Is AI Really Eliminating Friction?

A conversation with Erik Skogsberg, V.P. at Voltage Control

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“It’s kind of putting a lot of strain on something that was already somewhat broken, but now we can’t ignore the dysfunction.”- Douglas Ferguson

In the inaugural episode of New Friction, host Douglas Ferguson and Erik Skogsberg explore how AI has shifted organizational friction from execution to decision-making and alignment. While AI accelerates production, it magnifies existing dysfunctions when teams lack collaborative habits. They introduce the concept of “multiplayer AI”—moving beyond individual productivity gains toward team-level collaboration. The conversation emphasizes that facilitation, judgment, and organizational health are now the critical differentiators. Practical takeaways include assessing whether your organization operates in “single player” or “multiplayer” AI mode and intentionally slowing down at key decision points to maximize human impact.

Show Highlights

[00:01:36] AI’s Impact on Teams
[00:03:04] The Three Lanes of AI
[00:06:45] The AI Skills Gap
[00:10:00] AI Scales the Chaos
[00:14:57] Organizational Health vs. Operational Excellence
[00:22:18] Benefits of “Multiplayer” AI Habits
[00:32:58] Concrete Takeaways for Listeners

Links | Resources

Erik on LinkedIn

About the Guest

Erik Skogsberg is an educator, designer, researcher, and human-centered change agent. He is VP at Voltage Control, a facilitation-led transformation consultancy that helps leaders and organizations elevate their ways of working to unlock their full collaborative potential. He has worked with leaders, innovators, and creatives at organizations including Google, Microsoft, Nike, NASA, Lockheed Martin, USSOCOM, Atlassian, Stanford, the World Bank, and the Carnegie Foundation.

Prior to Voltage Control, Erik co-founded Michigan State University’s Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology, an internal design consultancy focused on learning experience design, innovation, and organizational transformation. Drawing on his background as an educator and researcher, he brought human-centered design and systems thinking to some of higher education’s most complex organizational challenges.

Erik designs and leads immersive, research-backed programs that help leaders navigate complexity, build alignment, and move from misalignment to momentum — building facilitation as a craft, a calling, and a catalyst for change.

He holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University, an M.A.T. in Secondary English Education from Brown University, and a B.A. in English Literature from Western Washington University.

Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:
Welcome to New Friction. I’m Douglas Ferguson. AI just made execution almost free. So why are organizations still stuck? Because the friction didn’t disappear. It moved and it multiplied. It’s no longer in building. It’s in deciding what to build, how to align, how to move forward when the path isn’t clear. That friction, the human side of change, is what this series is about. Each episode, I sit down with leaders who are living it, navigating the real challenges of AI transformation. Not the tools, the people.

The task that took two weeks now takes two minutes. The work isn’t the bottleneck anymore. The conversation before the work is. That’s the work this show is about. I’d like to introduce you to my conversation partner today, Erik Skogsberg, vice president at Voltage Control, where he leads strategic design and delivery of immersive research-backed programs that transform facilitation into a craft, a calling, and a catalyst for change. Looking forward to the chat with you today, Erik.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So first time. I think it’s been a while since I’ve been on the podcast.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And this is the first episode of New Friction, so first of many firsts.

Erik Skogsberg :
Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Douglas Ferguson:
So what have you been seeing in the rooms you’ve been in lately?

Erik Skogsberg :
Well, I mean, as AI is the talk in a lot of spaces, certainly seeing a lot of teams, a lot of leaders asking about how do we use this strategically? It’s out there, but we aren’t necessarily seeing the ROI that we’ve hoped for. And it’s really still caught in pockets of just individuals. I’ve been able to speed up my individual work, but what does that mean for my team?
And so a lot of questions there about how do we get this to be more collaborative? How do we integrate what I’m seeing individually in terms of productivity into the team? And also too, seeing some folks call out like, wow, this is actually just magnifying dysfunctions that I thought we were going to be able to fix. Because some team members, or even individuals, are creating a lot of new work product and then trying to bring it back in the team and meeting some big frictions there in making that happen. So ripe space for us to certainly lean in, and really having me thinking a lot about really core tenets of facilitation and collaboration that we’ve been working on even before AI was in the scene in these ways.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. I think important to step back and think about what do we mean when we’re talking about AI? Because a lot of times folks will hear AI, and it’ll conjure up any number of things. And that’ll vary depending on role and perspective within an organization.
I think I’d like to boil it down into three lanes. There’s like we have a really important critical business challenge we need to solve. And these new computer techniques that are labeled AI can help solve those challenges. So whether it’s computer vision or machine learning, or any number of AI related algorithms that have gotten more and more sophisticated lately, can help solve those. And those are typically custom models, very fine-tuned, built specifically for that challenge for that company. So that’s one lane, and lots of people doing lots of work there.
Another lane is how do we embed AI into our products to directly impact the customer experience. And a lot of that stuff these days is being built on the foundational LLM models. So through the OpenAI APIs or through the APIs over at Microsoft or even Anthropic. And then also you can write custom models for that stuff too. But the difference is it’s being embedded into our products that we’re delivering to customers.
Now, the third category, which is really the category where we operate is around how do we 10X teams? How do we use AI to really level up and as a force multiplier for our organization and our people? And that naturally is very human. As we’re thinking about how our roles might be impacted, how we’re rethinking the way the organization might work and function and be structured, that can certainly create a lot of uncertainty and fear for folks. And so that’s a conversation that needs to happen. And also as an organization, if we’re going to design this stuff well, we need to be well versed in what’s possible when we empower humans with these tools. So it’s a naturally facilitation forward task to approach this work and to help people navigate this change.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you put a finer point and some clarity there on those lanes, because I think that’s certainly another thing I’m seeing. You sent me that, what was it? A PwC commercial, the AI, AI, AI.

Douglas Ferguson:
AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI.

Erik Skogsberg :
It’s just everywhere, but people aren’t clear as to what they mean and/or don’t know about those multiple lanes. And so then the company, the team, the organization suffers because it’s all mashed together, and then the human pieces are lost. Or one person means in this way, another person means in another. It really gets back to, again, some old lessons here around clarity, around clarity of communication, clarity of purpose.
And that’s such an important thing for us to be bringing in. What are we hoping to accomplish? And oftentimes those lanes that you laid out are operating in the same organizational space. And so at what points do they need to intersect? At what point should they remain a part in service of the work that oftentimes we’re coming in to do, which is really about maximizing the human and thus organizational potential there?

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And I want to double tap on that idea of what they don’t know. And it really gets at this issue that I call the skills gap. And when you look at historically most technological transformations and advancements, this sort of thing happens. Some people get really good and proficient at it, others lag behind.
The thing about this movement is that AI is moving so incredibly fast. There’s a lot to keep up with. And the people that are starting to adopt it and go deep with it can move at lightning speed compared to others. And so the ones that don’t know and are following behind are falling even further behind, and they also are afraid to admit it. It’s really frightening to step up and say, “I don’t know.” And so this is where leaning into this very human-forward approach, this facilitated approach, giving people frameworks, even maturity curves where they can say, “This is where I’m at, and these are the steps that I can take the move forward.” Really powerful.
Another thing is something we’ve talked about a lot around this multiplayer mode that’s so critical for operating a team at 10X in an AI forward world. And the multiplayer capacity allows everyone to follow along and move together in progress. So while you have a variety of levels of adoption, the awareness is shared and the discovery is happening in real time across the team, and there’s a ton of value in that.

Erik Skogsberg :
No, absolutely. And I think even just being able to articulate that for folks can be reassuring, can provide some common language. And then to your point there, here’s how to bridge that delta. It’s not impossible. There are some great now models and moves that have a long history because a lot of it does come back to what we have regularly done when it comes to helping teams collaborate better together. It’s just some new inputs and outputs. And having AI as a toolmate, as Gartner frames it, as a part of that equation there.
And I think the other thing that you pointed out that’s important to double click on as well is the speed piece. I think this is both at a pace that we haven’t necessarily seen before and also has allowed certain individuals or organizations to excel at a pace that we haven’t necessarily seen before. And so as individuals and organizations are seeing this, they want to jump in because they don’t want to be left behind. But without that clarity, without that framework, it can actually end up being worse. Because it’ll magnify the dysfunctions that were already there versus digging into unearthing, dealing with what may have been the issue in the first place, AI or not. It just actually magnifies that dysfunction.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, I would like to say it scales the chaos. And I think it’s really interesting just to step back to the thesis too here. What we’re saying is AI is making execution nearly free, so you can build the thing in 10 minutes. What’s most critical now?
And ultimately it comes down to decision making, discernment, and consensus, like deciding what to build, building the right thing. Because putting more of the wrong thing out in the world is certainly not going to solve any problems. I mean, you look at all of the innovation techniques, the design sprint, startup kind of incubators, all of that was helping them to get to product market fit. Now, this matters in companies as well. If we’re executing a new project for employee onboarding, if we’re launching new products for our clients, or if we’re creating a new legal review process, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, we need to execute it correctly and we need to put the right things out there.
So if we’re just speeding up creation of the wrong things, or we’re just moving faster through a broken process, it’s just scaling those things much more quickly. And so as it becomes cheaper to get things out the door, we need to really be focusing on are we creating the right things and how are we creating the right environments for those decisions to happen smoothly? Because if we’re generating tons of things faster, more and more things are piling up to make decisions about.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s changed the cadence actually in some really cool ways because it allows us to then slow down better at some real key points that we may not have been able to before because, all right, the prototype or a couple different prototypes have been created so fast. Now let’s slow down and really get into the finer points and nuances there of what has been created, what we want to move forward, what we want to iterate on.
And let’s take a look at our prompting. Let’s take a look at what we asked for. Is that what we ultimately want? We can be more purposeful in how we’re building those things into place or creating those. Whereas in the past, there was so much time that had to be given to actually the creation of things, we couldn’t slow down in as purposeful of ways. So in some ways here, this is even better because it invites us to be that much more purposeful at the key points, at the decision points, at the points where we’re making a call as to here’s what we’re going to invest in, here’s what we’re going to move forward with.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. This is making me think about how we often talk about reading the room, or sensing as a facilitator or as a leader, just understanding where we need to place attention, what do we need to attune to, what do we need to address with the group, what are the dynamics that are playing, what’s emerging that requires the most attention and the most care?
And that’s really what we’re getting at here with this new friction thesis is that as we look at our organizations and our enterprises as systems, and you could think of it as an organism, what portions or what subsystems do we need to point our attention to and attend to? And what we’re saying is that the friction is just shifting to new areas and just presenting themselves in new ways. I would argue that nothing’s really changed. It’s inherently still very human.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also too, again, it allows us to put more of our total attention on this new friction and a friction in ways that has always existed, but maybe hasn’t gotten the attention that it’s due here because we were trying to focus on both. We’ve got to execute and we’ve got to make the decision, and we’re kind of splitting our attention between each. This allows us to really dig in purposefully to the decision making, the consensus, the human side of things as those other pieces are that much quicker and create a new cadence here that allows us to maximize what is very human and is a real benefit of having strong teams and strong decision makers.

Douglas Ferguson:
This is making me think about Lencioni’s differentiation between organizational health and operational excellence. And how typically leaders will focus on trying to drive more operational excellence, whereas organizational health is what actually drives more value, more sustainability, higher quality, these kinds of things.
And I would argue, if you really think about it, operational excellence is around that execution. And so if that is starting to get optimized by the AI, maybe that affords an ability for folks to actually say, “You know what? Lencioni, Voltage Control, all these folks that are focused on facilitation and organizational health were really onto something. Now that we’re not distracted by the operational excellence and the execution, we can focus on what is most critical, has been most critical all along.”
And also I would argue the fact that the execution is getting so cheap and easy, and so commoditized and also just so abundant that not only is the friction shifting, or our attention might shift, I think it’s exacerbating that friction because it’s kind of putting a lot of strain on something that was already somewhat broken, that it was already dysfunctional, but now we can’t ignore the dysfunction. We can’t just operationalize ourselves past it.

Erik Skogsberg :
Agreed. Well, I mean, it provides a real opportunity to fix dysfunctions that, to your point, were always there, and now we have more time and opportunity to focus on them. And that then helps us address what could just be the creation of a lot of slop to then instead focus on purposeful outputs, prototype, execution, content that ultimately gets us to exactly where we need to be.
And I would argue that because we have more time to be in purposeful decision-making, be in purposeful collaboration, be in spaces where we’re addressing those organizational health pieces, then each time we execute, here’s an opportunity for us to level up that organizational health piece. So we’re now able to address those pieces every time we need to produce something again. Here’s another opportunity for us to get healthier and healthier and healthier.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, I love that. It’s like iterative kind of improvement over time. Yeah. Why do you think this isn’t obvious? I think most companies are still operating like execution’s the bottleneck. And part of me thinks that’s a bit of an awareness thing. Also, just being in the replay loop, it’s like Groundhog Day. It’s just like it’s hard to break out of the patterns often for folks. But I’m wondering what you’ve been noticing and if anything comes to mind there.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah. I mean, part of it I think gets back to where we started the conversation. Everything’s just happening so quickly, and people are in reactive mode. So when everything’s coming at you, you aren’t necessarily seeing as clearly as you could. Because of that, that limits then awareness and what we can see of the system. I think this does get back to a larger gap in teams’ ability to see the system and to engage in systems level change when it comes down to it, which has always been something that’s important to cultivate and learn. And then also too, I think because of that, there’s a dearth of models for how to do this well. I still think we’re helping and building and have got some great early cases, but at scale, I still think there’s a dearth of models of teams really doing this well. I think that’s still very much in process.
And the more that we can look to cases of how this is going well, we’re a part of creating with our clients right now, I think that’s going to help. But if you can’t, it’s happening fast, because it’s happening fast, you’re not able to see the system that was already a gap, and then there are no models to look at, it’s easy to be lost in that process there. And then just continue to come back to it as an individual and continuing to then magnify the dysfunction that’s already there.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. It reminds me of something I talk about, which is that leaders are currently trying to coach a sport they’ve never played.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah, it’s true.

Douglas Ferguson:
Some of them are dabbling in AI, but man, they’re not using it every hour. They’re not building the proficiency and comfort that you really need to be able to really guide folks through what it means to live.

Erik Skogsberg :
And certainly not using it as a team, even if they’re doing it individually lots and lots and lots, that doesn’t, from my experience, translate to then the team level, which is what we’re talking about.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, they’re not building those multiplayer habits.

Erik Skogsberg :
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Douglas Ferguson:
So just to recap before we move into a new section here, it’s like the old friction was execution, the new friction is judgment. And of course, not all friction is a waste. There’s lessons we can learn from things. But we really need to attune to where that friction resides today as leaders and facilitators. And at the end of the day, that means it is leadership and facilitation work. It’s not a tools problem. It’s not about picking the right model or putting together the best adoption plan or creating the best training. It’s really about leadership facilitation and sparking a change.

Erik Skogsberg :
And that makes, if we think back to that idea of cadence, this new friction is a purposeful slowing down in a new space around the decision making. That’s a great opportunity again for leveling up the organization here. So it should be an exciting thing there to lean into.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. So let’s use this moment to pivot into what we’ve noticed specifically, how folks are behaving with some of these changes, when they start to take on these multiplayer habits, when they start to get in and work together in these ways, what kind of benefits or what kind of shifts are we noticing?

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah. I mean, out of the gate here, I’m thinking about some foundations work we did with a client around the holidays recently. All of a sudden, as people are getting some small reps in, in this case, we tackled an organization-wide question or problem and had teams come together to ideate some potential solutions in partnership with AI, but they did that altogether. And by AI here, I mean, they’re using Miro and using the AI affordances of Miro to ideate some new ideas and then to collate down.
All of a sudden their ability to create together was sped up. They now were able to slow down and say, which ones of these do we like best? And at which points is it best for us to call in AI as a toolmate? At which point is it best for us to turn to our team? It’s one of those things that all of a sudden with those reps happening, people are reflecting in different ways about work practice or work product there, which is really, really cool.
Also too, I’m seeing people being able to, to pieces of our conversation earlier, we just did some recent design sprints. We were much quicker to the creation of the prototype. We were able to create some newer more versions than we would’ve been able to in the past. And we were able to dig into some really important strategic conversations about, well, is this going to be the best way for us to go? And is this the best sort of team makeup even for this? Which wouldn’t have been able to happen before when we were just so focused on creating the prototype and just trying to get that to the end because so much was focused there.
And I just say anecdotally between both of those engagements, having C-suite folks observe or be in the room at points, they were witnessing things that, until seeing the teams working together, hadn’t clicked for them until that moment. And then they wanted to have a different strategic conversation like, how do we do more of this? How do we give people more opportunities to practice here in a way that was an unlock? So those are a couple of things that I’ve been seeing there.

Douglas Ferguson:
For those listening that might want a quick diagnostic, what’s something that they can watch out for? I’m trying to think about the folks that have come to us, what they were noticing before they came to us, or what we were noticing, helping them notice that might be good signals for them to pop up and say, “Oh, now’s the time, this is happening here. Let’s do something.”

Erik Skogsberg :
Well, I mean, back to, it’s not a huge mystery here, we were mentioning earlier this difference between single and multiplayer AI. I mean, I think that’s a good gut check question for folks to ask right now. If we were to step back and look at my company, look at my organization, are the majority of folks just using this individually? Are they even there yet? Because I know in some companies they’re just trying to push, let’s get this out in people’s hands. All right.
So would you say your company, your teams, are mainly in the single player mode, individuals using this for productivity gains? Are you seeing or experiencing any moments where teams are using this well together? Are you seeing any signals in this popping up across the company? I think those are some good initial gut checks there. And certainly for folks, and we’ll talk about this a little bit more, can put a finer point on that in some upcoming events we’ll be doing, webinar upcoming where we’ll share some of our maturity models and how we get people thinking about that.
But just as a gut check, we mentioned single versus multiplayer AI. Is your company mainly in single player mode? Are you seeing some multiplayer? How easy is that to shift there? I mean, I think that’s a good gut check out of the gate because you’re not going to see ROI at the organizational level, at the systems level, if all of that AI investment and practice is just in individuals. It’s got to get into teams, and to get to the organization, then teams ladder up to the organization.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And I would say certainly when folks are just coming to terms with this kind of multiplayer capacity, getting the teams doing this together, that’s step one. But then getting that cross-functional, cross-team collaboration piece, such a power up, and these are orders of magnitude. The getting the team together is 10X. And then you 10X from there when you can draw different groups together because what was previously impossible to integrate is now a feasible task to get folks working across these boundaries in ways they weren’t before. And I think that it’s really missing for a lot of folks. And that’s part of the fun right now is helping people realize what’s possible and kind of guiding them through that.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah. And it’s amazing how quickly things lock in, or light bulbs come on, as we’re with folks guiding them in workshops. We’ve got some collaborative AI labs that we do. We’ve got AI executive studio that we do. Just little moments where people can start to experience this as a team in real time, visualize this in Miro, seeing things happen, how all of a sudden things start to lock in. Oh, okay, that’s interesting. Now this might be possible. Or, huh, this conversation wasn’t possible because we couldn’t see everything together before. Huh, that now allows us to shift this piece over here. And it really starts to lock in pretty quickly there in terms of certainly seeing potential, seeing some small wins, and small practices on the way to what might be a larger transformation.

Douglas Ferguson:
Leadership instinct is something that’s always really fascinating to me because I think some leaders just have intuition, and that drives quite a lot. And if someone’s a naturally gifted facilitative leader, they’re probably tuning into quite a bit of that. But this is a moment where I’m noticing that intuition isn’t always kicking in. And I think it’s just a sheer paradigm shift that’s happening. But that’s something I’ve just been noticing, and that’s why these experiential moments we’re creating are so powerful because we’re helping them experience the paradigm shift so their instincts can then take root. Because they’re there already. They just need that new framing. So I’m just curious how leadership instinct is showing up in the interactions you’ve been having, how that’s driving the way people are thinking about this, and fostering better alignment across teams on their usage of AI, and what the future could look like as the org evolves.

Erik Skogsberg :
Well, I mean, I think what I’m seeing, and certainly what is open conversations with a lot of the clients we’re working with right now, is there’s a sense that the ways that they’ve been going about AI adoption, decision making, the team-based side of things, isn’t working. So they see that and they want to address that.
Also too, I’m seeing, hearing more folks recommitting to the power of facilitation. It’s like, oh yeah, this thing that we know you guys do really well and has been so important all along, we need you even more at this point because of how broken we’re seeing things. And so I’m seeing folks noticing and raising their hand there and wanting to invest in purposeful ways, which is great.
Also too, I’m seeing both for these individual leaders and then other leaders across teams, more investment in leveling up the ability to guide decisions differently, and to really resource what it takes for this. And I would say too, a recommitment to practice and playing and prototyping. Let’s try this together as a team, and what are we learning from that? And then let’s codify it. I’m thinking of a client, a large tech client we’re working with right now, that they’re now recreating some key playbooks and codifying things that have shifted now using Miro blueprints and templates so that these shifts in practice are now memorialized in some really important ways around rituals that needed to be addressed before. And now this gave them the opportunity to do so.
And these leaders are resourcing that and prioritizing that for teams. And really taking the time to step back and say, “Hey, we’re going to, instead of just focusing on the execution and outputs here, here’s what’s just as, if not more, important for us to make sure we have our rituals right.”

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And as we come to the close, I think it’d be fun to reflect back on a few key concrete takeaways for folks and maybe even some prompts and things to consider as they reflect on this episode and go about their work in the coming days and weeks. And one of the things that I’d encourage folks to do is, before your next AI assisted deliverable, before you ship that thing, think about how you would’ve approached that prior to AI, who you would’ve conferred with, who’s going to have to receive this AI generated thing? Could you loop them into the process before wrapping your interactions with the AI? Could you create ways where they can give you feedback on how you’re thinking about assembling this thing? Could you shape it together through a screen share or through a multiplayer Miro board where AI is coming into a joint meeting or group gathering?
Also, I would say if you’re thinking about who’s going to receive this AI generated asset, could you even have another AI pose that individual and give you the feedback they would give you? So then you’re already taking one rev past how you think that individual is going to respond and critique this. So you’re ultimately saving time by making sure you’re catching the early revisions and early pieces.
And so really thinking about how we’re being more conscious. It’s not just about the speed. The speed can help us get to higher quality. It can help us do more reps before we even pass it off for more human review. So how can we model the humans that we have around us to make sure we’re taking their thoughts and needs and perspectives into consideration before we even share it with them? And then also how are we bringing folks into collaborative moments so that we’re doing collaborative prompting and collaborative review of these intermediary assets before we polish it and get something to where we produce it.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that dovetails nicely with a couple of things that I have written down here as I was listening to you. Part of this gets back to just a quick gut check assessment. If you were to step back and quick gut check of your company, your organization, are you mainly single player AI or are you multiplayer AI, or are there pockets? What’s the picture right now? If you were to just do a quick gut check assessment, of that assessment, what places might you shift into some more multiplayer and potentially cross-team approaches? Even if you don’t know how to do it, where might that be an improvement?
And then back to our cadence piece from earlier, if something that you used to do before is now much quicker, then where might you slow down in places that you would’ve rushed before, for the ends that might get you and the organization to a better place? And increasingly too, as we think about where might I now slow down, I’d add too, where might I slow down and re-anchor in the talents of the humans on our teams? Where might we maximize their impact and their input here at a place that we may have had to rush before? So if I’m speeding up over here, where might I slow down over on this part of things?

Douglas Ferguson:
That’s well said, Erik. And before we come to a close, I’d like to just give listeners a little bit of a perspective on what’s coming in the rest of the series. And I’d say just be on the lookout for more conversations like this. I will be inviting critical thinkers, clients, people in the thick of these challenges. So who is it that is experiencing this new friction, and what does it look like from the inside? What experiments are they running? What have they tried? Where are they getting gains? What worked, what didn’t work? What are they curious about? What are they hoping to try next? So some real lived experience and some real honest assessments of where things are at and where we’re hoping things go.
And at the end of the day, like you were saying earlier, there’s a deficit of proven models and ways to do this, like best practices. But I’d almost argue that, in this new world we’re in, it’s a little bit of a fallacy because things are moving so fast anyway, we have to figure out what works and we have to keep experimenting. We’re more and more in a world governed by complexity law. And so we have to constantly probe and experiment.
And so I think the thing is is we have to be willing to reinvent all the time. And so the folks we’re inviting on are folks that are in these moments of reinvention, folks that are champions of reinvention, and getting good at it. They may not be experts, they might not be researchers, but they’re brave, experimental, and curious and smart folks that are making their path through. And I think that’s how we all learn together when we share from those points.
And so I would say if someone wants to be on the show, reach out. We’d love to chat and see if you’d be a good fit. And then otherwise, just stay tuned for more of these series and looking forward to having more conversations like this.

Erik Skogsberg :
Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited, just in our conversations around this, who’s going to be in the podcast upcoming. Some cool voices conversation from a variety of areas. And to your point there, really leaning into the reinvention and timeliness as we go week to week, how that conversation will shift, and we’ve got a great lineup of folks who will join us.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And ultimately, when we say new friction, there’s no one singular friction. And to my earlier point, it’s evolving. And so we’re going to name these frictions with our guests and with these conversations we’re having. And we’re going to name them one by one as they evolve and as they present themselves. And we’ll be exploring things like trust and governance, speed and identity, the new apprenticeship model. What does that look like?
And so I would say if any of this hits for you, you’re curious, tune into a future episode, or sign up for something new that we’ve got coming that we’re hosting, the New Friction Webinar where we’re going to list out more framework and more opinions. We’ve just been chatting about the landscape here and sharing some perspective in order to set up the thesis around the podcast and what’s coming with other guests.
But the New Friction Webinar that’s coming up on, I believe it’s June 11th. And I would encourage folks to sign up for that. And I broke the rule of not making this evergreen. So you might be listening to this after June 11th. But there’ll be a recording. You can check it out in the show notes to find the event or the recording. And we’re going to do more of these. It won’t just be a one and done. So no matter when you listen, go check it out in the show notes, or check out our website, sign up. We’d love for you to join us and see what we have to say.

Erik Skogsberg :
Cool.

Douglas Ferguson:
Thanks for joining, Erik.

Erik Skogsberg :
Absolutely. Always a pleasure.

Douglas Ferguson:
Thanks for listening to New Friction. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a leader who’s in the middle of this right now. They’ll thank you for it. And if you want to go deeper, we bring leaders together through executive dinners and virtual masterminds. To learn more about our work or to inquire about exclusive executive events, visit voltagecontrol.com. I’m Douglas Ferguson. See you next time.
So, I’m really excited to be exploring this in partnership with people who want to go on this journey with me. And it’s just a very personal offering that I am making in this chapter in my life.