205. Say What Sucks: Catalyzing Organizational Change with AI

A live SXSW panel on how employee complaints illuminate the path to organizational innovation. Wrong question: How can AI revolutionize productivity in my organization? Right question: What do my employees hate most about their jobs? For the Portland Trail Blazers, a winning game plan for AI implementation didn’t begin with a tech-first approach — it began with a talk-first one. “The whole concept was to talk about pain points," explains David Long, VP of Digital Innovation, describing the "Lunch and Launch" sessions where employees could openly share frustrations about their daily work. “People really enjoy talking about what they hate about their jobs,” says Christa Stout https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/christa-stout/, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, and as they did, they illuminated opportunities for optimization. “By getting this insight across the whole company, it is already opening our eyes [to how] we can potentially transform the business more broadly,” Stout says. In this special live episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart https://www.fastersmarter.io/, recorded at SXSW, host Matt Abrahams leads a panel with Long, Stout, and Stanford colleague Jeremy Utley https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/jeremy-utley/, exploring how "catharsis catalyzes change.” For any team wanting to implement new technology or rethink workflows, these experts reveal how creating space for complaints can catalyze meaningful innovation throughout an organization. Episode Reference Links: Jeremy Utley https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/jeremy-utley/David Long https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/david-long/Christa Stout https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/christa-stout/Ep.77 Quick Thinks: AI Has Entered The Chat – A "Conversation" with ChatGPT https://www.fastersmarter.io/77-quick-thinks-ai-has-entered-the-chat-a-conversation-with-chatgpt/Ep.134 How to Chat with Bots: The Secrets to Getting the Information You Need from AI https://www.fastersmarter.io/134-how-to-chat-with-bots-the-secrets-to-getting-the-information-you-need-from-ai/ Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/premium/Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Transcripts >>>Think Fast Talk Smart Website https://www.fastersmarter.io/205-say-what-sucks-catalyzing-organizational-change-with-ai/Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>>FasterSmarter.io http://fastersmarter.io/Think Fast Talk Smart >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-fast-talk-smart/,Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkfasttalksmart/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6caGRBUYZCmgDGM2RK6mxKB9jG_ccmm3Matt Abrahams >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/ Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction (03:08) - The Business Behind Basketball (04:39) - Why AI and Why Now? (05:47) - Collaborating with the Team (07:05) - The Lunch & Launch Method (09:37) - Branding AI Initiatives (10:55) - David Detractor & Kelly Kindness (14:26) - Human Connection through AI (15:11) - Auditing for Brand Consistency (17:19) - AI in National Parks (20:02) - Making AI Personal (21:24) - Using AI to Learn AI (25:53) - Encouraging AI in the Workplace (28:47) - Change Management: Iteration Over Perfection (32:33) - Start with Curiosity and Empower Action (36:16) - Communication Ingredients (37:48) - Conclusion ******** Thank you to our sponsors. These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost. Learn more about how Notion https://www.notion.com/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=thinkfast can support your business at notion.com/thinkfast. https://www.notion.com/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=thinkfast Join our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community and become the communicator you want to be. https://learning.fastersmarter.io/?redirect_from=podpage

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Abrahams?

  In the moment, conflict is difficult for everyone. In our October newsletter, out now, you will learn ways to help yourself handle these challenges better. Not only do you get specific advice, we're also providing an infographic to help you remember. Find our newsletter on the Think Fast, Talk Smart LinkedIn page or at fastersmarter.io under Resources.

• 0:25Matt Abrahams?

  When it comes to AI, catharsis catalyzes change. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this special live episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast, recorded at South by Southwest. Many of us know about AI, and some of us even use it. But how do you bring AI to your organization and make it have a positive, productive impact? This is what I have been curious about for a long time. So when my friend and two-time former guest Jeremy Utley asked me to facilitate a panel to discuss his AI implementation work with the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers, I jumped

• 1:10Matt Abrahams?

  at the chance to speak with Jeremy, Krista, and David. And I have to say, it was a slam dunk for AI best practices and learnings we all can implement. So without further ado, let's listen in to our conversation on the South by Southwest stage. Well, good afternoon. My name is Matt Abrahams. I teach strategic communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. I host a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart. It's all about communication skills. We're very excited today to talk about the particular application of AI within a business. This business is in the world of professional sports, the NBA team, the Trail Blazers.

• 1:50Matt Abrahams?

  And I am honored to be on stage with these wonderful guests who have actually employed and deployed AI, and we're here to share their experiences and best practices with all of you. So with that, I thought we'd just start with quick introductions. I'll start with Jeremy, farthest away from me. Go ahead and introduce yourself briefly and share how you're connected to the team.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Hey everyone, I'm Jeremy Utley. I am an adjunct professor at Stanford. Been there since 2009 or so. Teaching mostly design thinking, innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship courses. And then my world, much like many of you, was rocked a couple of years ago when ChatGPT came out. Unlike most of you probably, I had just written a book about creativity. And a month later, this tool that's amazing for creativity came out. And I look in the index of my own book, the AI is not even in it. So I strapped myself into the front row of the classroom as a student. And I spent the last couple of years trying to get as close as I can to people like David and Krista, who are doing this stuff in the real world and learning from them as much as I can. And then sharing as publicly as I can. And so it's really fun to be here with all of you.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  And I thank Matt and Krista and David for allowing me to join the conversation.

• 3:00Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you. David, how about you?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm the VP of Digital Innovation with the Trailblazers and the Rose Quarter. We're a dual business for concert events and basketball. My team runs digital products, app, web, and arena digital products as well, and then digital marketing. And then recently, we are taking on the strategy and implementing the strategy around Gen AI for our company.

• 3:18Matt Abrahams?

  Krista?

• 3:19Speaker 03

  I'm Krista Stout. I oversee strategy and innovation for the Trailblazers. I've been there about 11 years and get to work with David and Jeremy on our AI strategy and implementation.

• 3:30Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. Thank you. So many of us know how basketball is played and we see what your team does. But a lot of us might not understand the business behind basketball. Krista, could you spend a few minutes talking about the business side of what you do? And then Jeremy, I'd love to have you share how the Trailblazers came to explore AI and get this whole project started. So we'll start with you.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. So our business is set up into three areas. The first area is the one that people probably think of when they think of the Trailblazers, which is our basketball operations. So that's players, health and performance, coaches, et cetera. It's one element of the business. Another element is actually our venue operations. So the people that put on the concerts and events and all that. And then we have our business operations, which for us is about 300 people. And that is run in the same way that probably any organization you've ever worked at is run. HR, finance. Sales, marketing, etc. So for today, we thought we'd focus on that part of the business operations, because hopefully it's most relevant to you all as well in your AI journeys. And my boss, who's our president of business operations, in August of 2023,

• 4:35Speaker 03

  took the time to go to this AI training. And he came back and he was like, Krista, we got to figure out how to implement AI across our organization. Like, it's the future. We have to figure it out. And at the time, David and I had been, because we're in charge of figuring out emerging tech, we had been talking to Jeremy about a whole other thing. And we pivoted and we're like, so Jeremy, can you help us figure out how to implement and create a strategy for AI instead? He was like, yeah, let's do it.

• 5:01Matt Abrahams?

  So David, AI came about as a result of your boss essentially saying, this is an important thing to do. What were some of the burning questions that you guys had that brought you to Jeremy?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  It's an emerging tech. It was something we were excited about, but there was no professionals on staff that understood, like, how to take this and run with it necessarily, because it's brand new. Machine learning, obviously, is something that's been around for a little while, but this from a generative AI side and being an accessible technology was new to us. So who's going to take that and run with it? We looked internally. We found people who could turn ideas into action, but we needed someone to be the barrier breaker for us. And the way I refer to that is someone who says, who could show that it's accessible, that it's something that's fun, it's something really impactful, remove some of the fear from our staff around something new. And then just tear it away, brick by brick, the wall that people might have put up around, I can't do this. It's too challenging and I'm scared of it. Like, all these sort of things. And so how can we remove those,

• 5:59Speaker 02

  whether that's within one-on-one sessions, a group learning sessions? Sharing how you use AI personally was a big one for us. So that's the thing that kind of jump-started everything.

• 6:09Matt Abrahams?

  I want to come back to the change management piece of this, because it's definitely challenging. And I'd love to hear what you all did. But Jeremy, what excited you about this part of the relationship that you had with the team?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  These guys are the ballgame for me. Because we had already been collaborating, as Krista mentioned, exploring different kind of technologies or businesses, or we were doing all sorts of stuff because we kind of had a kindred spirit in terms of our willingness to experiment, try new things. And I came to appreciate and admire the way they were approaching experimentation in the business. As Matt, you and I actually talked about this on another episode of the podcast. And we talked about that research there. But I had been privileged to be a part of this research program where a partner and I were basically studying, how does generative AI impact creativity? And we found some kind of counterintuitive stuff. But I would say armed with those observations and insights about how do normal people get the most leverage out of this technology?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  But I had, there were a lot of ideas I had. And when they came to me saying, hey, is there something here with AI? To me, I saw an incredible kind of almost sandbox and opportunity to collaborate with folks who I could test some of my ideas with. So because I already knew them, I knew they were the kind of people I wanted to work with. And because I had a bunch of ideas that I had studied in the lab, so to speak, it felt like the perfect opportunity to test some of those hypotheses.

• 7:27Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. And David, I'm curious, how did you identify the problems first to apply AI to? And how did you prioritize those?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think after we had done some learning sessions with Jeremy and tried to get the baseline up with Gen AI knowledge for our staff in general, we started to reach out to individual departments, well, all departments, actually, and invite them to a lunch and launch is what we coined these type of practices.

• 7:50Matt Abrahams?

  Lunch and launch.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Lunch and launch.

• 7:51Matt Abrahams?

  I like it.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we would get as many people from the department as we could to get into a room with us. And the whole concept was to share with them, let's talk about your systems and within your systems, what pain points do you have? Let's identify those pain points and let's, let's just start with one and say, this is the one we have to make it work. We want 10 pain points. We want 20 pain points. Because who knows, like the way AI works, we can solve for one and then potentially have a list of a ton more we can tackle next. Let's find that first one. And so we'd go through and we let people talk cathartically about their job and what bothered them and what could be done better. They could spend more time doing something else. And then we would take that, we would assign a co-pilot from that department to assist us throughout the process with the strategy in mind that keep these people as close to the build as possible because they're closer to the problems than we'll ever be.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  So with them in tow and in helping us out, we would build utilizing AI to either build a software, build a Slack integration, build a simple GPT, that sort of stuff, and then pitch it back to them and then get their response. And then from there, we would then a level of measurements, we can see how it's performing under a couple of filters of is this feasible and sustainable long term? Does it impact business efficiency, revenue or fan engagement? Are they going to adopt it? And what checkpoints can we put in place so that there is adoption? So lunch and launches have been super powerful. We plan to do two builds per department for every department.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Can I say one thing about lunch and lunch? There's a clear role of branding. And Krista's a marketer, she understands that. I can't overestimate the importance of branding. And I've got an AI focused podcast where I talk to AI leaders in different organizations. I think about JJ Zhuang, who's the head of AI at Instacart. Their internal effort, they call the Carrot AI team because the carrot is their mascot. Okay. I talked to Bryce Shalomel, the head of AI at Moderna. They call their internal team the GCAT, which are the core components of DNA, but the generative AI champions team. But I think there's a role of even thinking about the effort as branding it, it gives it a sense of credibility. Oh, you've heard of the lunch and lunch? You haven't been to a lunch and lunch?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  There's something to that, that I think when you talk about change management, thinking about branding stuff is actually a meaningful part of it.

• 9:59Matt Abrahams?

  And it sounds to me that not only did you take the time to brand it, but you started with people identifying their pain points. So all of a sudden, you're not coming in and saying, we're going to use this new thing to fix things. You had them share what their concerns are, where their challenges are, and then had them thinking about how AI can help. And what's very clear in the literature on influence and persuasion is that when you get people to buy into the problem early, they're much more likely to adopt and follow through. So I think that's beautiful that you did that. In addition, it sounds like you also came up with very clear criteria or what success would look like. So you build some things and then you had some clear criteria, which I think is a good of advice for everyone. Did you do anything in particular to help prioritize which things you focused on first?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  We managed the project from a top level, right? We were running all these different lunch and launches. So we saw what was coming in and then we could use the same filters without everyone involved and say, this one's going to really impact our revenue. This one's really going to improve customer experience. And then communicating that back to stakeholders. And we had a co-pilot along with us too, so we can utilize them to spread that message within their group. Like, it looks like the timeline for your build is in two weeks. Hope you're all excited. So like just kind of managing the expectations around this because everyone was excited. But from an overall top down, what's most impactful for the business? That was something that we would match.

• 11:17Matt Abrahams?

  I love that as somebody who teaches strategic communication, that you were including communication throughout the process. That's really important to bring people along and to keep it going long after you've created that particular solution. I'm hoping each of you can give us a concrete example of something you did that is impacting the business. Krista, do you mind starting with something that you saw really impact the business?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. So the builds that David's talking about, we have about 35 of those that we've done across the company. And my favorite one currently is called David Detractor and his counterpart Kelly Kindness. So I assume that you all, like us, send surveys to your stakeholders, to your customers to get qualitative and quantitative feedback. We were doing a really good job getting and visualizing the quantitative feedback so that we could learn from it and implement it. But the qualitative feedback was much more complicated. So we dug into it during one of the lunch and launches and learned that a couple of different people were spending combined almost 40 hours a week. So almost an entire full-time employee's worth of time, just digging into the qualitative responses from our post-event surveys.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  We have like millions of responses over the course of the year. Not all of them have qualitative responses. But people go into the system, read it, decide if they needed to send it to someone else or not, decide if they should respond, get approval to do a make-good if they had a bad experience, et cetera. It was just like a lot of mundane work. And so David, I guess, did you name this after yourself? David Detractor?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  It was the first one, so I think it was the easiest one for me.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  David built an alliterative tool. David Detractor that ingested all of the post-event verbatims, filtered out the The ones that we didn't need to respond to. When people were like boo, you're like, okay, I'm not responding to that. But if people have a specific thing that we need to respond to, that would actually go to a specific Slack channel where people that were relevant to that Slack channel, and I'll give an example in a second, could read it, put a specific emoji on it that then creates a draft in their Outlook outbox to send to that person. So before it took 40 hours of people's time. Now it takes seconds and two clicks. So my favorite example of this recently is actually this person who came to a game and really wanted a vegan hot dog, but the hot dog bundle didn't include vegan hot dogs. So she has this detractor feedback.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  It surfaces automatically to our head of F and B, who reads it and is amazing. And she's like, hey, we should include the vegan hot dog in the hot dog bundle. So she makes a change in the operations of the business, hits one click, responds to the person, gives her an F and B credit to come back and to get a free hot dog. And this person now hears back from us right away, right? So it works really well on the detractor side, as you can see, but it also works on the promoter side, where we can surface really any positive experience someone has at a game. We surface actually across the whole company, which is really nice because if you work somewhere and you have no idea how the experience is, it's really rewarding to see and read about these positive examples that people have across the company.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  And on top of that, they're often like the warmest leads we could possibly have, like they're hand raisers. Someone literally said the other day, I had the best time at the game. I want to come every week. And so we're like, hey, sales team, you want to call her? She seems interested. So to close on this example, it drives revenue because it services warm leads. It improves our customer experience because people hear back from us. And it improves efficiency. So we basically cut out one FTE's worth of mundane tasks as part of this process.

• 14:43Matt Abrahams?

  It's a great example of how it was able to help you. F and B Food and Beverage.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Sure, yes.

• 14:48Matt Abrahams?

  Just making sure everybody's following along. David, please, what's one of the things that you're proud of or impressed by?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  One other addition to the Kelly Kindness piece. One, name your bots. That's also a part of our branding strategy. People can refer to them easily.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  It's a pro tip. Name your bots and give them a human personality.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Correct. I think a lot of talk around Gen AI is one of those concerns around disconnecting human-to-human connection because of the use of these tools. This is a perfect example of how it's actually increased human-to-human connection. I think on the Kelly kindness in particular, we're acknowledging folks who had really good experiences trying to solidify like a core memory, a core moment for them and build fandom. We'll admit there's areas where that was happening in very small scale, but now the scale for that is like immense because of this tool. And so I really like to call that one out in particular.

• 15:33Matt Abrahams?

  I recently was interviewing somebody else and they were talking about how they have built into their system whenever an employee calls in sick, have a bot that automatically will send them chicken soup to their house. And it's a way of showing kindness and showing that they care and that somebody's monitoring that you're not at work that day. So it does a whole bunch of things. So this ability to drive connection, I think, is important. Is there another tool that you are pleased about?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, another named one, Billy Brand. So Billy Brand is trained on our Complete Content Style Guide, our brand guideline book, some history about the Portland Trailblazers, anything else that our brand team, PR team, deems appropriate to be within there. And the main pain point we're trying to solve here is try to avoid his revisions. And I think that's one thing that this thing was trying to solve for is if you're having copy, if you're having creative, if you're having anything that's supposed to be public-facing, let's have a tool that we can load it up. It can audit all of that stuff for any brand things that are not aligned, give that feedback, give suggestions on how to fix it. And so we're trying to cut revisions from six, seven, down to one, two, three. Can we get it down so we're not spending time doing that stuff, moving these campaigns forward and moving the best campaigns forward?

• 16:42Speaker 02

  So Billy Brand has been really impactful.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Just to make sure I understand the kind of economic impact, you're saying a typical, say, somebody in marketing or insert department here, they're getting feedback on how to align more with the brand voice, six, maybe six or seven times in some cases, and this tool's taking it down to two or three times? That's cool.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  We're all flipping upwards of 10 or 15 times.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Six or seven.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  It's generous, conservative.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  The best for adoption purposes, it's still, this is one of the first ones I built. So I actually built it without someone helping me with it, who was closest to the pain point. So it actually went through a couple of different systems. One, it was like, it previously used to be within Slack, but people were like, I don't want to use it in Slack because then everyone can see that I don't know how to do this or that. I was like, great point. So it's now a web-based software that we're rolling out to folks. And I had one member of my team who complained that he ran out of tokens the other day. And I was like, that's the best problem I could ask for. So.

• 17:38Matt Abrahams?

  I'm sure it's 100% brand compliant, that website.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 17:41Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. Very good. Jeremy, what's one of the tools that you're excited about?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  I'll give a non Trailblazers example, if that's okay, just to broaden the aperture a little bit. But I've had the privilege of working with a bunch of, this is going to sound crazy, but a bunch of park rangers in the National Park Service, which is just super cool. They reached out somehow. I don't even know how. Hey, all of our backcountry rangers and facilities folks want to learn how to use this tool. Can you help? I was like, totally. And we did some kind of basic foundational training. And one of the things that we focus on, similar to the conversation about pain points that Matt's drawing out of David here is, what sucks about your job? What takes way more time than it should? And a really great kind of stim for finding opportunities is, to finish the sentence,

• 18:26Speaker 01

  it sucks that, dot, dot, dot. And we had people just think about that. What sucks? And one of the folks on, in this group, it was a group of about 60 folks, he said, it sucks every time I've got to replace the carpet in the lodge, he worked at Yellowstone or Yosemite, something like that. Every time I got to replace the carpet tiles, I've got to fill out 10 pages of federal funding requests that include OSHA requirements and ANSI standards and historical heritage site removal preservation. He's, I'm like a backcountry ranger, man. I don't know the answer to this stuff. So he built in 45 minutes, a tool that could reference all of the relevant databases of information, including expense information, all that stuff, and would take.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Take a crack of first pass at drafting the document for him. And it took him, he said, whenever, he said, the last time he had to replace a carpet tile, it took three days to fill out the paperwork. This thing took 15 minutes. It took him 45 minutes to build it, so call it an hour in total. But three days minus an hour is not bad. But here's the really cool thing. When you codify these workflows and simple kind of shareable tools, the individual who builds it gets the benefit. But then anybody else for whom it's relevant also gets the benefit. So in his case, his name's Adam. I tried to tag him on LinkedIn to shout him out. Homeboy doesn't even have a LinkedIn account. All right? So it's like, this is someone who literally has no presence on the web, no tech experience. And someone shared his tool.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  There are 450 parks across the US where there's a role like his. The National Park Service is estimating that tool is going to save the National Park Service 7,000 days of human labor this year. Just his tool.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Wild.

• 20:09Matt Abrahams?

  That's amazing.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  But the shareability of it, right? The fact that Billy Brand is shareable. It would be useful maybe just to you, right? But now it's useful to anybody who's trying to create brand-aligned communication.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Which is everybody.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Which is everybody, right? Yeah.

• 20:24Matt Abrahams?

  So I'm hearing a couple of things to take away from this. First and foremost, that these tools can build connection, not reduce connection. Two, it's really important to think about where you place the tools and how you involve people in the process. Three, the shareability of these things is really important. And so I love the specific examples, but the lessons that we learn, I think, are really important. AI for non-technical people can be intimidating. Maybe not for one park ranger, but for many people it can be. Krista, how did you help make AI accessible to your less technical folks?

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think you said it as part of your recap. It was, for us, it was figuring out how to connect with people and bring people into the process. So when my boss, Dwayne, said, hey, you got to figure out how to, like, have everyone at our company using AI 18 months ago. I was like, I don't know how to do that. So the first thing I did was on a full team call, I just asked if anyone that was using AI wanted to come talk. Talk to me or be part of a conversation about how they're using it, what they liked about it, what they don't like about it. Let's just talk and then go from there. And so it's like tapping into people who were like, we had 35 people who were already using AI 18 months ago, who were then excited to share what they were using it for

• 21:38Speaker 03

  and whose job is not to create strategy for new tech across a business, but they got to be a part of that and got to help shape it.

• 21:46Matt Abrahams?

  I'm curious, Jeremy, what have you seen beyond the trailblazers that helps organizations bring AI beyond just this is an IT initiative? How do you bring it to everybody in the organization?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  I don't think we have to look very far beyond the trailblazers. I think they're like a great case study of creating space for folks, creating venues and venues for sharing and for celebrating, mechanisms for learning, incentives where we can get into all that stuff as well. Right? But there's a bunch of pieces there. I think one simple thing that has really helped a lot of folks I talk to is when they say, I don't know how it's relevant to my job. The kind of meta hack, which feels like a Yoda-ism, but is not, is you can use AI to use AI. The basic idea is if you're not sure how AI can impact your work, you can actually pull up chat or Claude or Gemini, whatever. I'm not model agnostic, but I'm not hyping a model here.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  But you can pull up any of them and say, hey, I have no idea how to use AI in my work. Would you act like a, insert LLM here, chat expert or Claude expert or Gemini expert or Grok expert? Act like a Grok expert and interview me about my job so that you could recommend three to five obvious and maybe totally non-obvious ways I could use AI. And you know what? It'll totally do that. The biggest thing is actually getting your imagination sparked. And most failure to use is actually a failure of imagination. And part of the value of mechanisms and forums like Lunch and Launch and like gathering people together is it helps broadcast and showcase a bunch of things that people go, I would have never thought to do that. And basically what you want to do is create these forums where you kind of give these forehead slap,

• 23:25Speaker 01

  I can't believe I've never thought to do that, right? And if you can provide enough of those moments and then celebrate how people are trying stuff, it's just kind of a snowball effect.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  I would say, just to build on that, but one of the things that Jeremy unlocked for us that also helped with the change management was tapping into personally relevant AI examples. And so rather than starting with how can AI help me do my job better, which is great and helpful. We started with prompts that that really tapped into personal issues that people had. So not work appropriate personal issues. So for example, think of a decision that you have to make in your life. It's a hard decision. And then Jeremy had a whole specific prompt that we just like copy and paste it into chat GPT where we described the decision we had to make and some of the challenges and asked chat GPT to interview us to get more context and then to work through that challenge with us. So I did it about my daughter starting kindergarten, schools and whatever. And it was so helpful, right?

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Like the kind of advice that I wouldn't, I just never would have thought that an AI tool could help me with, that then sparked a million more ideas around how it could benefit me at work.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  That was actually inspired by a life experience. We ended up doing a series of emails or Slack something, right? Where we basically said, here's a use case, here's a prompt you can copy paste, and here's a video of a professional nerd in California doing the thing, right? And the only reason we even did that, by the way, is because I had this true story about my, in my personal life. I'm riding with my grandma in the car one day. She lives in Oklahoma. She's mid 90s. I love her. I love you granny, if you're listening to this. And we're driving in the car. She's, hey, what is this chat thing that you're working on? And think about, how do you answer that question? Your 95 year old grandma asks you, what is Gen AI? You know, and I'm like, what's an emotional question you'd ask Faye Ann, who's her neighbor, that you'd ask Faye Ann about? And she goes, I thought this was technology. I go, just bear with me just for a second. She's, we don't even know how to think about assisted living.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  And I said, let's invite my friend chat GPT to the conversation. And I'm driving, she's in the passenger seat. I just said, hey, my grandma just asked me about assisted living. I don't even know what framework to reference. I don't, I have literally no idea how to think about this. Before you give us any advice, would you ask her three or four questions so that you can customize your advice to her? And said, sure. Have there been any changes to her mobility recently? And I hand her my phone and she's like, this is amazing. And I said, the tech's pretty cool, right? She goes, not the tech. I've never thought about assisted living like this. Two days later, I get the, my favorite text message ever from granny. Jeremy, we're out of cream of mushroom soup for the green bean casserole. Do you think your chat thing could help?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  To Krista's point, the reason she thought of the work application was because she had this personal experience. And that made me realize, and then I did just all these random things in my life, we happen to have this opportunity. I said, hey, instead of starting with work, let's start personal. Let's give the first prompts personal so that people feel like they have this kind of imagination opening experience where work effectiveness or productivity isn't hanging in the balance.

• 26:15Matt Abrahams?

  That story is amazing for so many reasons. One, that your 95-year-old grandmother is texting. I find that fascinating.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  She does.

• 26:21Matt Abrahams?

  And second, this notion of making it personal first to get people connected. And this idea of bringing people together to share, at Stanford where Jeremy and I both teach, they do this thing called Appy Hours. So people come together to share the different apps that they've built, so that you can then learn to leverage it. And just the name Appy Hour, and they do serve drinks. It's a fun experience to share, building more on that creativity. I want to pick back up on that notion of allowing for time for this. How did you at the Trailblazers actually give permission to people to take the time? Because I'm sure people are saying, I already have a full-time job. I don't have the time to do this work. David, did you do anything in particular to give people permission?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  I think to couple along with what you all are just saying, I think it does start individually. And looking at personal use of cases to with an end goal of empowerment. Can this tool empower me? Because if you reach that level, then you stop thinking about replacement. You stop thinking about things that are negative connotations with Gen AI. And then you can be a proud displayer of what you're able to come up with. This is what I did. I'm going to share it with my staff, whether that's personal or something work-related. They see it. And then instead of saying, hey, are you using AI? So they're immediately put on the defensive. Say like, here's what I did. Have you tried this? Have you tried using AI for this? Or something like that. Just trying to rephrase it around empowerment and trying to get an end result has been super helpful. And just making the time is difficult. But in the end, once you start it, you realize

• 27:47Speaker 02

  that there are benefits of using it. That cuts down on some of the manual labor that you have to do and allows you to focus on more important things. I refer to it as a utility. It's going to be a next utility for us. Implementing electricity, okay? Companies got rid of gas lamps. One of the most obvious things to do right away. But the people who really take it to the next level is like, how can they use electricity to improve their production lines? Improve revenue? Improve all those different things? So I think you have to do it because it is a utility. It's not a new flesh in the pan.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we would also like, we had a Slack channel where we would just encourage people to share, like, hey, I just took a picture of my lunch and asked it how much protein is in it, and guess what, it knew exactly how much protein in what I was eating, and blah, blah, blah. And so we just were like constantly encouraging people to share how they're using it, so that it is demystified and encouraged. And so the result of that is that David has someone that works on his team who just like went off without even asking, built her own software that replaces an existing software that we spend a lot of money on today. And I think it's because we, like, she knew top down that Dwayne, our president, and others supported it, it's part of our business planning process, etc. But also, it's just so encouraged across the organization from that initial AI committee,

• 29:01Speaker 03

  from David's luncheon launches, like, it's encouraged and celebrated. And when you celebrate something, people tend to want to do it.

• 29:09Matt Abrahams?

  The literature on motivation is very clear that if you put people on the defensive, they're not going to be motivated to do something. And it sounds like you've worked very hard to reduce that defensiveness and give people an opportunity and to celebrate, as you said, to help them. And that's really an important step. Can we talk a little bit about the change management to actually get people across the organization to use these tools? It's one thing to build them. Is it simply that people see the benefits, so therefore they use them? I can imagine some people are really comfortable in what they're currently doing and the current way they're doing it. Have you done anything to help with the change management to keep the momentum going?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I think individual groups adopt faster than others. And I think the best thing is just come back to the luncheon launches. Within those groups, there's people who have not used AI yet, there's people who have. But it's a shared space where we can talk about a similar topic and talk about solving problems. And it's specialized to what their main focus is. So I would say that those are incredibly powerful. One, for, we are there to build something impactful, but for the shared space of communication and things like that, that's a major motivator for change management.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  And to go back to Jeremy's sandbox point, the David detractor Kelly Kynas example that I shared earlier. So when David first built it and launched it, it's not like people just started using it right away. People, a lot of, sometimes, a lot of people didn't use it at all. So then we had another meeting and a conversation. We're like, hey, what is keeping you from using this? What would make it easier for you to use? What, you know? And so like, you iterated that product for a couple of months before, and now it's just like, everyone's using it, it's everywhere. But it took months of iteration and learning and feedback and communication to get to that point.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Were there any key revisions or key iterations that you feel like unlocked people's ability to use it? Like, what was keeping someone from using it? I'm just dying to know.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  It was me. I think one, one part of it was that I was not solving for the user's problem. So I needed to stop and overproduce something that I envisioned would be helpful. And that's, this is before a lot of these launch and launches, a big component of what we now implement. But getting with them and saying, does this actually solve your problem? In what ways? Why? And what does allow you to do? What impact do you think this will have? So that, that's the main thing. If you're solving for it by yourself, you're going to have revisions, you're going to overdevelop, and you're going to probably have less adoption.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Matt, just thinking about your question of what drives adoption is kind of what you're getting at. To me, as I'm listening, I go back to the very beginning, which is, everything's rooted in employee pain points. Of course, people want to use something that's actually making their life better. But I think importantly, critically, David and Krista did the hard work of figuring out how their lives need to be improved. So they didn't start with a broad mandate of, let's just use GenAI in general, right? I think the usage metrics are largely irrelevant there. What they did is they said, what are the problems? What really stinks in your job? Let's build a solution there. And then it just creates suction, it creates pull. This makes it easier, this makes it better? No brainer, right?

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  And like, I love the, it sucks that prompt. It's a really good framing. It turns out people really enjoy talking about what they hate about their jobs. And so we had, we set up our sessions, and then we would always have to cut people off at the 50-minute mark and be like, okay, now we're going to switch to solutions. The word earlier, it's cathartic for people to be like, oh, and if only. And for us to get that insight across the company of like the systems, like the key systems across our company and how they do and don't work effectively. And then the problem solve for those also gives us a lot of insight, which my hypothesis is that ultimately it will help us be able to figure out where and how AI is going to significantly transform our business. Like right now, this is all incremental innovation across a lot of different work streams. But by getting this insight across the whole company,

• 32:50Speaker 03

  it is already opening our eyes into ways we can like really potentially transform the business more broadly.

• 32:55Matt Abrahams?

  Anybody who knows anything about me knows I love alliteration. So catharsis catalyzes change. Ooh. I like that. For those in the audience looking to expand AI in their organizations, whether they're technical or not, I'd love to hear from each of you, what's one concrete action they could take next week to start making progress with AI? Why don't we start, Krista, with you, we'll just go down the line this way, if that's okay. What's one thing they could do?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  I mean, it's self-serving because this is what we did. But I think just recognizing that you don't have all the answers and don't need to have all the answers when it comes to AI and how to implement it, like you have to step and trust that the path will follow. And also admit that you don't know everything because literally nobody in the world knows everything about AI. So the idea that you would be expected to is a little crazy. So I think just admitting vulnerability, starting with curiosity and understanding like what's already happening at your organization. So you can tap into the latent motivation and create momentum from there.

• 33:55Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. So start with vulnerability, follow with curiosity. Very good. If it, what's one thing people could do starting next week?

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I think at the leadership level, critically about who within your company or under your team who exhibits like behavior of taking ideas and turning them into action. I think that's a person that you should have a one-on-one with and present AI as an opportunity for them. Because that's a huge unlock if you have someone who can move things forward that way. Because this is a powerful tool in the right hands of someone like that. As an individual, like I mentioned earlier, do a complete audit of some of your systems. Whiteboard out, here's one, for example, like every month I have to balance my credit card. And so I need to know all the codes to send all these different charges to across marketing, across our corporate partners, all that sort of stuff. I know it takes four different sheets. I know I have to reference Ctrl F all these different sheets to find these different codes. It takes me two hours. I'm cathartic.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Like, this is one that I absolutely do not like. And so within that, I was able to mark just with little carrots. Maybe I could use something that understands all of our codes. Maybe I could do something that can be accessible within Slack and answer it right away. So that's something that's taking it to the next step. But to answer your question, just like audit something and see what's possible and then go from there.

• 35:07Matt Abrahams?

  So the audit point is well taken, but you bring up something that we haven't really talked about, although you mentioned it, is buy-in from more senior leaders is really helpful. And taking the time to make sure they're on board can help. And in your case, to really drive the event. Jeremy, what's one thing these folks could do next week to make a difference?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  We talked about it earlier, but I think have AI interview you about either your life or your work to identify opportunities. Tell AI it's an AI expert, which by the way, a role is a critical part. If you've been playing with AI at all, you know this, you gotta give it a role. If you're talking about a parenting challenge, hey, you're a child life psychologist with a specialty in childhood development in teenage girls. I have four daughters, so I've used that prompt a lot, right? But the point is, you're an AI expert. You're here to give me a consultation of how I can use AI better in my blank. Would you ask me five questions, one at a time? Because I'm a human and struggle to answer more than one question at a time, please. Something that simple. The other thing I would say about leaders, by the way, leadership buy-in is not some nebulous

• 36:11Speaker 01

  abstract thing. If you're a leader and you want to give buy-in, do something yourself and tell the team what you've done. Because to say, hey, y'all have permission to go do it is totally insufficient and it's far too passive. And the best leaders I have observed, they are actively showcasing what they're doing on Zoom calls. Let me share my screen for five minutes. I want to show you guys what I've been doing. That goes so much farther than, no, really, you're free to try it on your own time. No problem.

• 36:38Matt Abrahams?

  What's even more important is to, as a leader, to share your struggles and challenges and failures, because that gives permission for others to do that. Because it's one thing to say, go do it, and here's what I'm doing. If people feel theirs has to be perfect, just like yours was, that can be challenging. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Their support covers the cost of production, so we can bring you this show for free. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. The best communicators don't just get their message across, they make it easy for people to know what to do next. Your website can do the same thing. With Squarespace, you can build a polished online presence that clearly shows people who you are, what you offer, and how they can work with you.

• 37:23Matt Abrahams?

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• 38:06Matt Abrahams?

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• 38:50Matt Abrahams?

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• 38:57Matt Abrahams?

  Before we wrap up every episode of my podcast, I ask some typical questions. Due to time, I'm just going to ask one question. We'll do it very quickly. The final question I always ask is, what are the first three ingredients that go into an effective communication recipe? And since there are three of you and I'm asking for three ingredients, just very quickly, name an ingredient and then we'll wrap up. Krista, what's one important ingredient for successful communication?

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Oh, since it's his birthday, I'm going to say something that Jeremy does really well, which is turn complicated objects into very clear messages and communicate them very well.

• 39:30Matt Abrahams?

  Make them accessible.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Constructive problem solving. If you have a problem and you want to present it to your leader or your staff, present it, but now you have this tool, AI potentially, where you can come with lots of solutions and you can flood a problem. So I think anytime you can come to a leader and say, hey, I have this problem, but here's some things I want you to consider about how I want to go about solving it. That's a completely different type of conversation.

• 39:52Matt Abrahams?

  Lead with solutions. Very good.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Conviction. If you don't believe it, don't say it.

• 39:57Matt Abrahams?

  Ree, very valuable. It's advice and important ingredients. And lots of interesting steps and recipes today to help all of you be successful in deploying AI. Thank you very much for your time. I hope you're taking something of value with.

• 40:13Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you for joining us for this special South by Southwest live version of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about AI and communication, please listen to episode 77, where I interview ChatGPT, and episode 134 with Jeremy Utley and Kian Gohar. This episode was produced by Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.

• 40:56Matt Abrahams?

  Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, Ask Matt Anythings, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.

• 41:07Matt Abrahams?

  Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.