How Teams Burn Out When Change Never Stops

“Alex Cullimore: People are tired. People are worn out. The burnout is real, because there's a feeling that they don't have enough time to make any change lands. They don't know when the next change is going to come. Most people are feeling a little disenfranchised, like the changes are being thrust upon them. They're not choosing what is going to happen.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. It is a host episode. Today, Cristina and I are joined by Cristina and I and our thoughts. This is a pretty crowded room.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, I'm glad that you and Cristina are in the studio with Cristina's thoughts and your thoughts.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it's a crowded place here. It’s a little bit loud. There's a lot of soapboxes.

Cristina Amigoni: There's multiple personalities on both sides. It almost feels like a whole panel and conference.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, sometimes we joke about two brains, one face, but that really doesn't cover the vast number of personalities that each of those –

Cristina Amigoni: The brain is a container. What's happening in the container is, yeah, good luck.

Alex Cullimore: It explains a lot about the general head pain I've had all day.

Cristina Amigoni: You may have a few of your personalities fighting each other in there.

Alex Cullimore: Basically, this does tie to our topic today.

Cristina Amigoni: Somehow.

Alex Cullimore: One thing we noticed is that everybody, I think, had a bit of a rough exit of 2025 and a bit of a rough re-entry into 2026. That's entirely fair. It was a long year, a bit of a difficult year. Then suddenly, before anybody was ready, we're back at it. AI is still here and getting bigger all the time. Organizations are determined to change and shift things. We're all feeling a little –

Cristina Amigoni: Nonstop?

Alex Cullimore: I don't know. Tired? Yeah. How do you pull that stop cord, like you would on a bus? I'd like to get off. This is enough.

Cristina Amigoni: I think they've eliminated the stop cords on the bus.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Now they're just like, “Look, we'll stop when we want to stop.”

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: If it's not where you want it, too bad.

Cristina Amigoni: It's almost like that scene in Speed. That's what like, 30, 40-years-old. I'm going to hold that is, where the only way to get off the bus is to actually put a platform across another bus that's also going 60 miles an hour, and then get on that bus.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: There is no really getting off. You're just moving to another bus that's going just as fast.

Alex Cullimore: That bus also has a bomb that will explode if you go along.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. That's the only movement that's allowed is from bus to bus to bus to bus. It's just a matter of getting out before the first one crashes and then the second one crashes and then the third one crashes and then the fourth one crashes. That seems like the state of organizations and teams right now, and the world.

Alex Cullimore: Which brings us to the topic that we haven't even named yet, which is group burnout, organizational and team burnout. Everybody on the bus is a little tired of hopping to the next bus and wondering whether this is going to be the one that blows up on them.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Until they actually see the end and they're like, “Oh, there's the bus stop.” But then, everything shuts down and it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. You got to get off and get on the next one. Which is pretty much how organizational change and transformations are happening right now. I'm pretty sure we talked about this, what? Two or three years ago, where you just can't be in a success state if you're constantly changing and not letting the seeds that you've planted actually grow. It's nice that everybody's catching up on this, or at least some of the big article people are catching up on it and now writing articles about it. I’m like, yeah, it's been happening for a while.

Alex Cullimore: Did we all just start noticing?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly.

Alex Cullimore: How many transformations did it take you in your career before you're like, “Hey, this isn't right”?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we talked about that in our leading change module. We started probably two or three years ago about like, you have to actually let the seeds grow. Stop digging them out and then putting new seeds and then going to a different plot and digging those out and putting new seeds. I'm wondering why nothing ever works, and you're not getting to whatever fictitious future you're trying to create, because your future keeps changing.

Alex Cullimore: That is the perfect metaphor, because the leaders just go to a seed depot. They pick out the thing that they're going to do and then they scatter it all around and then they check back a day and a half later and they're like, “My God. This hasn't grown into a beanstalk. How are we supposed to get the golden goose?”

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: At which point, they tell the entire field, throw out the seeds and go back to the drawing board. Everybody's just sitting around going, “Oh, my God. Can we stop tilling the fields?”

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: We started that leading change thing way before there was AI. Could you imagine the use cases we would have had before that?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Oh, my God.

Alex Cullimore: Now we can just point to like, look what happened with AI, and we don't even have to – It doesn't matter what company we're in, that would just be true.

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. Indeed. Yes. That will cause, is causing, has been causing group, team, individual, of course, but organizational burnout.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Almost feels like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, whereas just constantly just running. “I'm late. I'm late. I'm late. I'm late. I'm late.” That's how it feels like organizations are running. There's this like, we're all late, but none of you know where you're running to. Stop running.

Alex Cullimore: That's the feeling we keep getting from everybody we talk to. It feels like they're all the rabbit. They all feel they're too late. Everybody is, this is one huge problem with organizational change. It’s not something that gets announced and we're already not doing it right and we’re already behind the schedule. We thought we'd have everything better in a month and everybody's like, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Everybody's running around in every which way. You can only do that so many times for people like, “You know what? I'm just going to sit down. I'm going to catch this train when it comes around again.” Inevitably, it does.

Cristina Amigoni: It does. It really does.

Alex Cullimore: Organizations have been running around, like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. People have been running around. If you do that a few times, people are tired. People are burned out. The burnout is real, because there's a feeling that they don't have enough time to make any change land. They don't know when the next change is going to come. Most people are feeling a little disenfranchised. The changes are being thrust upon them. They're not choosing what is going to happen. These are all immediate triggers for general burnout, on top of just what can burn us out personally, which is just feeling lost, for meaning lost, for choice lost, for ability to grow.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I actually have a good anecdote around that. One of the many. One of the many personalities in my head is screaming right now. We'll let that one speak. I was actually talking to my therapist yesterday and realized that last year was definitely one of those years where it was just running, running, running, running from one thing to the next. Major goals accomplished, like writing the book, major changes happened personally, professionally, all sorts of stuff. It was the whole year.

At the moment while running, I didn't realize it, but looking back, the whole year was just nonstop. It was nonstop, what's the next thing? What's the next crisis? What's the next change? What's the next thing to deal with? What's the next thing to figure out? Then a lot of that was making changes and making things to figure out to create space. That doesn't work anymore. Let's change it. We wanted to do write a book. We finally got it. Now there's a space for other creation.

Now this year, I started this year by looking around and me like, okay, now I have the space and what the hell do I do with it? She had a novel suggestion. She's like, “What if you just focus on being and what does it look like if you're just being? That's your purpose.” Because part of what I was doing is I feel like I don't have purpose. Yes, I have tasks and small things, but where's my bigger purpose? Because last year was constant. This is the next big purpose. Even the last two or three years, but last year, especially. Now it's just going like, what's the next big purpose? We both agreed that going to Ikea every weekend to find a couch that I can't seem to pick, not big enough.

Alex Cullimore: That could be everlasting, but maybe not satisfying.

Cristina Amigoni: It's taking me a couple of months. I'm definitely dragging it on, but somehow it doesn't fill me inside. I'm not quite sure why.

Alex Cullimore: We're going to call this episode, searching for purpose in Ikea.

Cristina Amigoni: I keep hoping that something will show up, but it doesn't show up. Then she said, “What would it look like if your purpose for this year, or the next few months is just to be, and think about that?” I was like, I don't think I know what to do with that. I don't think I've ever made being my purpose ever in 51 years of my life.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. The second you start to think that, then the first question is like, well, how do I do that?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. What she said after that was, “Oh, and I don't expect you to give me a list of the how and an explanation next week. If you do, I'm going to tell you that's not it.”

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. That's not very being.

Cristina Amigoni: No, no. Back to how this relates to organizational burnout is like, what would it look like for organizations and team to just be and not chase the next big transformation and the next big organization will change and the next big structure and the next big something. Can it actually provide success?

Alex Cullimore: I would posit that there could be some huge benefits from that. First of all, when we talk to people, people appreciate having a little space to think. The space to just sit back and let things happen for a bit would be huge just to allow people to stop feeling like they have to run from task to task. I think that would help for one. If you could just let an organization be, you'd find out who's more proactive, who's going to take some initiative, who's going to say, hey, we need to do these things, and you'd allow some of your initiatives to finish, instead of assuming, “Oh, this one hasn't worked. We need another one.” Or, everything's happening in the market and we're totally going to have to change right now. AI. We have to jump on it.

Cristina Amigoni: And choke on it.

Alex Cullimore: We jump on it.

Cristina Amigoni: And choke on it. And choke.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And then choke on the implementation.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, just jump on the next thing and then choke on the implementation.

Alex Cullimore: I wonder if hackathons are a piece of that just being like, what if you just let everybody choose the thing they wanted to work on for a bit and just do the thing? Have 24 hours to go ship something, and then you end up with all these creative solutions for things that have been stymying people for a while in your organization that suddenly, are solved from within, feel ownership, and it's just because people want to make some things better.

Sometimes, I think, leaders forget that. They let their people be extensions of getting their agenda done, instead of believing that they might want to be able to help, or contribute, or do something, or have a lot to say and contribute that would be helpful, if you stop ramming your agenda down their face.

Cristina Amigoni: Or throat, because they're going to choke. But yes, that too. Yeah. It's interesting, because then you hear the feedback from hackathon and it's consistently the same. It's like, wow, these are amazing solutions. I didn't even know that was a problem and now there's a solution that we can adopt. It's not like people are going to a hackathon in an organization and creating a way to ride pink elephants to the grocery store. They are connected to making work better, to making teams better, to be more productive, to move the organization forward and the core values, or the core mission of the organization forward and make clients and customer interaction better and experience better.

But then, you hear all this feedback and you get this – everybody's excited about, look what came up and this is incredible and we should do this all the time. Then the 24 hours expires, the clock expires and like, okay, now just go back to doing what I told you to do in this new change that you had nothing to do with. No, there's no time for innovation and I'm doing a hackathon. That's a once-a-year thing. The rest of the time, you just got to run. In which direction? Oh, I don't know. Just run. We don't have time to figure out direction. You just need to run.

Alex Cullimore: I love that portion of the hackathon mindset, where a month later, the senior leaders come up with their all hands and they say like, “Oh, here's some of the things that came out. Here's the great projects. What a great work.” Then there's the exasperated eye-rolling, putting it back on the people phrase, “We really could. You guys could use all this innovation you have other times of the year, too.” They get exasperated. They kind of like, “Guys, why don’t you just pick it up and be more innovative,” and then go right back to, “This is the agenda. Can you please stop asking questions? We're tired of a resistance. Everybody has to expect change all the time. Can you please stop complaining about it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and wondering why we don't have the spirit of innovation.”

Cristina Amigoni: I know. What's amazing is that the other thing that's demonstrated in hackathons is not only the innovation is incredible, the productivity to get to that innovation is incredible, because it is usually done in 24 hours, or a couple of days. You've got sky rocketing productivity, sky rocketing innovation, huge success in the outcomes, so skyrocketing outcomes. The results from those outcomes could also be skyrocketing if only you didn't make it a one day a year break from the real work.

Alex Cullimore: I know Google was the first one to at least popularize, if not create the idea of 20% time, where a fifth-year time you can spend on personal projects. That's where things like, Gmail apparently came out of. That is now an app that a ton of people use for their mail. It's now the basis for Google's office suite of email. That is obviously a huge thing and they were just doing it as like a, “Hey, we need an internal way of sending messages,” and it became a popular, popular item.

I think the reason that people get worried about allowing these things is there's too much immediate concern that people are going to misuse this. People are mishandling their 10% time, their 20% time, their whatever it is. I've seen some companies be like, well, okay, it's going to be 15% time. Like, where are we splitting hairs here, guys? Nobody's busy all eight hours of the day, regardless. They're going to find some time to be doing something else just – Anyway, that's a totally different soapbox. A little soapbox, a little soapbox. Just a soapbox exception. But I do think there's a lack of control. They're worried that we can't control people's time.

Somehow, it's been decided over and over and over again. It's better to have the control with none of the good results and to let go of that a little bit and figure out how we infuse the breaks, allow the autonomy and get the even better results than the, well, we're going to keep settling for mediocre, probably not even reaching the mediocre level result that we wanted to get to.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. It's incredible. Again, it's not like people are going to sit there and during a hackathon, figure out how to create a 3D printer that spits out donuts all day long. They're doing something that – 

Alex Cullimore: If they do, great. They should be able to do that, Kudos to them if they figure that out.

Cristina Amigoni: Hopefully, they work for Crispy Crème if they do that. They're actually creating something that will help them and the organization, and not be burnt out by it, be completely energized by it. What is it? Is it boredom? I really, truly believe that there is a level of boredom at some executive levels. Where like, oh, well you haven't done a major transformation and I'm bored. Let's come up with the next one. You’re bored. Go play golf. Or, I don't know, go wash dishes. There's plenty of things to do if you're bored.

Alex Cullimore: I think I'm going to actually tie those two thoughts together. The one you came up with, like it's hard to just be. Maybe we need executives and leaders to just be for a bit. I think that that's – we get this into positions of leadership, or executive positions, and there's this belief that I have to be doing things and changing things and proving that I'm making executive decisions and you get used to just constantly being maybe in that mindset.

Unfortunately, the exchanges can take many, many months to years to complete, not the couple of days to six months that comes to come up with a plan for it. There's the boredom. There's coming up with the next thing. There's the feeling that you have to be doing something. If the executives could learn to just be, help the changes happen. Then I think that would help a lot reduce some of this anxiety. I don't blame executives for the feeling of it. I get why there's this pressure to do it. There's a feeling that you have to be moving and contributing. That's probably how you got promoted to so many different levels of things and you feel you have to show that you're doing things, or you're playing some game of politics and making sure you look like you're part of the good projects, or whatever it is. There's a lot of having to feel busy and trying to –

Cristina Amigoni: And show busy.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. If you go off and play golf all the time, suddenly, everybody's like, “Why does he get to play golf all the time?” I get the pressures that would lead to this, but if you can reduce your own internal drive to have to push and move, even when there's not progress to be made, what if that gives permission for everybody to take a breath and stop this burnout cycle and stop just running to the edge with nothing to show for it, other than getting more and more frustrated, and then more and more mistrust between different layers of the organization.  There's so many negative consequences that we keep seeing grow and we don't seem to be willing just to stop it, or extend some trust, or have any of that allowance for being human.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, absolutely. It's true. There's plenty to do without coming up with extra information, or playing golf, or washing dishes in the sink at the leadership level.

Alex Cullimore: All good things to do, too.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, all the things. There's plenty to do in the change, in the transformation, in the system that's already been created. It's not about being stagnant and it's not about being stubborn and saying like, this is how we do things. We're never going to change. No. It's about not overhauling everything. It's about figuring out like, you know what? This one seed is not growing, because it needs more sunlight. Let me remove the patio chair that it's blocking the sunlight, as opposed to nothing is growing in the backyard. Let's completely eliminate everything and replant.

There are incremental changes. There are incremental pieces that can always be improved. Focus on those and focus on supporting. That's really the whole role that leaders support. If you're not supporting, you're not a leader and you shouldn't be in that position. Support. Support the change. Support what's happening. Figure out what's going on. Create more hackathon type cultures. Create the permission for more hackathon type cultures. Listen. There's plenty that can be done.

I do want to empathize, because as owner of our company, and it's more than I do, but I tend to also be the type of person like, oh, I just heard this new thing. Let's go do it. Oh, and then there's another. Let's go do it. But then, I am hopefully, and our team will have to provide feedback on that, learning to not do that all the time, or at least do it just with you and then keep it within the two of us, so that we don't create anxieties for the rest of the team. Also, even when I do have that urge to share with the team, I'm learning to observe first and realize like, okay, is the team even capable right now to take on a whole new thing, or even a half new thing? Not really. Okay. I can do some brainstorming in the back. You and I, Alex can do some brainstorming on the side and figuring out if and when there is a good opportunity for an incremental change towards that direction, without having to just create that feeling, oh, everybody, destroy everything you're doing, because we're doing something different.

Alex Cullimore: Unfortunately, I am very much an enabler of this, because I enjoy jumping down new things and trying other things. I spent the last week and a half just messing around with a new AI tool we’ve been testing out. I have to check myself a lot as well. Unfortunately, we provide some feedback for each other to occasionally send that one on prematurely to our team. Definitely something we can be better about checking. We have gotten better about checking. We definitely learned that the hard way. We tripped into that a couple of times.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, yes. Yes, yes. We've learned, thanks to feedback, honestly. Creating a culture where people speak up helps, because they will speak up. The minute you say like, “I have an idea,” you can first of all see the faces draining. Their soul is just like your body. If you're looking away and not paying attention to that, or thinking it's because of something else, it's not pushback, but the feedback will be like, “That's great. What do I take off my plate in order to go that, or is that the new direction and I stop doing now?” There is that dialogue that then helps us as leaders stop and think through like, is this really necessary? Is it necessary now and is it necessary to be radically different the way we're thinking about it? Or is there another way to do it?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. It is a give and take game of trust on that. Because if we did not respond to people's thoughts on that, they would stop giving them, but they would still be burnt out, which I think has happened in many organizations. We have to be very responsive to and thankfully, we have a team who's very aware of their own energy levels of where that's going, of what their current plan is. That helps a lot, because they know, hey, this is going to change my priorities. They're willing to speak up about it. As long as we are willing to listen, we can keep that in flow and we don't have to end up accidentally stepping all over our teams.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Getting nowhere, because we destroyed what was being worked on. We are not going to be able to focus on whatever the new shiny thing is. Then three or four months from now, we're going to look back and be like, oh, we got nothing done.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, man.

Cristina Amigoni: Or, there's a bunch of half-done things, which you and I have no experience.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. No, we do that all the time. As an employee, I remember being proud and frustrated occasionally when somebody would ask for seven new things and then suddenly, a few months later, they'd look back and like, “Hey, weren't we working on this?” Like, well, yeah, but that was seven initiatives ago. I thought we all agreed we abandoned that, because how could we possibly have done it? Then there's a whole kerfuffle. What should have been done?

Cristina Amigoni: Is that a word?

Alex Cullimore: Yes, it is. It's a great word and everybody should use it more. Kerfuffles.

Cristina Amigoni: There you go.

Alex Cullimore: That's what you're learning in the podcast today, everybody. The word kerfuffle.

Cristina Amigoni: Could that be the word of the year?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I mean, this whole year is a bit of a kerfuffle already.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 15 days in.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Every day appears to be a new kerfuffle.

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. Now that our thoughts are kerfuffled – I just made it into a verb. Is that a verb?

Alex Cullimore: The train is kerfuffled. It is now. I don't think so.

Cristina Amigoni: Okay.

Alex Cullimore: No, it is – That's where disagreements come up. That's where trust starts to fall apart. That's where psychological safety starts to fall apart. Not because people are feeling as they can't speak up necessarily, or they're – it's going to be a hugely disrespectful response. It's just, it's not going to be useful. They don't feel like they can speak up and it's not going to be really listened to. They might not feel unsafe as in, I'm going to get fired if I say that, they just feel like, well, there's no point in me bringing this up. At which point, wow, where you’re suddenly losing the opportunity to take advantage of any feedback, understand what's really going on. You're going to run very close to the speed burnout that we've all been talking about.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. How do we prevent, if that's something that anybody's interested in doing, prevent team and organizational burnout?

Alex Cullimore: We're going to segment our audience right here. Anybody who wants to burn out the rest, you can just tune out now. This rest is not for you.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Just keep going what you’re doing. It's fine.

Alex Cullimore: We can recommend Psychology Today as a place to find a therapist, or when that eventually crashes. Other than that.

Cristina Amigoni: You're going to run out of buses. Just maybe have some foresight on when you're going to run out of buses to move to.

Alex Cullimore: Now that that part of the audience has gone and everybody wants to address, burnout is still here.

Cristina Amigoni: I can already see some of the text messages that we're going to get when this episode is released.

Alex Cullimore: I definitely tuned out at the half hour mark. See you in burnout. One thing, and we've discussed a few of them here, just to sum up some of the things we've been talking about. First of all, is soliciting feedback, making sure you understand where the team really is. Oh, if there are things that are working, like hackathons, where there are cultures where there is some freedom for people to be able to stretch their wings a little bit and make the moves that need to happen, can the executives sit back, let that be, and have those rise?

Now you might be in a position where the culture doesn't really support that at this time and everybody is in a psychologically unsafe space. Even with the space, they're not going to take it yet. You will have to go into some other support. Think about the things that do work in a culture. Can you create those? Can you create more opportunities for those? Where might you be stopping that energy that you're enjoying in other places?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, definitely. I have a controversial question.

Alex Cullimore: Unfortunately, we don't have time. This is the top of the hour. Traffic's coming up next.

Cristina Amigoni: There was the psychological safety right there. This was not rehearsed, but I do have a controversial question.

Alex Cullimore: Fire away.

Cristina Amigoni: Again, controversial, and we're experiencing it too. The novelty, yes, I would like to stop the bus, pause, do all these great things to prevent burnout, or not continue it, and the technology changes. AI is not stopping. That's not taking a break. From an organizational point of view and a leadership point of view, how do I create the space to pause, or slow down, while the rest of the world is speeding up?

Alex Cullimore: I'm going to throw out a metaphor that I just thought of right now. We're going to explore this, one or the other.

Cristina Amigoni: We don’t have enough in here.

Alex Cullimore: We haven't had enough yet. It's about a 90s movie called Speed. No, I'm just kidding.

Cristina Amigoni: Alice in Wonderland. No.

Alex Cullimore: I'm thinking of this as, think about phones, which we've all been dealing with for the last 10 years, at least after that, those, that's when smartphones are particularly common. It's 15 plus, 20 years since it's really started to take off. In those 15 years, we've all gotten pretty used to there being things like a new iPhone every year, and there being things like a new computer every year. For a little while, there was some anxiety around like, “Oh, I got to have the latest one. Oh, no. This is much better. This is much better.” Now, first of all, the technology is somewhat leveling off. Unless, you really want the extra 0.2 megapixels on a camera, you probably aren't getting a new phone every year. There are some features that eventually go, if you think about the direction of technology, that might in the background be growing all the time. They're growing their features, they're growing their ability to do AI on a phone. They're growing their ways to connect different apps, whatever else. Those are all happening a little bit throughout.

We really take the step up in technology on more of a staircase. We wait, we are on our technology for a while, whatever, we are on our phone. The one phone that we have for a year or two years, three years, four years, whatever it is. Then we'll maybe upgrade as that one eventually just isn't working anymore. I think that maybe leaders need to stop thinking they need to ride the top of the AI curve and be okay with just taking some steps, be okay with being like, okay, which is exactly what we've done with our AI implementation internally. We've used a few things. We just got used to using those for the couple of use cases that we liked that for. We found out about a new tool. We started playing with it. This will be our next step up in understanding and integrating a little bit more AI technology into some of the things that we do.

It's been very useful, but we're doing this in more step-wise, even though there's people who are “passing us,” there are people who will be a little bit ahead of the curve, there are people who will be on top of some new trends that we haven't even heard of yet. We'll get to that one when we get to that one. If we keep evaluating what we've been talking about, which is capacity and whether we need to actually do this, what we actually want to get out of it, I think we can actually walk this more as a staircase, give it time to grow, give it time to settle, give it time to become part of how we work, which is how we've done things like ChatGPT, we played around with it, and then it started to become a pretty commonplace thing to do a couple of pieces internally.

This next thing we're organizing, we're figuring some stuff out and it'll become a little bit more commonplace use of what we're doing day to day. We'll find out at that point, here's the next five things you might be able to do, which we can start experimenting with that. I think part of it just takes the, again, back to the leaders just being, taking the chance to just be, yes, other people are jumping ahead. Yes, they were on a half-step different than you. Now they're ahead technically on some AI curve. But are you getting what needs to get done done? Are you in danger? Those are the things you have to watch out for as a leader. Not are you less fast than Josh Mode next to you? Are you going to be okay as a company? When you need to move faster, how do you help build the capacity and the space to do that? How do you help energize people to get them through that? If you do suddenly need to make a leap, and if you don't, can you just do this step-wise? Can you do it a little bit at a time, instead of feeling like you have to be on top of –

Something that I was just thinking this morning about how many LinkedIn courses I saw for about a two-month period about prompt engineering when ChatGPT was coming out, and people are like, no, you got to have really clever prompts. Then AI immediately got better and didn't need to be as careful with that. Got better at refining. All those courses are gathering dust on some data center shelf right now. Yeah. There's no need to jump into every single trend. You can just take it when you need it. Make sure you're being aware of some risks, just in case there's some huge benefits that might be quick wins. Is there something that you can jump into that would be? Do you have the capacity to do that? If you can evaluate those things, I think you can do this more step-wise, and you don't have to do the pressure game of, oh, man, I need to be at the top of the curb all the time.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. I really like that, because then in the step when you're on the flat part, that's the being. That's the, we're here to observe. Then take notes and figure things out, so that then we know exactly when to take the next step and how to take it and eventually, it's a better way to go up the hill. I mean, if you think about it, we don't go straight up a hill. Even when we're hiking, we're zigzagging and we're stopping and we're pausing and we're eating a protein bar and then we're looking at the view and then we're having some – we're taking some pictures and then we're – it's the same thing. It's like, you can't just shoot up at the hill. That's what it feels like a lot of organizations are right now with this constant like, it's the next change and the next transformation and the next change. Like, oh, and this organizational structure didn't work, so let's redo it again. Then redo it again, and now we do it again. I'm like, but you never even gave it a chance. How do you even know if it worked? It hasn't even gotten even the beginning of a chance. It's that. If we think about even yet another metaphor, because we don't have enough, let's think about like, what is it? The hare and the turtle.

Alex Cullimore: Tortoise and hare?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, that one. It's different anytime, so I'm just going to not say it.

Alex Cullimore: That's fine.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Everybody knows who wins. Be the one who wins. Not the other one. I'm going to avoid saying those words.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, be the tortoise, not the hare. The hare gets exhausted –

Cristina Amigoni: Be the tortoise. Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: That's a perfect metaphor for so many organizations out there, running like the hare, getting exhausted, deciding it has time to take a break, or just not being able to continue. Then being passed by the one that's being more diligent and just getting to the place that it needs to be. There's the proof of that in investment strategies. There's people like Warren Buffett who are like, let's just figure out the right thing to invest in and put a lot into that, and then watch it grow over a long time. Instead of, let's make knee jerk reactions, because right now we're talking in trade deals with this country and that's going to mean this, and tomorrow that's all changed and thrown out the window, but at least you lost your broker fee on it, whatever it is. There's tortoise and hare analogies everywhere. If you follow a general trend instead of trying to follow every up and down, which is good advice for your emotional state, by the way, as well.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, yes, yes.

Alex Cullimore: Then things will be a little bit easier, a little bit smoother. Let them be smoother. Don't let yourself be carried by all of the things that are going way up, way down.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, you may actually win the race.

Alex Cullimore: Or even better, you might just be me just be.

Cristina Amigoni: You might just be. I think I have found one answer to what it's like to just be. I'm pretty sure it's going to get shut down, but maybe not. It's going to have to be a collection of answers for my therapist, but observe. Maybe my purpose in my life for a while is going to be to observe my life. We'll have to see how impatient I am, but we'll figure that out.

Alex Cullimore: Tune in next week for when Cristina's therapist roasts that.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Then we'll now change the name of the podcast to Cristina's couch.

Alex Cullimore: Recover the Human. I'm going home.

Cristina Amigoni: Recover the Human is even better. Yes, pause, observe, listen.

Alex Cullimore: Pause.

Cristina Amigoni: Resist the urge to change. If you want to change, change your couch and go to Ikea every weekend.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. It's like the phrase, I think it's usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln but, if I have an hour to cut down a tree, I'll spend the first 59 minutes sharpening the axe.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, yes.

Alex Cullimore: Just take some time, make it easy. Make it easier on yourself. Instead of thinking you have to move all the time, pause. Figure out when you have to move and then move.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe stop measuring doing as the measure of success.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That's the beauty of the pause is figuring out whether you really need to move, and when you are ready to. You will have to move on things. Things change all the time, but you'll be ready to move, instead of just having moved so much. Then suddenly, you have to move, but now you're really tired.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Now you’re exhausted.

Alex Cullimore: You've been running around the gym the whole time. Now suddenly, you have to lift a weight for real.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Then the game begins and you can't even the basket. You’re so exhausted. You realize, you don't even play basketball, so you shouldn't even be in there. Pause.

Alex Cullimore: I'm going to have an AI parse out how many metaphors we used on this.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. It should be fun, definitely.

Alex Cullimore: Go forth and give yourself a break, give everybody a break and try to avoid burning yourself out unnecessarily. There's a lot to do all the time, but that doesn't mean you have to be doing things all the time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening.

Alex Cullimore: Thanks.

[END OF EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We Are Siamo, that is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you’d like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions, or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or, I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere else.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We’d like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you. And Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. 

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