StephanusAW

Digital Solutions Architect. Entrepreneur. African. Husband, Dad of 3. Masters Baseball. Loves reading, computers, gadgets Facinated by Life and its Creator

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

@Jacobsklug Native

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

@audible_com PLEASE stop recommending the Harry Potter series to me. I cannot log in to my account or finish an audiobook without it being spammed to me.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I spent $1.4 million on Microsoft Copilot.

$30 per seat per month.

4,000 employees.

Why?

2 words.

Digital transformation.

This morning I opened Microsoft Teams.

My top notification wasn't from my boss.

It wasn't from my team.

It wasn't a customer escalation.

It wasn't my wife.

It was Microsoft.

Telling me to learn how to use the thing I already bought.

It said ... "Elevate your expertise with new Copilot courses."

I've had these licenses for 6 months.

Apparently ... I should have waited.

The courses are 47 minutes each.

There are 9 of them.

That's 7 hours of learning.

Times 4,000 employees.

28,000 hours.

To learn the tool ... that was supposed to save us 40,000 hours.

We're already down 12,000 hours.

And no one's opened it yet.

Here's the math I don't put in the deck.

4,000 employees.

Average salary ... $105,000.

That's $50 an hour.

Times 7 hours of training.

Times 4,000 people.

$1.4 million.

In labor.

Just to learn the tool.

The training ... costs as much as the software.

$2.8 million.

Year 1.

To save 12,000 hours.

That's $233 ... per hour saved.

The CFO will never see this slide.

But I'll mandate the training.

Completion rates will be tracked.

Tracked means dashboarded.

Dashboarded means presented.

Presented means ... "adoption metrics are strong."

The graph will go up ... and to the right.

Strong adoption ... of the training ... for the tool no one uses.

Microsoft will send another case study team.

The case study will be called

"Enterprise drives 98% Copilot Academy completion."

The CEO will post it on LinkedIn.

He still won't know what Copilot does.

But he'll know we're ... "committed to continuous learning."

Learning is a journey.

The journey costs $1.4 million per year.

Plus $1.4 million in training labor.

To summarize emails ... we could read in 30 seconds.

But here's the thing.

I'll renew next year.

Because canceling requires a business case.

The business case requires ROI data.

The ROI data comes from the dashboard.

The dashboard shows 98% training completion.

98% is a success.

Success means renewal.

Renewal means ... I keep my job.

My job is ... making decisions.

I made a decision.

The decision was $2.8 million.

The decision cannot be wrong.

Because wrong decisions ... don't get promoted.

I got promoted.

So the decision was right.

This is called ... "strategic alignment."

Next quarter ... we're adding Microsoft 365 Copilot Studio.

It costs extra.

It lets us build ... custom Copilots.

Custom Copilots ... to automate the workflows ... no one has ... because everyone's still ... in training.

Microsoft says it's ... "transformational."

I believe them.

I have to.

I already signed the contract.

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude,’ wrote G.K. Chesterton.

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

@carlvellotti Antigravity

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

Goodhart’s Law, named after economist Charles Goodhart, states: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

I see this often in my corporate consulting. At the same time KRA's and KPI's are worth doing.

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

"God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart." Charles H. Spurgeon

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

Finishing well over a life time seems to be relatively rare. Encouraging that there is very few mistakes that cannot be "worked for good"
I often just have to keep on keeping on, no matter what

[Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc @JasonKPargin]

To be clear re: the AI newspaper scandal of the day: the AI didn’t screw up here. People did, by trusting it.

[Gary Stone @GaryStoneSWS]

Ray Dalio's interview with Tucker Carlson just went viral.

And he's NOT just talking about market predictions.

Instead, he exposed a dark truth most Americans don't want to admit.

Here are his 7 shocking claims about 'America's new Civil War': 🧵

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

@drewbrees @todhansen @netflix Watching my favourite sport from Cape Town South Africa. How about them Chiefs!

[GC Cooke @Gccooke]

He predicted the rise of:

• AI
• Remote work
• Digital streaming

Years before they happened.

Now, Kevin Kelly says these 5 tech trends will shape the next 100+ years:

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

I'll tell you this one right now.

Most companies are breathtakingly inefficient.

Because no one gets fired for doing what "we have always done".

Because boomer middle managers hate engineers, and most their interactions with them are for the purpose of micromanaging them or emphasizing their own status.

Because three hour meetings including everyone they can think of allow nonproductive people to look busy.

Because boomer c-suite executives couldn't inspire an autistic nine year old boy to talk about trains.

This results in companies that are process-oriented, rather than result-oriented.

The purpose of a process-oriented culture is to dilute responsibility so no one can be held accountable for failure.

The only way such companies succeed is by eventually, mechanistically running out of mistakes to make, and grinding their way across the finish line.

This means that it's actually pretty easy, in principle, to make most companies far more competent and efficient .

But you have to be willing to break social rules and offend people. In other words, you have to be a sperg.

What you do is simple.

Create a culture of accountability. Every single act, every single component, every single product, every single decision, must be connected to a single name, who owns it and is accountable for it.

Cripple meeting culture by allowing anyone to not show up, or to walk out at any time, if they deem their presence unnecessary. Most meetings serve no purpose other than to dilute responsibility by artificially adding consensus to what should be an individual decision.

Eliminate any role which doesn't directly and obviously contribute.

Focus on results, and remove anyone who plays it safe instead of pushing forward. But never punish failure, if the failure resulted from a reasonable decision that turned out to be wrong. Failure is inevitable. Learning from failure is what brings success.

Don't allow HR to have any power in hiring decisions. Their job is to handle payroll, benefits, sick leave, and paperwork, and that's it. They shouldn't even be allowed to talk to candidates before they are hired.

Hiring, like any other decision, cannot be by consensus. No dilution of responsibility can be permitted. Team leaders hire their teams.

Power in the company must rest firmly in the hands of its core function. If you are an engineering company, designing and building new technology, power must rest with the engineers. Not sales, not marketing, not accounting. Engineers.

Above all, know how to inspire your people. This must be done with real, meaningful action, not pretty speeches.

Engineers are some of the smartest people on Earth, and have high levels of integrity, but boomer middle managers despise them because they speak without subtlety, and don't care about professional appearance games... so they tend to treat engineers as irresponsible children. In reality, middle managers are the ones playing games.

To earn an engineer's loyalty, you need do only three things:

- Shield him from having to play, or even know about, office politics, and from unnecessary busywork. An engineer's time should not be spent doing unproductive things he is not good at.

- Treat him fairly in pay, benefits and job expectations. Engineers expect not to have to argue for what they get. They create value, and their share of that value should not be gated behind the exercise of a set of skills that are not necessary for job performance.

- Give him something important to do, something that he can be proud of. An engineer's profession is an important part of his identity and sense of self, and he needs to feel as if he is dedicating that part of himself to something that matters.

What does this look like?

Watch the video with the sound on.

Hear the cheering. Watch the people's reactions in the left half of the screen.

Listen to the announcer. She's crying.

When people believe like this, they will work harder than they ever have. They will pull together and resolve problems. They will treat each other like trusted members of their tribe.

They will set team goals above their own.

So what is Elon Musk's secret sauce?

Asperger's Syndrome, that's what.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

This 500-year-old portrait may seem ordinary, but it's one of the most mysterious in history.

There's so much detail that you can read every musical note on this small page.

But look closer — an unsettling secret is hiding in plain sight... 🧵

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

20. Statue made of knives removed from UK streets

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

29. Dad reflexes

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

A thread on some of the most surreal trains and beautiful train rides

1. The Mauritanian iron ore train, one of the world's longest and heaviest, spans up to 3 km, travels 704 km, and has 200-300 carriages, each weighing up to 84 tons.

[StephanusAW @StephanusAW]

@ElonMNews A

[Geordin Hill-Lewis @geordinhl]

Our Rainbow Nation 🇿🇦🥹👏

It was very special to be there for this. Won’t forget it!

[Leon Schreiber @Leon_Schreib]

A beautiful morning to work through the queries I have received over IDs, passports and other documents. One of the key aspects #TeamHomeAffairs will focus on is to improve communications. But for today, the key question is: can I clear my inbox before the Springboks play? 😅