00:08from dallas texas i'm allison laforgia with housing wire and i am sitting with sasha stare
00:14the cmo from sactus sasha thank you for joining me it is always my pleasure allison it is truly
00:20always mine um we have an important topic to talk about today we do we're mixing it up a little
00:27bit
00:27and really delving into leadership leaders have more information available than ever before why
00:37does decision making sometimes feel so much harder not any easier yeah i think we are in a state and
00:45society of information overload we're overstimulated by how much information there is and i always make
00:53the joke being a technology provider that i think technology has created as many challenges as it has
00:59opportunities and so though we're using technology to help us sift through that information it's also
01:06creating more information and it's hard to keep up and i think in general there's also just so much
01:12noise out there unfortunately i think when we have down markets and there's maybe a little too much time
01:17on our hands people like to make more noise than normal and so it just becomes challenging as a
01:24leader in any company any industry to have to think about how do i sift through the information and really
01:31find what matters most so that i can decision on the data that matters most now a theme that i've
01:39heard
01:39you talk about is the difference between certainty and clarity what is the difference between seeking
01:48certainty and creating clarity so certainty to me is somewhat of a farce right i mean the world is
01:55just uncertain and again you think about the noise in the market people like to say we're in uncertain
02:01times we've never navigated things like this before yes that's true and when is it really not
02:07uncertain right uncertainty is just kind of par for the course in life and so i think it's critical to
02:13not get caught up on the word certainty but really to look for the clarity and again that goes back
02:19to
02:19what i mentioned before which is how do i figure out the data that matters most so that i can
02:24make the
02:24best decision possible and again sift through that noise because there is so much information out there
02:31and you have to really do your due diligence to understand what's the difference between noise
02:36and fact because you don't want to act on noise you want to act on facts and that takes time
02:43and there's so much
02:45fraud on the rise now that it's hard to know who to trust what to trust even with technology in
02:50place and so
02:51there's just more diligence necessary than ever so that you can get to a place where you can determine that
02:58clarity and then from that place you can make discernment and make good decisions so you've
03:05mentioned that we're in a place where we have all of this data at our fingertips almost creating more
03:12data that is harder to look through how does a leader know when they have enough information to
03:18actually make a decision and move yeah it's a great question and we just had a panel on stage that
03:24was a unique scenario i think for housing wire and for us at sactis where the former director of
03:32presidential advance hope i got that one right brian montgomery and also eric wilson from veterans united
03:39went through the storyline of what happened on september 11th which is our 25th anniversary this year it's
03:45hard to believe it's been 25 years since the towers went down the pentagon all of it and that story
03:52is so
03:52impactful and hearing brian talk about what it was like to be on the ground the day of the days
03:58proceeding you know you think about a crisis like that and what information is available and what
04:04decisions had to be made in a terrible time and probably decisions that no one ever wants to face
04:12and decisions that you're not going to necessarily have all the information and so you have to potentially
04:18in a split moment decide do i do something do i not you know the joke was made on stage
04:24there was
04:24a bunch of b52s with nukes loaded up like are we going to use them are we not well let's
04:28hope no one
04:28hit that red button they didn't but we just don't know and so what i come back to when i
04:33think about
04:34this question is something that colin powell actually said before 9 11 i think it was in the 90s that
04:40he came up with the 40 70 concept which is if you have 40 of the information you have enough
04:46once you get to 70 you start to get to too much and so waiting for 100 of the information
04:51is always
04:52going to be too much because then you're in that overload mode but once you have at least 40 of
04:57the
04:57information you have enough information to make a decision now you've got to trust your gut and i
05:03know that's hard for a lot of people who are really again looking for the data looking for the facts
05:07i
05:08even said that myself and there's a reason why we have instincts there's a reason why our experiences
05:13teach us so much and so really having 40 of that information and then trusting your gut making a
05:19decision pivoting from there i think is where anyone regardless of the times needs to be thinking
05:26to your point earlier and what you reiterated with the 40 70 principle is that you get to a point
05:35where
05:35the data and too much information becomes noise how do you distinguish meaningful signal
05:43from noise honestly it's fact checking and i think you have to fact check in multiple ways multiple
05:51times now more than ever because there are so many again tools out there that you think i can just
06:00google it and i'll get the facts i can put it into chat gpt or anthropic and just get all
06:06the facts and
06:07it's not that's not the case right those machines are learning based on what we feed it not necessarily
06:13what the facts are and so i think the key is you've got a fact check as best you can
06:18and get to the root
06:20of the data and make sure that you understand where that data came from so that way you're making informed
06:25decisions on good data now we know that technology can give us intelligence to your point it can give us
06:32data and we can determine signals but i think something that you've mentioned and needs to be
06:40addressed is where does human judgment still actually matter yeah it matters in so many ways so it's a
06:48loaded question to answer because i think there's a couple of ways i would tackle this one a human still
06:55needs to talk about fact checking check the tools right and the technology so just because technology is
07:02getting better you still want human discernment human judgment to look at it and say okay this
07:07does make sense and then ultimately make judgment calls which technology cannot do and so that's a
07:14critical area to look at i also look at younger generations who grew up with technology in their
07:19hands and in some regards i worry about in the workforce us losing the ability to critically think
07:25and so i hope that we continue to invest in helping young adults and ultimately people in our workforce
07:33understand what it means to critically think and and how to do that and i'll give you an example because
07:38our industry loves to have fun with rates right it's always like oh well we'll just wait until the
07:42rates go down and then all of a sudden everything will get better i actually remember i think at econ
07:46summit for housing wire a couple years ago we were all in the audience and somebody on stage said once
07:51it
07:51gets down below six percent we'll we'll be fine well look where we are now right and there's a threat
07:56of going from seven to maybe eight or nine percent and so why would you wait right and so your
08:03critical
08:03thinking your human judgment comes into play consider now being an opportunity market it's not a buyer's
08:10market it's not a seller's market but it is a good time to sell and buy a home why well
08:15because the seller
08:16wants to get rid of their home if they didn't they wouldn't have it up for sale right so they
08:21want
08:21to sell the buyer wants to buy usually in this type of an environment we've got more time more discernment
08:27we're able to structure a deal properly and so why wouldn't you take the opportunity to go for that
08:34happy medium you're going to have less people competing for that sale and you're likely going to close
08:39more loans if you don't fall for the fear tactic the noise of oh we'll just wait for rates to
08:46get
08:46better we'll just wait for rates to come down they're probably not they could get worse why would
08:50you wait you have an opportunity market that's not something i think a technology tool at least at this
08:55stage can answer that is something that you take the best of what technology can offer the historical
09:01data we have and then that human discernment that critical thinking to go oh that's an interesting
09:07way to look at it i've heard you mention the term decision intelligence you've also mentioned that
09:16you think that the next era is going to be about decision intelligence yeah what does that mean
09:24for those of us who are in mortgage well specifically in zactus world we really are looking at it in
09:31the
09:31verification space because it is hard for a human to manually look at every piece of data that comes
09:41through to verify alone and it's a lot of work it's cumbersome it's exhausting right and and we do still
09:48have manual voes that is something that exists today however there is technology that is getting
09:53better and better to help in that space and so i'll use that as the example but of course it
09:57could
09:58parlay to any other area when we think about what can we do to help make that better it isn't
10:05necessarily automating the entire experience it's creating the orchestration layer and the pathway
10:12that guides someone again to come in with that human discernment and say okay the technology has
10:17learned me has learned my company has learned my borrower and has figured out this is the best path for
10:24me to take now i as a human can come in and say i agree with that or oh the
10:29technology was missing
10:30one nuance and so actually no i want to go path b not path a and so that decision intelligence
10:35i'm
10:35i'm referring to is really technology getting to a point where it can orchestrate as much of that
10:41decisioning power as possible and then the human can still come in and go yes that's right or small tweak
10:48and the ability to evaluate that i think to your point is what's going to be increasingly critical
10:55absolutely now for those of us who are mortgage leaders what if you could leave us all with one
11:02principle for navigating the uncertainty of the market ahead what would you leave us with beyond the
11:10fact that everything is uncertain as i mentioned when we started i would say scenario plan for the
11:17worst so that you are in the position to be strongest for the best because ultimately i think things are
11:25going to get more challenging not sure what that looks like because we're in an uncertain world and
11:31that will be persistent however those who can scenario plan and think about all the different possibilities
11:39and then prepare for that worst case scenario i think will come out on the strongest side of this market
11:45and i think everybody's looking for ways that they can come out as fast as possible on the other side
11:51of
11:51when things aren't exactly where we want them exactly and you can only control what you can control
11:55so use the ability use your human judgment use the data scenario plan recognize that life is just
12:03uncertain get to that 40 mark and move forward use your gut make a decision
12:08go and that's it make you trust your gut make your decision and go thank you sasha thank you allison
12:15you
