Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee Season 2 Episode 1
Doug Barton, director of the UWEBC, shares a preview of the Wisconsin Digital Symposium and Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing at Lambeau Field while reflecting on how leaders should approach rapid technological change. He challenges organizations to think not only about what they must change, but also what they must preserve, including human judgment, trust, and the honest collaboration that helps teams adapt with purpose.
Transcript
UWEBC Podcast Introduction
Customer experience, technology, people, and supply chains are shaping how organizations operate today, but keeping up isn’t easy. At the UWEBC, we connect leaders navigating transformational change every day. Each week, we bring you the journeys and perspectives of Wisconsin leaders shaping the future of business.
From the University of Wisconsin–Madison, this is the UWEBC podcast.
Doug Barton:
Hey, everyone. It’s Doug Barton with another episode of Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee. There is merely one catalyst in the car tonight.
We thought it was important to share a message about our upcoming Wisconsin Digital Symposium, which will be at Lambeau Field. All fan paraphernalia is invited.
The next day, we’re also going to host the Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing event with a terrific collection of higher education, technical education, and industry leaders.
We would love for you to be with us for one day or for the full two-day program. There are terrific benefits to registering for the first event and getting the second included as well.
It’s going to be a terrific day of learning. It’s going to focus on all things digital, but also the things we need to improve about the way our organizations change and adapt to the world we live in, the tools we use, and the ways our organizations need to shift and change to take the fullest advantage of this moment for the lives and livelihoods of our people, customers, suppliers, and everyone else.
It’s going to be a terrific two-day event.
That’s the promotional part of this, but I also want to share a thought that I shared with a very elite group of technology leaders last night. I received a number of fond remarks afterward during the cocktail hour, so I wanted to start here.
There’s a quote that I picked up from Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, who is going to be the new dean of our College of Computing and AI, that I particularly loved.
It goes: “These miraculous machines—do we shape them, or do they shape us, or reshape us from decent [unclear] designs?”
By the way, decent, not noble. Just merely decent in our long-horizon plans, you might think of it.
This was something that was written in 1948. The writer was a gentleman by the name of Russell Lord, who appeared in the Saturday Review.
If you think about what was going on at the time, it was the mechanization of agriculture. It was the tractor, the combine, and industrial fertilizer—technology that would forever change what it was to farm the land and to be part of the agricultural economy.
The question he asked was one that we keep asking again and again as technology emerges that promises untold benefits.
Feeding the world is an important part of a life well lived, but technology also perhaps has unintended consequences.
These technologies shape the way we live, the way we work, and who we are for one another in our communities.
In these times we live in, it’s particularly interesting because the whole energy around being digital and using artificial intelligence to good effect carries this feeling that everything needs to change.
I really wanted to offer the room—the room I was in last night—a different possibility.
While you’re considering what to change, also dig deeper. Do the intellectual exercise and try to identify, with your team and your partners, what needs to stay the same.
What should we be careful not to do?
I think I said it like this: The hardest job in a moment of total change, as it feels like we’re in, is not figuring out what to change. You’d be forgiven if the answer was everything, right?
It’s figuring out what must not change.
I would share that a couple of things that came to mind for me were the role of human judgment and apprenticeships.
That hard-won experience and practice alongside another human being, where there is something at stake, is where we create and hone our intuition and judgment about trade-offs.
A better predictive engine, a better generative engine, and AI that is phenomenal, multimodal, and everywhere all at once will never replace the judgments you need to make about trade-offs in so many areas of your business.
Finally, I also acknowledged in last night’s talk the role of trust within companies and between companies and their customers.
But I particularly called out the importance of leaning in together to what we’re all learning through our experiences.
We’ve seen, especially in recent times, what were unprecedented conditions. It’s only when we lean on one another that we can really learn how best to navigate our unique circumstances while modeling examples for one another.
I hope that resonates with you a bit as well.
I think I’d leave you with this idea for Monday morning, given that it’s a Friday night: What is the one thing you’re going to fight to keep the same?
It’s unlikely to be a technology, if we’re honest with one another.
It’s much more likely—in fact, I would say it’s probable—that it will be some habit you have with your teammates, customers, or partners.
An internal example might be the connection you have where you tell one another the honest truth.
Whether that’s a stand-up meeting if you’re on a technology team, or a team meeting where you’re honest about performance, resources, and constraints, it’s only then that we can invent better solutions that outperform the old ways of thinking and doing.
That’s my thought for you.
What is the one thing you are going to preserve in these moments?
This moment is not going to be owned by companies that merely adopt everything or merely adapt. It’s going to be owned by those that adopt and protect.
That’s my thought for you.
I hope you’ll join us at Lambeau Field in Green Bay on June 1, or June 1 and 2, if your schedule permits. We have terrific programming, and we’ll see you very soon.
On, Wisconsin.
UWEBC Podcast Closing
If you want to keep the conversation going, check out the UWEBC website for more events, resources, and details on what’s coming next. Thanks for listening, and from the UWEBC, we’re glad you joined us.