Are We Obsolete? AI Changing the Workforce.

[00:00:00.000] - Rich Veltre

I think the only problem that I have is I don't really have a question out of it. I mean, I guess it's all a question, right? I've been seeing the change. Everything you talked about, I associate with coming up in the accounting industry since my first accounting job, I was writing things out. There was no computers. So now you see the trend from that point, 1990 to 2023. It's only 33 years. Long time for me, but in the overall scheme of things, it's not a very long time.

[00:00:37.330] - Mark Stouse

No, you're right.

[00:00:38.590] - Rich Veltre

33 years, you went from... We used to do things on green sheets, and all of a sudden, there was a computer, and you have to adapt to the computer. Then the computers get faster, and then you have to adapt to that. Then they take over more of the effect. So you have to adapt to that. The accounting industry is interesting, though, because the accounting industry changed some of their rules on who could become accountants at the same time as this change was going on, so now you have a shortage of accountants because everybody said, well, I'm going to go into computer science. Why would I want to go through accounting? I hate accounting anyway. So why am I going to? So every article you read, So every article you read is about how the accountants are short. But now you almost have something coming back, right? Because now you're saying, well, AI, computers, the ability to do a lot of this stuff automated, you don't You don't need as many. The only reason there's really, at this point in my head, as you're speaking, I'm thinking about it. I'm saying, you mentioned the word competition.

[00:01:38.940] - Rich Veltre

And I said, the big problem is most of these accountants don't like change. So they're all doing the same thing they did back in 1990, when I came out of school.

[00:01:48.790] - Mark Stouse

That's right. We all have the weaknesses of our strengths.

[00:01:52.960] - Rich Veltre

So that pendulum is coming back now, and it's saying, look, as you guys start to retire, and all the younger guys have already been in, they're the ones buying your firm, because they embraced technology before. So when I started thinking about that, in the context of what you said, this is very interesting, and this is that exciting side of me that says, here's the exciting side. The scary part is when AI put together an ad, nobody looked at it, and there's a guy with a picture with three arms.

[00:02:21.960] - Mark Stouse

I'll give you another example that is... You want to talk about a compounding effect here? So right in the middle of all this, we are seeing a major crisis in data science. So a lot of data science teams for the last 8 to 10 years have been focused almost entirely on data management, right? Building these really complex, thoroughly arcane data management systems and totally ignoring analytical output. So then two years ago, 18 to 24 months ago, when all of a sudden everything went nuts, their C-suites turned around and said, okay, guys, we know that you've been spending millions of dollars and lots and lots of people hours generating fantastic stuff. We need your help now. It's time to give us a whole bunch of insights. The response that they got back was generally, Well, we're not ready for that yet. We're still working on the data management piece. To which the C-suites essentially said, the hell you say, right? And realized that they had a repeat performance of IT 20 years ago, post-Y2K, right? And so they generally said to themselves, in 2002 or '03, we moved all of IT under finance, right? And it wasn't because finance could teach them It was not anything about IT.

[00:04:16.750] - Mark Stouse

It was about putting a new... Putting a T on the right, right? It was about a culture change. And an entire generation of CIOs over the ensuing during, say, 10 years, was completely wiped out. And today, you just have a different scenario. It's not entirely healthy, but it's very different. The same thing is happening right now in data science, they are being moved under finance, oftentimes more specifically, FP&A teams are getting all these analysts. At the same time that the business is telling FP&A, guess who is going to be running the budgetary business case process going forward? That's you guys. Okay. And so you need to be able to do it on a scalable, largely automated basis. So all the data scientists are clearly welcome here. But in our case, right? I mean, we're seeing an entirely new buying center emerge in the last nine months, where it's FP&A teams that are buying proof licenses. So it's really... I mean, there's just a lot of change that where you can forecast it. You can say that some of this should have been expected, right? And yet very few people were expecting this. Well, why is It's not a lack of data.

[00:06:02.200] - Mark Stouse

It's not a lack of history and historical perspective and all this stuff. It's something far more human. We would prefer to believe that past is prolog, and it is not. It's never really been prolog, okay? But for a lot of our lives, things have been stable enough where it felt like it was. This is actually one of the big problems in climate change study, right? Is forever and ever and ever, people heard the prognostications of scientists about climate change, and they walked outside, and they looked around, and they said, I don't see any evidence of this, right? I mean, today looks like it did a year ago, and two years, and 10 years before that. And I mean, what are these The guy is talking about it, right? And they did not understand the concept of non-linearity, right? This idea that things don't degrade in a perfect line. They will look normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, and then all of a sudden, right? And mathematically, you can see the degradation, but visually, experientially in the world, you can't. That is a big problem. If we have a obstacle commercially in our company, that human tendency is it.

[00:07:45.600] - Dan Paulson

I think that's true across the board for most every company, whatever situation they're in.

[00:07:52.560] - Mark Stouse

Yeah. I mean, particularly if they're active, if what they're about is driving Helping change, constructive change, or helping people manage constructive change, as intuitive as that would seem, it would seem to be a good thing intuitively, right? Everybody would want. The reality is that human beings prefer everything in the gray zone. And even though we're not talking about deterministic ideas here, right? Because you assume And this is almost all human behavior data. So this is a probabilistic outcome always. So we're not saying you're essentially foreordained to do this thing, right? But people like keeping it blurry.

[00:08:54.800] - Dan Paulson

Well, that is the nature of human beings. I know that from just the Management and Leadership side of things.

[00:09:01.500] - Mark Stouse

Yeah, it's a hey. Let's just call spade a spade. That's one of the main reasons why so many people in businesses don't want to have drinks with accountants. Accounting is a settled state, black and white. This is the deal thing, right? And That either support your narrative or it disturbs your narrative. And in most cases, it disturbs it, I think. That's just a. And so people were like, Man, I don't want to talk to those guys anymore than I absolutely have to. They ruined my life. So there's this thing that we're all going to have to make peace with and get past, right? In its worst possible incarnation, right? This is the whole idea of alternative facts, right? There are no alternative facts. A fact is, by definition, something that's absolutely true, right? Now, are there not very many of those compared to things that are up for grabs? Yeah, sure, right? But I mean, If you drop a million rocks off of a building, none of them are going to be found floating in the air afterwards, right? There's no scenario, there's no alternative fact that has a rock suspended in midair, not having impacted the ground, right?

[00:10:52.160] - Mark Stouse

It just doesn't exist. So everyone's going to have to wrap their head around the fact that things have answers.

[00:11:00.320] - Dan Paulson

And you've just ended your political career. That's all I'll say about that.

[00:11:06.520] - Mark Stouse

As someone who started in politics, I will totally embrace that.

[00:11:14.550] - Dan Paulson

Well, we're not going to get into politics.

[00:11:16.280] - Mark Stouse

I mean, that was a long time ago. As a very, very young guy, I actually had the opportunity to work for the President of the United States, and it was a great experience, but it was It brought out, at least in that moment, all kinds of things in me that were not the greatest. I'm very thankful that I got out of it. It was a delight? Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:11:56.400] - Dan Paulson

Well, Mike, thanks for taking the time to meet How is the best way they can get a hold of you or learn more about proof analytics?

[00:12:05.370] - Mark Stouse

I would say actually LinkedIn. Linkedin? Linkedin. I publish a lot of content on LinkedIn. I hope anyway that people find it very engaging. They seem to find it very relevant, very engaging content. If you contact me through LinkedIn, I will I'll always answer. And I don't... I'm not a salesy person on LinkedIn. So you can contact me with total confidence that I'm not going to subsequently chase you down or have I'm going to take someone else to take you down. I made a choice a long time ago between... You either... On LinkedIn, you have to say, I'm either here to help people, and if they buy, then that's great, or I'm here to sell. And And I want to help people. And the problem is, as soon as I start selling, all the shields go up, right? You can't help them anymore, right? Exactly. So that's my choice, and I'm sticking to it.

[00:13:12.730] - Dan Paulson

Well, that is a good choice, and that's what we hope to see more people on LinkedIn doing that. Rich, how about you? How do they get a hold of you if they want to talk to an accountant because they want the black and white?

[00:13:25.830] - Rich Veltre

The best way is probably my email address rveltre@veltregroup.com.

[00:13:32.980] - Dan Paulson

And you can always get a hold of me at danpaulsonletsgo.com. To learn more about these podcasts and to catch other interviews that we will be doing in the near future, go to booksnbiz.com. That is B-O-O-O-K-S, letter N-B-I-Z. Com. And we look forward to seeing you there. Mark, thanks again for joining us. This has been very fascinating. And I appreciate all the history that you've put behind it as well. It gives it a different spin than just a tech dude talking about AI. And it's good to hear that maybe, just maybe, I will still have some career for the next at least 10 to 15 years.

[00:14:11.230] - Mark Stouse

Yeah, I think we all feel that way to varying levels, right? Yes, definitely. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:14:19.530] - Dan Paulson

All right. Thanks again, and we will see you in the next episode.