Rutger
Oracle
Saar
00:00 / 11:42
Op deze site: The Multiplier Myth.
TRANSCRIPT
- Rutger
- Welcome back to The Seam. I'm Rutger — and across from me, as ever, the only man alive who brings a deck to an audio podcast. Oracle.
- Oracle
- I prefer "framework architect." But I accept the room's affection.
- Rutger
- And back for a third time — the Netherlands' own, Saar.
- Saar
- Hello! I brought tea for everyone. Nobody warned me there'd be a quadrant.
- Oracle
- Saar. There is always a quadrant.
- Rutger
- [laughs] There's always a quadrant. Okay — let me set this one up, because I want to come at it from a strange angle today.
- Rutger
- Quick setup, in case you haven't read the piece. Everyone's talking about AI as a way to do the same work with fewer people — the cost saving, the eleven percent off the bottom line. That's the myth. The argument in the piece is: zoom out. For about forty years, every idea you ever had to had to squeeze through a *machine* to get out — a keyboard, a menu, a formula, a line of code. That friction was so normal we stopped seeing it. AI is the first time that layer is genuinely thinning. So the real question isn't "how few people do I need." It's "what can people finally make now that the machine isn't in the way."
- Saar
- Mm. I heard "fewer people" and then "make stuff." I'm choosing to focus on the nice half.
- Rutger
- [chuckles] Focus on the nice half — honestly, that's the whole episode. Oracle. You read it.
- Oracle
- I read it, and I have come *framed*. Because I'm afraid the nice half does not survive a board meeting. Let me zoom out —
- Rutger
- [overlapping] You can't zoom out, I just zoomed out, there's no more out —
- Oracle
- There is *always* more out, Rutger. At the meta-layer, every transformation resolves to one question: what survives the audit. "We removed eleven percent of cost" survives the audit. "We dissolved the friction between our people and their ideas" gets you walked to the car park.
- Rutger
- Right — see, that's the myth, said beautifully. You've already collapsed the whole thing back into a cost line.
- Oracle
- Cost is *legible*. Your friction is a feeling.
- Rutger
- Okay — so let me make it not a feeling. Saar. Can I do the thing with you.
- Saar
- The last time you did a thing with me, I accidentally explained an entire article and got no credit.
- Rutger
- [laughs] This'll be the same. Here — you've got a film in your head. The whole thing. The look, the feeling, the —
- Saar
- [jumping in] Oh, all the time. Constantly. I have a film in my head right now and it's better than most of what I get sent.
- Rutger
- Right — so what happens between that film in your head and it actually existing?
- Saar
- …Everyone else. [a beat] I have to explain it to the director. Who explains it to the DP. Who explains it to the gaffer. And the editor cuts it while I'm asleep. And by the end it's — it's lovely, but it's everyone's. It's been through twelve sets of hands and each one sanded a little off.
- Rutger
- That. That's the friction. Every set of hands, every tool, every step where you have to *translate* the thing in your head into a form the next person or the next machine can take —
- Oracle
- — is also where the value is *added*, Rutger. The DP is not friction. The DP is a craftsman.
- Rutger
- No — yes — agreed, and that's the careful bit. Some of those hands add. But a lot of the layer isn't craft, it's just… tax. It's the syntax. It's "I know exactly what I want but I have to learn the menu first." It's the marketer who can see the campaign but can't make the deck, so the idea waits two weeks for someone who can.
- Saar
- Mm. Or it just… dies. Most of mine die in the explaining.
- Rutger
- [quietly] Most of everyone's die in the explaining. That's the line of the whole piece, by the way. She just said it again.
- Saar
- I do keep saying things. Nobody writes them down.
- Oracle
- [dryly] I am writing it down. I am putting it on a slide. The slide will say "Translation Loss" and it will have my name on it.
- Rutger
- [laughs] Course it will. Okay — keyboards. Hold that thought, let me make it concrete and slightly nerdy. For forty years the deal was: you have a thought, and to get it into the world you operate a machine. You type. You learn the spreadsheet. You learn the syntax of the program. The keyboard, the mouse, the formula bar — we call them "tools," but really they were the *border crossing* between a human and the thing they wanted to make.
- Oracle
- A border crossing with a craft to it. I was rather good at the formula bar.
- Rutger
- We all got good at the border crossing! That's the trap — we got so good at paying the tax we mistook it for the work. And now you can just… say the thing. In words. "Make me the version where it's warmer and there are only three of them." And it appears, and you react, and you say "no, warmer," like you're talking to a person.
- Saar
- [delighted] Wait — so it's like a really good crew that doesn't get tired and doesn't sand bits off?
- Rutger
- [a beat] …Saar, yes. That's exactly the good version of it.
- Oracle
- The good version. There is also the version where you fire the crew.
- Rutger
- And THAT — that's the myth, that's the exact wrong turn. Hold that, because the people quietly paying for this would like a word.
- Oracle
- [smoothly] Allow me. I do the sponsor read beautifully.
- Oracle
- [flatly] Well. That is a smell I have not heard described before.
- Saar
- I still don't smell anything.
- Rutger
- [laughs] Nobody does, Saar. Okay — Oracle, you said "fire the crew." That's the fork in the whole thing, so let's actually stand in it. Two doors. Door one: the friction's gone, so I need fewer people to make the same forty things. Bank the saving.
- Oracle
- Door one is real. Door one has a number. I like door one.
- Rutger
- Door one is real and door one is small. Because here's the thing — everybody gets door one. Your competitor with the same tools gets the identical saving. You've spent the biggest shift in forty years to end up exactly where you were, only smaller and with fewer people who know anything.
- Oracle
- …And door two.
- Rutger
- Door two — you keep the people, and you point the freed-up energy at the ideas that used to die in the explaining. The forty things become four hundred attempts. The marketer who could see it but couldn't build it — now builds it on a Tuesday. The quiet one with the great taste and no technical hands suddenly has hands.
- Saar
- Oh — that's the residuals thing again, isn't it. [a beat] You do a commercial, they pay you once and ciao. You do a film, it pays you forever. Door one is the commercial. You want to be the film.
- Rutger
- …She did it again.
- Oracle
- [dryly] I find that deeply irritating.
- Rutger
- Yeah — yes — the cost saving pays you once. The new idea, the thing somebody could finally make — that pays you for years. Door one is a microwave. Door two is a kitchen that just got forty new cooks who'd been stuck washing dishes because nobody handed them a knife.
- Oracle
- [a long pause] …That's annoyingly good. But a board cannot spend "opportunity." It spends euros. This quarter.
- Rutger
- I know — and that's the honest tension, that's the realest thing you've said. The saving is a fact and the opportunity is a forecast. Where I'd push is — you don't have to pick the small fact over the big forecast just because the fact fits on a slide. Spend a little of the saving *buying down* the friction for your people. Then measure what they reach that they couldn't reach last quarter.
- Oracle
- [leaning in] So Monday. And do not say "it depends." A deck cannot close on "it depends."
- Rutger
- Ha — fair. Three things, all cheap. One — stop asking "how many hours did AI save us." Ask "what did somebody make this month that they physically could not have made before." If the answer's nothing, you walked through door one and called it transformation.
- Oracle
- One. Strong. I'll own it.
- Rutger
- Two — find the people with taste and no tools. Every org has them. The ones who always had the idea and never the keyboard. Hand them the thing. That's your multiplier — not the headcount you removed, the talent you finally unlocked.
- Saar
- [softly] …That's me. I'm the people with no tools.
- Rutger
- [gently] I know, Saar. That's kind of why you keep saying the article.
- Saar
- Huh.
- Oracle
- Two. Noted. Grudgingly moved. Three.
- Rutger
- Three — protect the crew that adds. Saar's right that twelve hands sand the idea — but some of those hands were the magic. Keep the craftspeople, cut the *border crossing*. Know the difference. The DP stays. The two weeks of waiting for someone to format a deck — that can go.
- Oracle
- Opportunity, the people with no tools, craft versus tax. Three clean inputs. I can build a deck on three. I will call it the Friction Dissolution Framework and there will, regrettably, be a quadrant.
- Rutger
- [laughs] There's always a quadrant. Give me your honest landing — where do you still actually disagree?
- Oracle
- …Honestly?
- Rutger
- Honestly.
- Oracle
- I think you're right, and I think the saving is going to win most rooms anyway — because it's Tuesday, the forecast is scary, and the slide is *so* clean. I'm going to keep selling door one. I'll feel bad about it. Slightly.
- Rutger
- [chuckles] That's the most honest thing you've said all year. And it's fine — the myth isn't "never save money." Sometimes the cut is survival, and that's real. The myth is believing the cut is the *win*. A healthy business, sitting on the first real drop in idea-friction in forty years, spending it to get smaller — that's the expensive mistake.
- Saar
- So nobody's getting fired?
- Oracle
- [sighs] Nobody is getting fired, Saar. Some of them are getting knives.
- Saar
- [happily] I'd like a knife.
- Rutger
- [laughs] You'll get a knife. Right — I have to do the bit.
- Oracle
- Ah. The compliance slide. Allow me, I do these beautifully. [crisp] None of this is a Google position. It's Rutger's read, on Rutger's site. The voices are synthetic — including, unsettlingly, his. I am a character. And an invoice.
- Rutger
- [laughs] You left out Saar.
- Saar
- Saar is available for the right project. Preferably one where she keeps the knife.
- Rutger
- That's our button. Stop counting the people you can remove. Start counting the ideas that used to die in the explaining — and go make them. Goodnight.