Systems, AI, and the Small Things That Change Everything with Gilbert Guzmán

You're listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Welcome to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm your host, guide, and coach on this journey, Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell. We are joined today by Dr. Gilbert Guzman, an executive leader, founder of IntraQ, and systems-driven thinker who integrates technology, workforce strategy, and operational excellence. From being fired early in his career to overseeing large-scale hiring and AI-driven workforce systems, Gilbert Guzman brings a rare perspective on how leadership Data and human behavior intersect. Today's conversation will help you sort through whether your people, your systems, or maybe your leadership may be a problem. We'll challenge how you think about leadership, management, and performance. Let's dive in and have some fun with Dr. Gilbert Guzman. Gilbert, thanks for being here.

Yeah, no, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure, Wayne. Thanks for having me. It's, it's always interesting when I tell that story of, you know, having been fired and, you know, resulting to, I guess, to some degree of where I'm at today, the trajectory, if you will, of, you know, what's really brought me to where I'm at today. But it's a, it's a moment in time, right, that not necessarily something you forget, but a quick reminder to say, hey, everybody can, can go through adversity, if you will, and land in a good spot.

That's perfect. And I think that sometimes it's that adversity that allows for the trajectory that you get. So let's actually start there. You know, you didn't wake up one day and go, I'm going to found an AI, you know, a company with AI products. It's like, that's not where you start. In fact, you started way back with Kroger or even before that. So, let's talk about that. Let's talk about your journey and what you're doing now. And there are leadership lessons that I'll pause you for along the way. So, talk a little bit about that.

Yeah. So, I started back in 2011, 2010, 2011, after— during undergrad. And I was working as a clerk at Kroger in what's called the Smith's division in Taos, New Mexico. And interestingly, I was a clerk. You know, I was playing football at the University of New Mexico when my wife and I found out that we were going to have our first child. So I said, you know what, no more sports. Let me focus on being a father, at least learning how to be, right? You kind of grow in that area over time. And so it started, started in 2010, 2011 as a clerk, just working part-time hours. In the, uh, what was formerly known as the non-foods department. You know, the shampoos, the, the, um, surprisingly candy was part of that. And I worked the customer service desk.

So that's actually good to know that candy is considered a non-food.

I love that. Yeah, now it's considered drug, drug, and general merchandise. But, um, you know, they've, they've decided to change it up a little bit. But yeah, so I was a clerk for, for a couple of years. And, and, you know, during that time, I'd like to share with people that, yeah, I was, I was actually fired at point. And so, you know, it speaks to leadership. And really, you know, I was maybe 20, 21 years old and had no clue, no idea about leadership. And, you know, when you think about what leadership is and, and how people determine a good leader and a bad leader, for the most part, without kind of academic theory or rigor to teach you what leadership is, you learn by example, right? You tend to learn by, by example. And so I had seen what I didn't want or didn't appreciate or like from a leadership perspective. And in that situation, I had an assistant store manager that was not really the best, right? Was, was that prime example of this is not what I want to be or what I want to do. And I remember there was a point where I was conditioning the store. Others may know this as facing the store or zoning the store and had worked pretty early, about 8:30, 9:00 in the morning, had finished doing that. And the assistant manager said, hey, you didn't do a good job. And I said, okay, well, I'm on break. And being part of that organization, or at least the Smith's store in Taos, New Mexico, we were part of a union. So I said, hey, unfortunately, you can't interrupt my break. We'll deal with that here shortly. We'll go and correct any of those errors or areas that are wrong. And he had decided to kind of poke me in my back. I turned around, he poked me in my back, and he said, you need to get up and this now. And so we walked out to the sales floor and, you know, he was kind of pressuring me, pushing me, and decided to kind of continue to have an aggressive nature. And so being that I worked the customer service desk, you know, there's a counter that sits in front of you. And I decided to say, hey, I said, look, don't talk to me by, you know, like that. And by nature, I'm not a a person who really enjoys conflict. I try to avoid it as much as possible. I'll call it being risk-averse in that regard. And, you know, to, to kind of, kind of weaken the situation, I decided to separate myself from the individual because my mind was like, okay, I'm bigger than him, I'm stronger than him. You know, a lot of people wouldn't guess this as I'm sitting down, but I'm 6'7". And so, you know, I was like, okay. And, you know, I was still working out, college athlete, and my mind was like, okay, don't hurt this man. Separate yourself. So I went across the customer service desk and separated myself. And at this point, we used to be able to clock out on a computer. So I turned around and I clocked out on the computer. And he's like, you know what? You're done. You're fired because I clocked out. And basically that was his, his his mindset of his choice of me, or at least understanding of me walking off my shift. And so I said, okay. So I ended up the one and only time I called my union rep, I told her kind of situation that happened, and I decided to write an email to our district human resources coordinator and sent him this email. Didn't hear anything for about a week, didn't go to work. And he replied, I heard about the situation. I understand what's going on. This is a very well-written email. You know, have you thought about becoming an assistant store manager? And I was like, wait, what? How am I going from I'm letting you know my side of the story via email to you like the way I have, you know, put this email together and have decided to ask me if I wanted to become an assistant store manager. And my mind had gone to, no, I do not want to become an assistant store manager because I had seen what that role had done to individuals, right? The aggression, the amount of time spent at the store. And I said, no way, not at all. Never going to happen. Fast forward a couple of years. So I ended up getting my clerk job back. You know, pressures were alleviated. Relationships, I would say, were, were stagnant. I never experienced a situation like that again. But, you know, fast forward a couple of years—

Were you at that same store?

Were you at that same store?

You were hired back to the same store?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I guess I can say the human resources, district human resources manager coordinator had taken my side and said, hey, there's nothing wrong. And, you know, the assistant store manager was in the wrong at that point. But what was interesting, you fast forward a year or two and I graduate from undergrad and that was one of the requirements to move up in Kroger was either you have an undergraduate bachelor's bachelor's degree, or you have spent a significant amount of time in a departmental manager position. And so what I did was, you know, graduated, decided to look for jobs outside of, outside of the Kroger world. And, you know, and this was 2013, and you realize that, that thought of, I have a degree, I'm going to go make $100,000, everything's going to be perfect, and that is not truth, right? And so it was a decision that I was going make to either go to the Navy and go to OCS and try to become an officer and or become an assistant store manager. So interestingly, the same day that I was supposed to swear into the Navy, I had lost a whole bunch of weight because by that time I had gained a little, little more fat than necessary and, you know, had decided to interview with, with Kroger for an assistant store manager position. So rather than swearing in, and doing all of the kind of entry things with the Navy, I decided to go to an interview with a very small suit. I actually held my shoulders up a little bit to keep the suit at the wrist level because had I not, you know, I would have had a gap between the seam of the suit and my wrist. But held my scapula back and had an interview and was accepted into the 15-week training program. And surprisingly, was not given that opportunity to train in the Taos, New Mexico store, but they actually moved me to Albuquerque to train under a different management team, management and leadership team. And, you know, that's where I kind of had started learning a lot about not only the operational side of things and really where I would say my operational mindset had come from initially was through that 15-week training program because you learn not only here's how to lead, here's how to manage, here's the difference between between the two. But in addition, you understand that there's standards, there's operations, and how do you lead through those operations? And one, taking the training from operation or from, from leadership and management and apply that to, you know, influence others, get the results that you're supposed to have. And, you know, ultimately created that operational mindset of now I— now, you know, now I understand why the label needs to be rotated or the edge of the box needs to be brought to the edge of the shelf, or why we don't stack jars in what was called a dump bin, you know, safety and applying all of the complexity that goes into grocery retail that I feel is highly misunderstood. That's, you know, it's— it definitely helped me create that operational mindset.

Amazing. All right. So you said a few things that I want to come back to. You learned to lead, to manage. You learned the difference between the two and you learned operational along the way, you also learn to influence. And then you learn some stuff about, about retail. And, you know, I, I worked at Whole Foods for a while. I was, I was consulting and then hired on internally as their director of HR. This was years and years ago before Amazon took it over. And I, I learned so much. I, I have this thing where I go into a store and I'll like start to face the product. Like, it doesn't matter, it's not my store. Like, even going shopping, it's like, oh, these, you know, these boxes are pushed way too far back, they should be at the front. Yeah, it wasn't my role in, in HR to do that, but I learned it, and now it's like, that's what— like, make it easy to purchase.

Uh, it's natural, it becomes natural.

It's funny. So a lot of people miss that leadership and management are different skill sets. And I think that's a really important thing. So how long were you in management and operations then in Albuquerque?

Yeah, so I was in my assistant store management role for about a year and 9 months, roughly. And then I transitioned into the world of human resources. So I interviewed, I had moved into Santa Fe, New Mexico, worked in 2 stores up there and for about a year and 9 months and had a leader that had some very, very challenged behaviors, if you will. And through those behaviors, you know, I kind of stayed very close to the operations, made sure the store was, was taken care of. And Santa Fe being a little more remote, not as remote as the Taos store, you know, in northern New Mexico, still a little remote. So didn't see a lot of what we would call company, a lot of visits from, you know, whether it was executives or district leadership. So a lot of the leadership and management was truly up to the store management team. So had an experience with a store manager that I wasn't too fond of. Didn't mind him as a partner within the store, but as an individual was challenged with, you know, what I would call values and morals. And so, I looked for a way out. I said, you know what, I want to apply for anything and everything that gets me out of this store because I just can't deal with this, this relationship, right? And so, what I ultimately did was landed my first, which was a brand new role for the Smith's division of Kroger and really a brand new role that we were adding into the Kroger Company as a whole, which was a recruiting manager. Role, a division recruiting manager role. And so, that's where I first experienced human resources and, you know, was able to sit in a room. So, got promoted to that role. Interestingly, the same day that I got accepted into 2 law schools, that was a path of mine. And at that point, I had 3 children and said, oh, I have to make a decision. Is it suffer a little bit, struggle through, and become an attorney? Or, uh, do I just move forward with the promotion, right? And saw roughly a 30% increase and relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah. So, uh, decided to, you know, take the route of human resources, grow in the divisional, divisional leadership, uh, human resources realm. And that's where I really understood this world of people and learned it because the store operations teaches you how to—

I want to pause for a second. Yeah, just every so often I'm going interrupt you because there's— you said, and, and I learned about this world of people. And it's like, it's funny because most HR people will say the word people that way. I learned about this world of people. It's like, yeah, I mean, it's— people are funny and they're required to make the world go around. So it's great, it's great. All right, so, so you learned about the world of people and HR Yeah.

And so learn about this world of people. And because in the world of management, especially on the operations side, you see the, the people within your function, within your domain, within your organization as a resource, right? And you're taught how to manage, which, you know, if we, if we spoke about that difference between management and leadership, I've always said that management is the what we're doing. How do you get people to do what we're supposed to do to achieve the organizational goal. And on the other side, the leadership is how do you influence those people to want to do that and want to do it well. And so between those two, you know, it's always the managerial side of people are a resource. And so when I was promoted to HR, I remember my talent manager, his name was Jerry Vincent. He, you know, all I knew was operations and the way our operations team within the field, within the store, and district would communicate, right, via email and highlight and bolded words and underline everything. And I remember I was pushing some of our human resources support personnel that were in the field that supported the stores for the entire division. I was pushing an email on some things that I said, hey, we need to focus on this. This is what we need to get done. And I did the highlighting, the underlining, the bold. And my talent manager came to me. He printed out that email. He came to my office. He sat down and he said, hey, read this for me out loud. And I just read it as if I was having a conversation. And he said, hold on, now I'm going to read it. And he put a lot of emphasis on where I had the bold and the bolded statements and underlined and what I had highlighted. And this is where he had first taught me Hey, we in human resources are a support. We support to help people know that they matter beyond themselves just being a resource. And that stuck with me and still sticks with me very vividly today as it helps me understand that there's more to this world of business beyond the business because the people are the ones that truly make it go. I've often used the example of the movie A Bug's Life, right? When in the movie A Bug's Life, the ants, one ant stood up to the grasshoppers and, you know, one ant stood up to the grasshoppers and one grasshopper said, it's just one ant. He said, no. He said, you know, he opens the— I think it was a bottle and dropped a whole bunch of seeds. He hits him with one seed, says, does that hurt? Nope. No problem. Hits him with another seed. Does that hurt? Nope. No problem. Opens up the bottle and then thousands of seeds fall on him and buries him. Right. And I use that example because the power of people for success of an organization is often either missed or dismissed because we are so focused on efficiency, effectiveness, productivity. And I think through that lens, going from operations to human resources and then back into operations helped me truly understand the impact that we leaders as individuals have on people that will ultimately— and Richard Branson said this, if you take care of your people, they'll take care of your company, right? And I think that statement can be taken in as somewhat of a cliché statement. But if you truly focus on the people and understand that they're not always the problem, you know, and I'm a big follower of Peter Senge and Dr. W. Edwards Deming and You know, Deming has always said 94% of your problems are not the people, it comes from the system, right? The systems themselves are— if a system is broken, the person is only as good as the system is that they operate in. And so through that lens, you know, as I went through my doctorate and said, you know what, how do I connect people and understand that technology is growing? And technology is not only growing, but we also have people who care about productivity. How do we bring all of that together to say that people still matter? Matter in this process, which is, you know, business, even in the world of AI today.

That's great. Um, yeah, more and more articles are coming out, and it's certainly something that I know you and I both underscore, that the, the power of AI is really driven by the ability of people to guide it. And yeah, you know, I, I was, I was teasing a little bit when I, when I said, you know, um, HR and people. And it's sort of like, it is people though. Like, that's what makes an organization. It is people. And the culture of the organization comes from the top down. The culture is going to be created one way or the other. And so, if you don't have leaders that are willing to say, this is how I wish to embody the values, which means that they start with clarity of values, and then they embody that and they bring it and they allow those under them to bring it. That's, I mean, if you don't have that, the systems don't work anyway, right? So you've got people that make all the difference. It's, you know, it's platform, it's process, it's people. But the culture that you create is really important. I love that your leader brought that to you and said, read this. Yeah, because yeah, how you show up, it does matter, and what it, it demonstrates what you expect from the people around you. So I love that you, you were in a position where you could create culture and nurture it, and sometimes it's one person at a time and sometimes it's collectively. So really good stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's, and it's interesting you say that. Go ahead, go ahead.

No, please.

Yeah, I was just gonna say it's interesting you say that because it has always stuck with me, you know, beyond— and this was roughly 11 years ago now when we, you know, when I first had that conversation. And, you know, Jerry had become a mentor of mine. So I, you know, followed him to— followed him to Texas. He was promoted to a human resources leader for the division of of Dallas, what's called the Dallas division of Kroger, which brought me to Texas. I became a store manager, you know, helped focus on turnover in a certain store and then was promoted again into back into human resources. And this time it was a dual role of a recruiting and divisional recruiting and training manager. And, you know, spent some time in, in that realm. I had previously done it in another division, expanded a little more of an expanded higher level role. And was able to learn then the aspect of training. And then towards the end of 2020, November, COVID year, you know, crazy, crazy year coming in. You know, I was promoted into an enterprise role out of the general office out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved back into operations under freshness and standards. So I, you know, kind of lived in both of those worlds and, you know, focused a lot on not only the people side of things, But, you know, how do you, how do you align people with data? Because I'll tell you, one of my loves in the world of business is, is data. And it's also one of the number one things I hate as well.

And in the, in the same breath, I think most people have a, have a love-hate relationship with data. It's like we need it. It's information. It's neutral. But to find it and to sort through it and make sense of it. That's tedious sometimes.

Yeah. And for me, interestingly— go ahead. No, go ahead.

I was going to just ask you, because I think you're headed there anyway. And so I was just going to ask you, how do you align people with data? Like, that's, you know, you found yourself in this dual role, you're training, and then you take on even more. And now you're given— Reports. Now you're giving data to track, right? How do you integrate? How do you align it?

I think today I would say, you know, because I was in that role in 2020 and then promoted in 2020 at the end of 2020. So 2019 to 20, end of 2020, I moved in. So a little over a year, moved back into operations. And, you know, operations, especially in an enterprise level, you're really driving standards. And how do you, how do you standardize things for for either efficiency or effectiveness. And, you know, truly learned a lot and, you know, ended up leaving Kroger in 2021, kind of halfway through the year, stayed home with my wife. But to answer your question before, you know, as I've grown, you know, kind of broadly speaking, to align people and data, for me, it's really understanding the systems that we as leaders and managers manage. And, you know, it's not directly quoted today. But, you know, one thing I'll say is if we don't understand, you know, one of the deadly diseases for Dr. Deming, he discusses this concept of managers don't really know what they're doing. And, you know, through that lens, you know, I did a little bit of research to understand it a little more deeply. And, you know, through that lens, managers don't know what they're doing is because oftentimes people are managing people within systems they don't necessarily understand. And I think that aligns with data because data is often converted into a metric or KPI. And through that, people tend to chase the metric before they chase the behavior, right? And this is where we can talk game theory. We can think about how people tend to try to game the system to achieve a metric, or we have data that's manipulated to say things look good on a report and so on. So I think to align data and people, I'd live through the lens of let's understand the system first so we can make sure that they can adopt it. You know, one of the, one of the frameworks that I used in my dissertation was the System of Profound Knowledge by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. And then Fred Davis in 1989 created the Technology Acceptance Model, And that technology acceptance model, it lives really on kind of two core principles, which is the ease of use or the perceived ease of use of a given technology and the usefulness. And between those two kind of core principles, if you can hit those two for the end user, whether it's internal client as a, you know, an employee or an external customer, an end user, If you can understand their perceived ease of use of the technology that you're inserting, or, and the usefulness, those two will create adoption, which to me leads to behaviors, which ultimately leads to system usage. And guess what? You put all those together, the metrics themselves will come. So aligning those two is difficult because oftentimes we get so clouded in the world of data, KPIs, and metrics that we forget to think, do my, do my team members know exactly what their contribution is to this system? Why this metric matters? Why are we measuring this in the first place? And it doesn't necessarily hit. So training, obviously, you know, for, for sake of adoption and usage of a system. But I'd say first and foremost, understand the system. How does the system produce the data? And how does that data lead to a metric that we're measuring for sake of, are we doing what we're supposed to do? I love all of that.

The, um, it's so easy to go, uh, why can't you just do your job? I've worked with so many leaders who will sit back and just, you know, like hold their head in their hands. Why can't they just do their jobs? And it comes back to Well, one, do they understand what their job is or what you expect from them? And two, do they understand the system? And three, why that all matters. Like for me, that all goes back to values. You know, I always start in values and, and you know, that's where you are too. You haven't, you haven't called it out that way, but that is where you are. It's like, what's the, why does this matter? Like what's the, so well, we've always done it that way is a terrible answer. Right. So we do it this way because you know, we've adopted this system because— and I think it allows for people to feel more enrolled or engaged, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's— and it's— and that's why— that's why I fell in love with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, or we'll just move forward. We'll just say Deming. But that's why I fell in love with Deming is, you know, one of my coursework courses was the Fundamentals of Productivity. And, you know, I could say that I've always enjoyed and loved loved the concept of productivity but didn't really formally acknowledge that until I went through that course and said, you know what, this is where my mind goes. Because not only does efficiency matter, not only does effectiveness matter, but truly productivity— and this is what, you know, my book Atomic Impact is about— is, you know, transformative productivity. And, you know, through that lens of productivity, I go back to Deming a lot because, you know, he created where he ran the Redbeet experiment, which talks about everything that we do today in organizations. And this was in the late '80s, and it's even more so relevant today, right? It's, it's employees are given instructions on how to do a job and they have the, the quotas, the metrics and everything that is the output, the, you know, the output within this formula of productivity. And the expectation is no red beads. And through this, this system or this process of what is the job, you do everything you're supposed to do. But unfortunately, it's inevitable you're going to produce red beads, which in manufacturing would be, you know, accounted for as defects. And then, you know, dimming changes the leadership, how many people are looking at the results, how many people are measuring and auditing the results. And then he says, okay, we have to let some people go because they're not performing well. And then I'm going to throw a bonus on this. We're going to add a little bit of a little bit of a bonus. If you achieve less than X number of red beads, then you qualify for a bonus. Oh, now we're measuring and tying in a bonus, some sort of bonus tied to a KPI, which then forces people to try to play the system because now there's some sort of reward there, right? There's some sort of incentive. And I always go back to Deming through the Redbeet experiment. I've shared it with even executives that are close to me and use the Redbeet experiment as, look, if we think about this was relevant in this realm or in this time frame, rather, in the late '80s when the internet was just coming and imagine where we are today. Now we have AI. Could you imagine what Dr. Deming would say today in how organizations are running through this world of metrics, performance reviews, and so on, tying in bonuses for sake of achieving a specific goal that maybe doesn't even produce an ROI for the organization. But on paper, for investors, for the boardroom, maybe it looks a lot better. But it's challenged, you know, to a degree.

Do you want to talk a little bit about the Redbeet experiment? Experiment. I think, you know, you, you've alluded to it. Just in a nutshell, how was it set up? What were they looking for? What were the outcomes? What were the aha moments from it?

Yeah. So the red bead experiment has, I believe it's 7 participants, and you can have as many as you want. So the way the red bead experiment is set up is there's there's a bucket and there's white beads and red beads within this bucket. And I can't remember off the top of my head the ratio, but there's, there's more white beads than red beads. And then there's a paddle with indentations on it where beads would fall into. So the expectation of the red bead experiment is you're going to have people within this experiment that are identified as workers. You're going to have auditors and managers. And the expectation is you would dip this paddle into this beads, into the beads at a 45-degree angle. And this is the fun that Dr. Deming would poke and says, hold it at 45 degrees, dip it in, now agitate it, now pull it up. Now you take this paddle, and with these indentations in there, the, the job of the worker is to— their job, their input is dip the paddle, pull out the beads, and the expectation is no red beads. And as you go over to an auditor, they're going to count how many red beads, they're going to mark down how many red beads, otherwise known as defects, checks, and then you're going to go to another auditor, and then there's your performance for the day. And through this experiment, the expectation to understand is regardless of the incentives you give, regardless of adding a bonus or saying, hey, we're going to look at the metrics of these individuals, the top 5 people, the top 5 workers, and we're going to say that these top 5 of, let's hypothetically say, 10, they're going to stay. We're going to have to release the other 5. And we're going to do the same thing, right? And the premise, and, or at least the aha moment, is there's red beads, there's defects within this, within this bucket of beads. And it doesn't really matter how much effort the workers are providing because the expectation, jobs, the input is 45-degree angle, put it in, agitate it, make sure every indention is, is filled with just one hand, and you take it to the auditor. The aha moment is we're only as good as, or effective as, the system allows us to be. So the, the system was the paddle, dip in the beads, pull it out. That's the system. And we know that the expectation or the outcome should be no red beads, but there's red beads in this system. There's, there's variation that exists in this system. And through that the challenge will always be you can only perform as well as the system is designed for you to perform. And this goes to Dr. Jay Forrester. He created the, the field of system dynamics from MIT. And interestingly, him and Deming really, they never worked together. They worked seemingly in parallel. Deming was a little bit older, but they, they, they never worked together. And, you know, I've— after finishing my doctorate, I, you know, cited, cited Jay Forrester a couple of times in my dissertation and but decided to do a little, little deeper research and learn this whole world of system dynamics and feedback loops and understanding what the world or concept of fundamental attribution error is. And all of this just kept my mind growing and expanding more. And everything is a system. System. I mean, from watching fire ants in my house last year, saw that the work they did, the reason why they chose a certain poison over another was a system. And that's where my mind goes is, okay, if there's a problem, you know, the fundamental attribution error is where people, managers, leaders, or individuals tend to blame the person without understanding the system. And I think that is an important concept, even pointing back to dimming, because if we don't understand the systems we're managing, how can we expect to hold people accountable to whatever the expected outcome outputs are and even, even drive down this lane of productivity Because in its most simple form, productivity is inputs to outputs, right? It's how much effort and work are you putting in that's going to result in an output that should have some benefit on, on the, on, you know, downstream for whether it's the end user, the client, you know, depending on its— depending on whether it's services or goods. And that's what led me to write my book, Atomic Impact, is thinking through the lens of people and the impact that people have in an organization, the work that they do that's not necessarily accounted for, that's an input that's not directly measured and/or given credit for or to that does have a downstream impact on overall productivity that's producing the results. It's, it's the It's the— what I call using a formula within my book called the chain reaction coefficient, where we measure investment, time investment, the impact of that investment. And driving through the chain reaction coefficient is thinking about what are the smallest things. And this is a reason why a lot of people might confuse my book with Atomic Habits and, oh, Atomic Habits is focusing on productivity. Love that book. Book, but it's, it's really within an organization. What are the small things that people are doing today that have an impact that are not necessarily accounted for? Because if we can find a way to measure those, similar to the atomic bomb, right? We learned how to create the deadliest weapon from some of the smallest things, or the— we can call it the deadliest weapon, or we can say atomic energy as a whole, you know, small, the smallest things measured, and we were able to see it at a level that you can't see with the naked, naked eye. But we now understand fission and, you know, those things, those, those atomic material, uranium-235 combining, smashing into each other creates more energy, more energy, more energy. How do we take those small things that the people are doing every day that we don't necessarily give them credit for and still have a great result. Not, not putting aside everything else they need to do, right? Not, not necessarily saying, hey, the, the big thing, the big conversation, the big project does matter. But, you know, somebody working a little bit later, like, we don't necessarily measure that because we measure them between the, the hours of 8 and 5, 9 to 5, or whatever their shift is, that 8-hour full-time shift. We might measure their productivity through that, But how much work are they taking home? How much are they thinking about work or things that aren't necessarily directly measured that are producing an outcome for the company that we haven't necessarily given that credit to?

I think back in an office environment, like an example springs to mind, right? And, and that is if you load copy paper, reams of paper near the copier. When that copier runs out of paper, yeah, it's not down for half an hour while somebody goes to a storage closet, you know, 3 floors down and gets the paper and comes back up and loads it. And they have it locked away because we don't want it for walking away, um, but it's right there. There's no downtime. And it's that kind of stuff, um, that is the, the small stuff, right? And And I think I just want to call out a few of the things that you said, and then I'm realizing how fast our time has flown. It's incredible. Like, you know, sometimes it's— this is great, Gilbert. I have so appreciated this. You've said a few things. I want to talk about your book. I want to talk about Atomic Impact and Transformative Productivity. I love that as a title and a concept. What you said, I'm going to read from my notes. Within an organization, what are the small things that impact that organization that aren't accounted for? And that to me is so important because as a leader, you actually have to be willing to look for it. And I have a premise, you know, I'm anti-assumption except for one. And that one assumption that I encourage everybody to make is assume you're missing something. And so stay in this curious place of what might you be missing about the context, about the other person as a person, or even about yourself with blind spots, which is where attribution theory— attribution comes in. You know, it's like, well, if you look at something through a lens, you're going to judge it by that lens. If you go, well, what else could it be? Now you're looking for for all the possibilities and you might actually find ways that you become more efficient, more productive. Yeah, well, I just, I love all of this. Spend a few minutes talking about Intracue. Like you ended up founding your own company and along the way you've written this book, Atomic Impact. So I want you to be able to promote both of those, like just brag a little bit about what you're doing and the book. Book?

Yeah, so I'll share with the book first. The book I would call a— I would call it an extension to some degree of my dissertation. And, you know, decided to write a book primarily because— and you know this, having a doctorate— a lot of people think that because you have a doctorate, you have this wealth of knowledge. It really just shows us how to research and makes our mind understand that there's this world of continuous research.

And, um, you know, so it, it's like, it's like getting your black belt, right? So it is, it is, right? So if you've ever been in the martial arts, you know that, oh, I'm striving for this black belt, and when I get the black belt, I'll have it made. And then it's like, no, you got the black belt and you realize now you've learned how to learn. Now you've learned how to integrate what's next into you and And so, right, the doctorate allows you to go, oh, now I know how to open the world and start looking at different things in that world. How exciting is that? That's great.

Yeah. That's great. And that's what made me, you know, want to write my book and, you know, kind of, kind of attributing some of it to my mother. My mom passed a few years ago now, 2 years ago now. And, you know, right couple months before I had finished my doctorate, and she had always wanted to write a book. I have a whole bunch of her, her diaries at my house. And I said, oh, well, let me, let me get this book done because I had started writing it while I was working on my dissertation and had a few months during the summer where my, my wife and kids had went to her parents' house for the summer for a few weeks, not a few months. And so I said, I have time because I had to work. So I had time to finish the, finish the thoughts and start working on editing. And so So the book itself really is an extension of my dissertation, which was focused on aligning technology, people, and productivity. But I fell in love with the movie Oppenheimer. And if no one's ever— if you have not seen that, you have to go watch it with an open mind. And I fell in love with the concept of physics and nuclear fission and just the atom and the amount of power that comes from something so small. It takes a lot of crashing. It's violent, right? But it ultimately, if we said beyond the atomic bomb, if we just said nuclear energy as a whole, it's violent, but it comes from something very small and it's used productively. And through that, I decided to write the book and focus on, okay, if I use the concept of the atom and the atomic bomb and, you know, what I'd learned from Oppenheimer and after doing research, if I can use that foundationally and then do some research, I ran some, some models and taught myself how to use R and Python, ran some models and decided to try to come up with a formula that says, how can we measure those small things, but also still bringing in, you know, my love for productivity and systems because Because in, in the world of business, we tend to operate— it's rare that we have individuals that are, you know, broad thinkers or dual thinkers, because most of the time we're given a role and we're, we're told to operate within that role, right? Maybe when you get to the executive level, you have a little more creativity and free thinking. But for the most part, your job and within your respective role and domain or function within your organization is to do the work within that respective function. And through that, I said, how can I create something broadly and, you know, do research and write something with creativity in mind that says, regardless of your domain, everyone is in a leadership capacity or in a managerial capacity, is a leader. How can you learn how to, one, think beyond the red tape or the parameters that you're given within your respective role and find the primary benefits and dig into the secondary benefits of what you need to measure productivity at a smaller level. And then find out, is it worth doing? And so I mentioned the chain reaction coefficient formula a little bit earlier. And so within my book, I talk about this chain reaction coefficient formula, and it gives you an ability ability to measure those small things. But what's most important in that formula is not the result. It's more so it forces you to go acknowledge the things that our people are doing in the organization that we often miss or we often misunderstand. So, like, one of the examples I give in my book is how do you, you know, go and sit by some of your top performers. Your top performers might be challenged by the system itself, you know, and going back to fundamental attribution error is you may have individuals who are not performing the way they're supposed to do, but you have top performers. That's variation. That's variation in your system. And you have to understand, am I leading? Do I understand the system? Am I managing everything I'm supposed to manage the way I'm supposed to manage it by way of understanding the system? To ultimately not just get rid of the bottom performers, because again, 94% of your problems come from not the people, it's usually the system, right? And Peter Senge says that, you know, when he's really famous for a quote where he says yesterday's solutions and kind of thinking through this, this lens of short-term thinking, yesterday's solutions are today's problems. And that's that short-term thinking that we often move forward to, one, move the KPIs, but it pulls us away from truly digging in, understanding our people and our system. And why are we doing these things in the first place? And if we can acknowledge that we don't need to do this, and if we're talking about productivity, I mean, Wayne, you've probably experienced this before. But when we think about this world of productivity, there's, there's meetings, especially the higher up you go, right? It's just meetings. It's dialogue. It's dialogue. And the question is, and many people have probably made this statement, like, this meeting could have just been an email. This could have been an email. And so my chain reaction coefficient pushes, formula pushes towards that. Like, what's the investment? And that investment can be monetary. It can be time. It can be energy. One, again, going back to the benefits that we're looking for, is forcing you to acknowledge, right? And then ultimately coming out with, with a number, a ratio. And then there's— I have a matrix within my book that says, hey, if your co— if your chain reaction coefficient result falls within a certain range, it's either toxic, it's waste, or it's transformative, right? What are— are there small 5-minute meetings you're holding with your team every You can measure that with the chain reaction coefficient and you can determine this is truly transformational because the network reach, how many people does this message and this investment reach? And, you know, because we know that the higher up you go, sometimes information just doesn't flow down all the way. And, and so through that, you have this, this ability to Acknowledge the small things. That 5-minute meeting is— it can likely be more transformational than the 1-hour report-out meeting you have every, every single week, right?

And so we're seeing more and more of that, by the way. You know, the— as work moved, uh, during COVID work moved to completely remote. Now it's back to hybrid. But while it was remote, we all learned how to do Zoom, right? And so now everything's a Zoom meeting and it's at least, you know, half an hour to an hour versus, versus you do a 5-minute stand-up at the beginning of the day. Now everybody's on the same page, they've got your vibe as a leader, and, um, they know what to expect at least for that day, at least for the morning. You said a couple of things I want to be able to, to wrap this up. Yeah, um, because you You're offering nugget after nugget here. It's so good, so good. Um, I love that you said regardless of your domain, everyone is a leader. Um, I love that. So, and I love that because that's one of the biggest pieces I bring to people is that like, it doesn't matter, you are a leader. You're being watched by people that you may not even know are watching you. Like, even in the grocery store, how are you showing up? Yeah, you know, what's your energy? What's your intention? And I think we've lost intentionality, and, and then we've, we've lost the— we've lost at a, at an atomic level, we've lost how a small engagement can make all the difference. Yeah, in the rest of that person's day, how they think, how they focus, what, what lens they're using This is so good. And the other thing that you said, I'm going to say it slightly differently. And that is that, you know, a leader's job really is to reduce friction. Yeah, right. And so if you're not looking at the systems, you're not able to reduce friction for the person. You're looking at what that person did wrong versus how that person engaged with the system. Yeah, that's a big deal. So, all right. So in the last few minutes, as we wrap this up, Atomic Impact is your book. What are you doing at Intracue? Is that something you want to talk about?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'll share Intracue. So Intracue is— I'll call it still in its infancy, but is an AI-powered HR command center, if you will. I like to call it the brain behind HR. Primarily for small businesses and startups. And so thinking of this world of systems, I decided to try to venture down and start my own company. Everybody's going into this world of AI and, you know, with, with the help of a couple advisors, pivoted originally from a natural language search platform to a more so HR-dedicated platform. Still foundationally has natural language search documents, find the things you need, but relative to HR. HR, but IntraQ serves small businesses and startups from an HR foundation, foundational perspective. And what I mean by that is we have all of the big name companies that are HR information systems, payroll companies, but none of them are really serving the small businesses and startups. And one thing I always say is when it comes to the, the world of human resources and compliance, small businesses, especially when you start growing in team size, are bound to some of the same rules, laws, regulations, and expectations as a Fortune 500 company, a Fortune 20 company. You know, you have 10 people or 5,000 people. Guess what? An ADA policy is still the same expectation, both federally and by way of state where you operate. And so what I, what I set out to do is build an AI platform that is cheaper than a consultant, faster than a consultant, and cheaper than having to hire a fully fledged HR team? Because maybe you're at a point that you just don't need to do either one of those yet, right? But you still are bound to some of those same expectations. So how can you get those resources, build that HR foundation, and truly be able to be one compliant so that you're mitigating risk? Because, you know, a small lawsuit for an EEOC claim, for example, can destroy a small business or startup. But, you know, a Fortune 500 company bound to that same rule, they might wink at it, right? They might wink at it, maybe take a blink and a quick glance and be able to settle, but it can destroy a small company. So my goal is to give a— provide a platform for small businesses and startups setups, the area of HR that they often are not thinking about until it's too late. How do I create that foundation at the beginning? Using AI?

Yeah, it's so good. Just, I've been in management roles, I've been in HR, I've consulted, and everything you're saying is just so positive and so powerful. You know, it's like people don't think about the small stuff, like, um, what's the pull on the— what's— how many pounds of pressure does it take to actually open that door? And there's like, you have to know that if you've got employees, any number of employees, right? You have to know that to be ADA compliant, right? It's that there's a certain amount that you can have and not. There's how many— you know, I used to, I used to go around with, uh, scratch-off lottery tickets and quiz my team members like, okay, stare at me. While you're looking at me, tell me where the, where the closest fire extinguisher is. Right? And it's like, you have to know, and team members have to know. Now it's, you know, do you, do you have first aid kits? I mean, it's small stuff that, that if you're not aware of it, so So I get a sense that this is more than just a checklist. It is an educational tool and it lets you know, you know, what's next, what's up, where you should be thinking, where you should be focused. I love this.

This is so great. Yeah, and that's where the AI lives. That's where the AI lives is I have a component that when you hire your first employee, for example, in California, let's say we operate in Texas and you hire your first employee in California, you enter that person's offer letter and so on in the system, then, um, InterQ gets to tell you that, hey Wayne, I see you just hired Gilbert in California, you're missing these policies, um, do you want me to generate them for you? And it's yes or no, generate, and now you have the policies, you get them acknowledged, 100% done automatically.

So good. This is how this is how the human component interacts with AI. And that's, and it's done for the, it's done for the betterment of the organization, ultimately, for the, for the team member as well. I mean, I would imagine that compensation and benefits are woven in there. And, you know, if they haven't filled out a particular form, they aren't going to get the benefits that they could. So I mean, just being able to track all of that and to keep the small business owner as, as compliant as possible is, is an amazing thing. That's awesome.

All right. So as much risk mitigated, mitigate risk.

Spoken like HR. It's awesome. Mitigate risk. That's, that's good. The HR people in my life, they're like, you know, my job is to keep you out of trouble. That's awesome. Um, I love it. Uh, where, uh, where and how can people reach you if they want to find more about you, if they want to find your book? Like, LinkedIn is a really good place. Where— what else, you know? Yeah, where else should—

LinkedIn is a really good place. I have my, uh, book on my book website, atomicimpactbook.com. Um, and you can actually see me talk a lot about systems on TikTok. So if you look up Atomic Impact book on TikTok. You'll, you'll find me there. It's also under on YouTube under Dr. Gilbert Guzman on YouTube and haven't posted in probably 3 months, but I have a whole bunch of content on there. Short, short form videos to kind of talk about systems and real life things, you know, to just really get people's, people's minds going because it's, it's sharing the information. And, you know, and I mentioned this earlier and I'll let you close this out, but I mentioned this earlier that I tend to share Red Beat Experiments systems, my book, with executives a lot around me that are, you know, often around me and they're like, whoa, never thought about this, right? Because they— this world of bringing in academic frameworks and theories is often missed in true growth of a business. And so sometimes you find leaders that had no clue. That Dr. Deming existed and you give them a framework and they're like, oh, I had— there's an epiphany here. I can be more effective through this, this knowledge of this framework. So, but yeah, that's where you can find me. I will be releasing a new website. Just it's me where it will encompass everything is drgilbertguzman.com. So that'll be released here in the next couple of, couple of months.

Okay, I'm gonna— I'm going to, uh, write it down and repeat what you just said. Um, it's, it's interesting because what you just talked about also is known as perceptual bias. Yeah, right. So that we look for the things that are familiar to us, right? And that— and, and so if we don't know what we're missing, how do we even think about looking for a system? And, and I think this work is so important that you you bring to people where it's like, look at how you approach anything. It's kind of— I mean, if you, if you look at it even from a personal daily level, right? Is your toothpaste next to your toothbrush? Is your floss next to your toothpaste next to your toothbrush? Like, you know, how do you, how do you floss more? Well, I take the floss and I put it back in the, in the cap cabinet, it's like now it's hidden, right? If you, you know, are going to the gym, it's like, do you lay out your clothes the night before, or do you wake up going, I don't know, it's kind of cold out, I don't feel like going to find my clothes? Uh-uh. If they're out, you've got a system for, I'm up, I'm gonna get dressed, I'm gonna go, right? So it's the small stuff that, that unless you're thinking about it, it's part of— it could be part of your daily life. How do you as an individual become more efficient and effective for your own growth and your own, your own productivity.

Yeah, yeah, I love all of this. I need you to snippet that section so I can share it with my wife because she, she wants clean counters. I'm like, just leave the deodorant on the counter, it's fine, because I know it's there and I'm gonna, you know, it's— if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. So I need that snippet so I can use it against her.

We will, we will snip it away. You will see this part on LinkedIn as a reel. So there you go. Uh, this is great. All right, my guest today, thank you so much for being here.

This is, this is really good.

I never know where conversations are going to go. We've taken this, uh, over my usual time with people, which is a, it's a really good sign of, wow, I just really, I personally, I just really enjoyed this and I hope everybody everybody else that's listening or watching does too. My guest today, Dr. Gilbert Guzman. Thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, all right, pleasure, my pleasure.

Awesome. Look for drgilbertguzman.com. It's, uh, if it's not up, it's coming. Look for Atomic Impact about transformative productivity And, uh, wow, find Dr. Gilbert Guzman, G-U-Z-M-A-N, on LinkedIn and go to Atomic Book— I'm sorry, atomicimpactbook.com. Excellent. I think I got it all in for you. Yeah, good. All right, Gilbert Guzman, Dr. Gilbert Guzman, thank you again for joining me. This is One Sharp Sword, cutting Cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell, your host, guide, and coach on this journey. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you here again next time. Thanks for listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer Dr. Wayne Pernell. For more information, please go to onesharpsword.com.