EP44: Lessons from Everest

And so we went out and had an explore of Doha and ate pizza on a street that was air conditioned. There were vents in the floor cooling the street, which seemed kind of strange. Air conditioning the desert. Get into the hotel. There's signs everywhere, army curfew. Don't leave the hotel. It's not safe to be out on the streets. A tour guide says if you have to go out, keep in small groups. Don't approach large groups of people. So obviously we went to a karaoke bar. One of the most important things you can do is to fit in that time to play within Project Rising. We've scheduled a Friday afternoon to be playtime and everybody in the company downstalls. We don't work on customer projects and we play with new technologies and then we record a little video and we share the learnings from that. By doing that, we're raising the profile of all of the team because we're able to look at many more tools than we would be able to individually.

Hi, I'm Freya. Welcome to the Skynet Business in the AI Age, the podcast that dives deep into the world where artificial intelligence meets business. Join us as we explore the latest trends, challenges and opportunities in this ever evolving landscape. From innovative startups to established enterprises, we'll uncover the secrets behind the successful integration of AI technologies. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and get ready to unlock the mysteries of business in the AI Age.

Well, hello and welcome to the Skynet Chronicles. Today, you've just got me. So instead of me interviewing one of our customers or guests, I'm going to talk about learnings from Everest. So I've been fortunate enough to just come back from Nepal, where I spent nearly three weeks exploring challenging experiences to get there, gently walking up some big hills. And I'd like to share some of those experiences and how they apply to putting AI into your business. So I'm going to start with. Starting's the hardest part. So our journey to Everest was challenging. We left Peterborough on a Monday at lunchtime and got down to London with no problems whatsoever. But then the underground was shut and so we were forced to take a different line to get to the airport. And as we were Approaching Heathrow Terminal 5, they announced that Terminal 4 had been closed, which was a bit of drama as we were going from Terminal 4 and they weren't letting any traffic anywhere near because there had been some hazardous material. So we did what all good travelers do and went to the nearest bar in Terminal 5, sat down, had a pint and a pack of crisps to work out what our plan was. And eventually they reopened Terminal 4 and we got on the internal transfer bus and were only two hours late for our flight, which fortunately had been delayed. So we still made our flight out of London towards Doha, where we had an interval stop on our way to Nepal for Kamondu Airport. Everything was going smoothly. It was a nice clean flight into Doha. And when we landed in Doha, we had about an hour and a quarter to get across the massive airport to our gate. We got to our gate pretty much last through the boarding pass check and our boarding passes were declined like, okay, now what? Can you go and speak to the people at the desk, please? So we went over and they said, we're worrying at this point. Oh, you're being upgraded to business class. Result winning. We had some great food, some great drink, fell asleep on a lay flat bed and woke up to look at the TV screen and saw that it said doh to doh when it was definitely meant to say Kathmandu, not Doha. And when we left Peterborough on the Monday morning, there'd been announcements on the news of some riots in Nepal. And those riots had escalated. Some protesters had been shot dead and some government buildings were being burnt, so they'd shut the airspace in Nepal. So our flight was turned around and sent back into Doha. And we were in Doha airport doing the only thing you can really do, wait and try and find out what the plan is. And Qatar Airways were very kind and put us up in a local hotel. And so we went out and had an explore of Doha and ate pizza on a street that was air conditioned. There were vents in the floor cooling the street, which seemed kind of strange. Air conditioning, the desert. So be it. We get back to our hotel and bombarded by messages from our families, Are you okay? Because while we'd been there, Israel had bombed Doha and tried to kill a Hamas delegation. And we were none the wiser. The next day, after some messing about and a long wait in the airport, we eventually get on a flight in the early hours of the next morning to get back into Nepal. Pole we arrive in Kathmandu airport. We're outside, there's people everywhere, but there are army everywhere. So the protests have resulted in the entire government being removed, all of the government buildings being burnt, and politician members being pulled out of their houses and beaten on the streets. So it's an uneasy silence while the army have taken control and we're trying to navigate in a taxi to get to our hotel. And we're hitting one roadblock after another turned around another roadblock, turned around another roadblock. And our taxi driver takes us down some crazy little back streets to try and get us to the hotel, and then charges us a small fortune for the privilege when he succeeds. But we were happy to pay it. So we've arrived in Kathmandu. We're there, we're in Nepal. We're nearly at the mountains, or so we thought. Get into the hotel. There's signs everywhere. Army curfew. Don't leave the hotel. It's not safe to be out on the streets. A tour guide says if you have to go out, keep in small groups. Don't approach large groups of people. So obviously we went to a karaoke bar, and while we're in the karaoke bar, we're having a drink, listen to music, and the staff of the bar turn off the music and they turn off the lights and they pull down the shutters and they tell us all to be quiet. As the army rolls through to enforce the curfew, we're just, what do you do? It's a very strange situation. Once the army had rolled through, the atmosphere in the bar had changed a bit. So we went back to the hotel and headed over to the airport early the next morning for our internal flight to the mountain airport, Lukla, which is where our trek was due to begin. We get into the airport, we're through security, we're on a little minibus having our planes loaded onto our bags, loaded onto the plane, and we're sat in this minibus waiting, and then they unload the bags and send us back into the departure lounge because the weather at the mountain airport is too bad for us to get into the airport. They can't land, and we talk as a group. How are we going to cope? What are we going to do? Because the previous trek had failed to get onto the mountains due to the bad weather and the riots, we didn't want that to happen to us. We had a quick debate and decided that helicopters were the answer. Helicopters should always be the answer, I think now. And we got the flight the next morning, successfully, after some trials and tribulations, by helicopter onto the mountain. And the sense of relief at that point was immense, despite the fact our trek hadn't started. So in life and in travel, in the same as in AI and business, starting is often the hardest part. We didn't realize how hard our journey was going to be to get to the mountain, but really, just by continually taking a step forward and keeping that positive can do attitude, we achieved our first goal of getting onto the mountain. So our tour group was made up of six travelers, my brother in law, a gentleman that we met from the US and three delightful young ladies who traveled from Australia, New Zealand via Canada. And one thing we learned very quickly was that games formed teams and that finding that time to play helped us develop good bonds as a group and also got us through some of the more monotonous and painful parts of the walk. Getting up every day was fine. Walking every day was fine. Keeping happy and enthusiastic and having fun required us to be silly. And so we played all sorts of games on the trail, we played all sorts of games in the teahouses at night. But finding that time to play helped form us as a team. But also made that learning experience and the tribulations we were going through most the of much easier to tolerate. So when you're looking at how you embed AI within your organization, one of the most important things you can do is to fit in that time to play within Project Rising. We've scheduled a Friday afternoon to be playtime and everybody in the company downstalls. We don't work on customer projects and we play with new technologies and then we record a little video and we share the learnings from that. That allows each of the team members to have exposure to new tools, to play with new concepts and to share their learnings. By doing that, we're raising the profile of all of the team because we're able to look at many more tools than we would be able to individually. Sometimes we'll rate them as absolutely not, do not touch, do not use. Sometimes we'll say revisit, Sometimes we'll recommend their use. And we're now starting to take those videos and some of them will be publishing via our toolkit as a resource so that you as the general public can see what we think about the AI tools that are coming out. But really it's about taking that idea of finding time to play and building it into a weekly schedule so that as a team, we're raising our performance. And I think everybody should do that. So after spending after many, many months training for a long walk up a big hill, we finally made it to the mountain. And every day we had an objective which was to effectively travel to the next town. Some of the trails were quite easy. Some of them involved a huge amount of steps. But one of the most important things was pacing. Our natural pace would have been much faster than we traveled as a group. Our guides showed us that slow and steady was best. Keeping our heart rates low helped us to acclimatize to the altitude change and to make sure that we finished the day fresh enough that we were in a good condition to start the next day. So that regular cadence that slow and steady helped us improve, helped us adapt to the changing environment. And again, in the same way as that regular play routine makes a difference within your business. Making sure you're looking at the changing horizon around AI and how it's changing business, not being overwhelmed by it, but building a method so that you're trying on a regular basis, you're making small changes within your business is how you're going to adjust to the change in climate. It is going to be a more significant change than we had in climbing a mountain. But it is something that you can approach step by step to make a major difference within your business. So slow and steady wins the race. You can look at it as the hare and the tortoise. You're not going to get anywhere by throwing everything in fast and hoping you get there. Build a plan. Take steps every day that are moving you in the right direction. In a restaurant, you might often hear about farm to fork. It's certainly something they talk about a lot in the US While we were in Nepal, we saw this firsthand when one of our group ordered some potato wedges from a lovely little coffee shop. The staff looked at each other a little bit concerned because their chef was out for the day. And then they said, yes, that's no problem. We'll make it work. Ten minutes later, somebody walked up to the front door of the coffee shop with a bowl of muddied potatoes that had just been dug up from the field. And some 50 minutes later, a plate of potato wedges came out of the kitchen. You can't have fresher produce than that. And this was truly from the field next to the the village, making potato wedges that were delightful to eat. And that that local buying, local attitude is something that helps businesses grow, too. If you can bring in resources that are close to you, that have an understanding of the environment that you're in, then everybody benefits. So reach out to local organizations, go to networking events, make friends with people in different businesses that have services that are useful to you and help to build that local atmosphere, because then everybody benefits and you can all rise together. So how do you choose the right tools for the job? You could spend hours and hours watching podcasts, reading expert lists, reading newsletters, and I had to do all of that when I was planning for the trip to Everest. So there was lots and lots of research across different types of equipment we which coat to take, what rating of sleeping bag was needed, what bag, whether I needed walking poles and a huge variety of things. And after many, many hours of YouTube and reading and talking to people who'd done that trek and similar treks, I had a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet is what most of the world seems to run on. And this spreadsheet had all of the different items that I was going to need and the weights for them so that I could keep within the weight limits for the internal flight, which was 15 kilos across two bags. My brother in law shortcutted that entire process and said, tim, can I have your spreadsheet? And he really won there, didn't he? Because I'd already done all of the work, pulled together what I thought was recommended and he did a great job of getting similar kit. And we both had exactly what was needed for the trail. I don't think there was anything we took we didn't use. So that same approach can be applied to how you're looking at new technologies and how you adopt AI you could. And you can spend hours each day researching, looking for the right answer, testing tools, adapting them, using them in your business, or you can ask experts for help and lean into a team that's already done it so that they can help simplify your journey. The right approach for you will depend on how you like to learn, but generally ask the experts. Everest has got a reputation for rubbish on the trail and at the various different camps on the mountain itself. And there's been a huge problem over the years of oxygen tanks, rubbish and ultimately bodies being left behind. There's a major initiative in Nepal now called Sagarnatha Next, which has effectively completely changed the outlook on rubbish and waste. They promote the production of art from rubbish, they promote carrying rubbish back down the hill so that trekkers participate in that. And the tour group that we were with, Intrepid, also had a process where as part of one of the days, we were effectively rubbish collecting on the trail. This has made a huge difference and the atmosphere, the environment is far cleaner than it used to be. And by and large there's no litter on the trail and no obvious sign of waste. The villages are all clean and tidy and the waste is well managed. And they've changed the mindset around recycling and reusability. That same mindset needs to be applied within your business because over time you take on new systems. Some of them will be custom, some of them will be out of the box. And over time that approach becomes dated. So the way we look at this with our own, we call it technical debt. The systems and architectures that we use, the code that we use, we've produced a series of agents which analyze our code base and they produce building blocks that are an optimal way of that particular application running. And then those building blocks are reused across other applications. And we effectively are having AI look at our software and solutions and continually improve them. For us, this means that making future code is more efficient, but it also means that the applications that we're running continue to be using the leading edge of capabilities and aren't becoming obsolete. So how you build that, reduce, reuse, recycle, to quote a famous cartoon character, into your business is important, but you need to be thinking about it. You can't just chase the shiny things because the systems around you and the data they hold are critical to your business. And the one thing that AI needs well managed is AI and is data and access to that data. So think about how you can implement methods of reuse and recycling within your business. Not just around waste, but also around the systems and process you have around you. Continuous improvement is critical. Choosing the right team for a job when you look around your business and you're forming a project team, who do you pull in? Who do you use on that particular goal? Maybe you've got a go to person every time. Sometimes you've got the choice, the great people are all around you. Sometimes you need to look outside and actually often you've just got a group of people who you've got to bring together for a common goal. Making that change, management of that team happen so that they are enabled and capable to implement a project requires bringing the team together. And often that process is quite challenging. Icebreakers are great, games are great, but really sharing that end objective and pulling the team together is critical. Because if you don't have the team together, then actually making that organizational change happen will be very, very difficult. So think about how you can pull together a team, whether you need to pull in outside experts in order to help with your AI journey. Every company should have an AI strategy now and it should be a key element of your 2026 planning. So what are you going to do differently as you go into 2026 because of AI? Is your organization going to change its approach? Do you need a different people mix? Are you going to use specific tools? How are you making sure your data is safe and secure? These are all challenges you need to consider. If you don't have the right team in house, then ask for help. So lastly, what are my main takeaways from my time in Nepal? It was a life changing experience. Just seeing the raw beauty, the changing environment, going from the forests to the faunas of the higher mountains to the barrenness. Once you get above the tree line and into almost the moon like space where there's essentially no life and then glaciers. It's a breathtaking environment. But ultimately, the biggest change I took away from it was having a great team around you makes all of the difference, Makes a trek a challenge, an objective, a project easier. Allows you to lean into the different experiences and understanding of the people around you to have fun, to make the most of that. And so while it was a beautiful experience, an amazing place, some fantastic people on the trail who have very little but will share everything with you, the main thing is having the right people around you makes everything easier. So when you're looking to make changes within your business, make sure that the right people are focused on the right task and have fun with it. Find a way to play. So that's the end of my lessons from Everest. I hope there was something in there that was useful and it wasn't just me rattling away to camera. I'll speak to you all. It.