How to start a conversation with your team about AI
We’re back from Break Week! As you’re reading this, the team and I are all together in Gainesville to kick off the quarter. The four of us don’t get to be together very often, and it’s always so special when we can be in the same place.
Speaking of kicking off the quarter, I’d like to start Q4 by addressing a hot topic: artificial intelligence and technology at work. I recently had my first experience with using AI. In fact, it was connected to this blog! Let me explain . . .
Our process for producing this weekly blog goes like this: I record my thoughts about the blog topic in a voice note; the team transcribes that voice note using a transcription software and makes edits to help shape it into a blog post; and then I then go back in and add additional thoughts and feedback until we get it to a place where we feel it’s ready to publish.
The part that takes the longest in this process is taking out all of my filler words in the transcription (like “um” and “uh” . . . which I say a lot when I transcribe my thoughts LOL). The team decided to look for a program that could help make the transcription part of the process more efficient.
What they landed on was an AI-based transcription program. We weren’t really sure how it would work or what it would do, but I agreed to give it a try. When I tried using it, though, instead of simply capturing the words I spoke and removing any filler words, the program changed what I said. It tried to make it sound better. The end result was a couple of soulless and superficial paragraphs that sounded nothing like me . . . and that is the moment my team and I decided that we will not be using that program.
That experience prompted an important discussion on our team around the role of technology in our company. As we talked, it became clear that we are all for using technology to help us be more efficient and productive and spend more time on the areas of the business that only we can uniquely contribute to. But we are not okay with using AI or technology to replace ourselves in our content process. We are a content company. When it comes to things like blogs, social posts, speeches, leadership programs, and designing experiences for our clients . . . These are the areas of our business that we will keep sacred and where we never want to lose our unique, human touch.
While our team hasn’t embraced AI like maybe other organizations have, we certainly aren’t opposed to using it in some contexts. We outsource several operations-related processes (which we wrote about here) to help us be more efficient and effective in the areas that matter most in our business. A great example of a tool we love is our favorite email software, Superhuman. It has smart features that send us reminders to follow up on emails and allow us to create email templates to address our most common requests. It also has an option to use AI to enhance emails and make them stronger. While I have never used it, Cheyenne, our Chief of Operations, loves this feature. Her role isn’t content production; she leads all of the logistics for our business. She appreciates Superhuman’s AI feature when she is struggling with how to phrase an email. She always writes the email in her own words first and uses the AI tool to see how she can make it more clear.
Every organization is different. I’ve recently talked to several of our clients about the use of AI at work, and it’s been really interesting to see how they each approach it. For example, one client shared fears around their team using ChatGPT for creating emails. They were worried that their team members weren’t putting thought into emails anymore and worried it could damage their reputation. Only a couple of weeks later, I was chatting with a different team in a different organization and they shared how much they love using ChatGPT for emails. This team happens to work in sales and be primarily in the field. They use ChatGPT for emails so that they can spend less time on them and more time in person with their customers.
Another client of ours is an electronics distributor, and they have a massive warehouse that houses millions of parts. They have recently installed a system that uses robots for inventory storage and retrieval, which replaces the need for their people to walk up to five miles a day. They were very intentional with how they went about this huge change, and as a result, they didn’t need to eliminate a single job. They simply moved their people to other roles that still rely on the human touch.
The point is that I think this is a conversation we each need to have on our teams. We need to think about and question the role of AI and emerging technology and what we want it to look like in our organizations. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here; every team, organization, and individual has different needs and perspectives, and technology helps us all in different ways. But I think it’s important to be proactive in deciding on your approach and determining those guidelines together.
To help you spark a discussion, here are three sets of questions that might lead to a meaningful conversation on your team:
What are the most “human” parts of your business? What parts do you always want to have that human touch? For example: Maybe it’s important to you that when a customer calls your business, they always connect with a human, not a recording.
How do you feel about the ethics of using AI? For example, are you okay with letting a bot answer emails? Do you think you should be able to use Chat GPT to get work done? What are the technology guidelines that you would like people to commit to?
What are the parts of your work that only you can uniquely do? In other words, what are your strengths and superpowers? How can technology help you in other areas so that you can work in your strengths at least 70% of the time?
And I hope this goes without saying: No matter what, there are things that AI and technology will never, ever be able to do better than us humans. It will never have meaningful conversations, connect with compassion, model empathy, give compassionate feedback, or celebrate others in meaningful ways. I believe that these are the things that will matter more than ever as technology advances. May we never lose sight of our humanity and how important it is.
Hope this gets you thinking!
Big hugs,
