumer, I sit there and I go, where have I, I want to, we played paddle this afternoon after golf and I just went, okay, let me look at Playtomic.

Where is available court at 5 p.m. today? And literally went around.

Now, the funny thing about it is that there's no loyalty to a particular paddle centre.

Y'all have really made some strides in the product recently.

Meow.

Well, if this isn't you for me doing cat news.

I know it's serious.

I'm going to do the cat news right now.

Sorry, Sherilyn.

Here we go.

For a cat, the front door can look like a prison.

They worried that they were taking

What are some of the ways, Dave and Brian, I'd love for you to share some thoughts on when you're talking to customers or Or if you were talking to a new prospect even about this, like what are some of the ways we can make these kinds of transformations and these big changes a little bit more manageable so that, hey, I get this and we can do this without, you know, if that's a fair question.

Yeah, I think it is.

I'll kick it off, but I know Brian's got a lot of views around this as well.

A lot of this comes down to, we talked at the top of this conversation around this isn't about deploying technology.

This is much more of a an organizational deployment than it is a technology deployment.

And a lot of it comes down to culture within the company.

So, so one of the, one of the things that I think is really interesting is allowing, allowing a, a challenge culture to develop.

Do you have some thoughts on that person? Like, who is that person? Where did they come from? What probably is their experience? Do you have any thoughts on that, Dave?

Yeah.

As we discussed in the sevens pitch in the box as well, maybe that would be great.

You've got your £90 Blood Bowl set, you've got your £60 seven set with the, the less players and the smaller pitch, and maybe a, a smaller rulebook there, like your, your Spike magazine.

Um, and I, I used to work for Games Workshop for 15 years as well, managed the Coventry store, and with those starter sets, it's, um, a really great way to, to upsell to people when they're looking, when you explain the, the extra bits you get in the box and what you get value for money and the hobby you're gonna get out of that.

A lot of people do see that value and then go for the, go for the bigger sets 'cause they're getting more for their money.

Um, so and it- the, the re- they're a great way to get people into the hobby, because the reason they give you two armies rather than just pick your own army, 'cause obviously you've got a second army, you need a second person to play that game with, so that does their marketing for them.

You, you ask your friends, "I've got this.

[laughs]

But does it actually affect the bottom line?

I do get asked that question a lot.

And I would tell you, Simon, that, you know, a number of years ago, I might have answered it differently.

A number of years ago, I would have said it was paramount to our business and that our business success was so critically tied to performance on the field.

Now, fast forward, I would answer it slightly different.

I think if you zoom out and look at the sport from a macro perspective, it's in a completely different place.

You've got professional leagues on the men's and women's side that are thriving, MLS, NWSL, USL.

What's had to change at US Soccer, whether it be in terms of content or just how you deal with those clients to step up for that responsibility? Yeah.