Episode 193 Transcript:

Ramona Shaw [00:00:00]:
This episode is about AI, artificial intelligence, which I consider to be 2024’s most important leadership topic.

Ramona Shaw [00:00:09]:
Here’s the question. How do you successfully transition into your 1st official leadership role, build the confidence and competence to lead your team successfully, and establish yourself as a respected and trusted leader across the organization? That’s the question, and this show provides deep answers. Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw, and I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is not seen as a source stress and dread, but as a source of contribution, connection, and fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows. In the show, you learn how to think, communicate, and act Ask the confident and competent leader you know you can be.

Ramona Shaw [00:00:52]:
Welcome to The Manager Track podcast and the 1st official new episode in the year of 2024. If you’re listening to this as and when it gets released, I hope you had a good holiday break and a good start to 2024 so far. I believe this is going to be an exciting year. This is Going to be a year with lots of change, lots of things happening on a global stage, on a political level, economically, and also business wise and especially as it relates to technology. There are several things I wanna share with you today in this episode, But the most important thing for my personal view before we dive into AI as the most important leadership topic for 2024 is that we officially launched our new company, Archova, on January 8th. Archova is a leadership development company, and we offer workshops, offsites, coaching, and most importantly, leadership development programs that incorporate 3 pillars that we fundamentally believe are critical to the success of any leadership development program. Null, one, of course, is knowledge transfer. This includes the tools and the insights that are being shared as of the program.

Ramona Shaw [00:02:10]:
The second, though, this is often missed is social and peer to peer learning. So the group, the small group Rraction’s the ability to learn with others and from others to incorporate a reflective component and that group discussion That makes it very different from a one way training where the facilitator does all the talking. So that’s the 2nd component. The 3rd component that also distinguishes our programs from others is the personalized support. We strongly believe that there is not one size fits all, that a lot of leadership development involves building self awareness and adapting sort of broad common knowledge and tools Two very individual situations and circumstances that includes who you are as a person, as a leader, the values that you foster and wanna nurture on your Team, the actual role and responsibilities that you have and then who you engage with. And depending on these 3 different components and some others. Anything that you learn needs to be adapted. This is why, you know, the on demand courses or books, while really interesting and helpful, often fall flat in the implementation and this creation of sustainable results or behavioral change is because Whatever is being taught makes sense intellectually, but then as we’re trying to apply it, it either doesn’t feel good, doesn’t work, or is we just stumble in the actual implementation or application of it.

Ramona Shaw [00:03:41]:
So our programs really focus on, 1, that knowledge transfer that is a given, 2, the social learning aspect, and then 3, the personalized support that we build into. All of our programs run over a few weeks to increase knowledge retention, and they’re all virtual to make it accessible as many people around the globe as possible. I’m excited to share this video, and as a team, we’re very much looking over to supporting our clients in the many different challenges and opportunities that they’ll encounter this year and beyond. Now one of the topics that we’ve added to our portfolio in a very deliberate way and are excited about is artificial intelligence. I cannot get enough of it, to be honest, of learning about artificial intelligence, seeing the business implications to in the implications of this technology and to observe, see, and engage in these developments and initiatives as they play out. Back in November 2022 is when Chatt GDP was first released to the public. And at that point, that really is a bit of a landmark, moment in time because Up until that moment, artificial intelligence wasn’t broadly available to the public in a form like that. It was available to big tech, companies, research institutions, government organizations, universities, and so forth, but not to you and me on a home computers or mobile phones.

Ramona Shaw [00:05:13]:
So back so when ChatGPT when OpenAI’s ChatGPT, application launched and was released. They altered it. That significantly changed the landscape of it. 20 23, I believe, is a lot about figuring out what this tool is, observing the investments that are being made into Up and coming in new companies that were on start ups that launched into this space, it was also a time where a lot of us were paying attention to what is the Technology that’s required. The what are the resources required to run these large language models that are required for artificial intelligence applications, what’s the hardware required, understand what are the risks of it, what are the actual opportunities. So Many of us were just trying to wrap our head around what this really means. As 2023 was Coming to an end, it became more and more clear that this has a Significant impact on businesses in the coming years. It it’s another big digital transformation that is in front of us, and it will be bigger and faster than any digital transformation in the past.

Ramona Shaw [00:06:29]:
And what that means is We have an entire workforce that needs to be educated and trained on the use and applications, risks, and opportunities of artificial intelligence and the different models of that. Now as a leader and this podcast is specifically for leaders. As a leader, you if you wanna be successful in your role, you have to be at the forefront of this. There’s no way around it. This is really not a fad. It’s not some kind of, trend that popped up like a viral dance on social media and will disappear. It’s not like another social media app that has, I don’t know, remember Periscope or a Clubhouse that was a big hype and then it appeared. This is very, very different.

Ramona Shaw [00:07:19]:
This is fundamental shift in how we’re gonna do business, how we’re gonna look at Business opportunities, how we’re going to assess business strategies, how we’re building technology, and 99% of businesses Says use some kind of technology or based on technologies. It’s just just no way to not be affected by this. And Without being doom and gloom here about this, I think also many people underestimate the shift that this will Create in a workplace. There is currently a lot of conversation about we’re gonna upskill or re skilled employees, or are we gonna augment what employees are currently doing with artificial intelligent applications? We’re not going to lay off people or eliminate people as a result of that. This is the beginning phase, which is actual absolutely true. And in the beginning, this makes sense because there’s still so much that’s unknown and so many companies are still in the development phase of creating tools that will support businesses that then these businesses could purchase and replace their employees with that tool. So that is still in the works, but this is going to happen. It could be in a year.

Ramona Shaw [00:08:33]:
It could be in 5 years, but we need to be prepared. And what you and I both have complete control over is how we show up on this topic, how we’re managing potential fears around it, how we’re going to make sure that we’re putting Our teams, our organizations in the best possible position to be AI embracing as a culture to be experimental and adaptive to what’s coming on the market. Not paying attention to it, Thinking that it will all be figured out by someone else or it won’t be a big deal or it will take years for this to Affect us personally, that to me is closing your eyes or shielding your peer review. And so as a leadership development company For me and for, Archova, this is really important for us to raise awareness on this topic to help individuals like you listening, but also companies get on the right track and do so rather sooner than later to start educating their workforce and eliminate some of the fear and create a more open and AI friendly work culture where People are interested in figuring out how could they use it, what would be possible use cases, how could efficiencies be created, productivity be increased, product be augmented, data analysis be enhanced, and so forth. And as I say this, the I’m talking about a lot of opportunities that we can unlock in 2024 through and with AI, but there are also a lot of risks. Currently, this is a total wild wild west. And there’s inaccuracies. We call this hallucinations of AI models who will make up information because it’s not an sole brain that does logical rational thinking, although sometimes it can seem that way when we engage with with a Chatbot or with a tool like ChatGTP or Google’s BARD, but that is not the case.

Ramona Shaw [00:10:41]:
And as a result, there’s misinformation inaccuracies. There’s also Societal risks, ethical risks, reputational risks, data privacy, data security risks that companies Leaders to be aware of, trained on, and be in a driver’s seat to, identify risks, to set Restrictions around them while at the same time looking for opportunities to capitalize. Companies and leaders not engaging in this conversation or This topic will likely be at a competitive disadvantage in a few short years, if not months, from today. So you can maybe tell listening to this. I’m very passionate about it. On one hand, I think it’s a very exciting time For us, personally, for me, for my kids, for society, for businesses, for the start up world, observe what is happening. And at the same time, it’s going to be a very interesting time of how leadership teams and organizations are going to adapt to this rapid rapid a change in available technology. And just to give a quick teaser, I will record a future podcast episode on AI and EQ, And I also wrote a blog post to about that on our covid.org, which we’ll link to in the show notes.

Ramona Shaw [00:12:01]:
Now I’ve shared with you why I think this is such an important topic. The way we at our are going to support companies is through the introductory workshops that can be opened up to an entire workforce or teams. And then we also Have our AI fluency for leaders program, which is a 5 week program for nontechnical leaders who wanna get up to speed on AI not to understand all the technological background, but really to understand what is AI, what’s the history of it, How has it evolved, and what are current I AI tools and applications? How do I think about AI strategically? How I evaluate and assess and identify AI initiatives, and then how do I lead and manage the people in the execution of such AI projects. So these are the 2 ways. Now to go a little bit deeper here, let’s talk first about some of the changes that AI will bring to the workforce. And that specifically applies to you as a professional. 1st, expertise or knowledge is going to be less valued. So let’s say, you know, restaurant critiques, for sample have become less valuable through social media.

Ramona Shaw [00:13:17]:
Now we’re looking at, you know, apps such as Yelp or Google reviews or Tried TripAdvisor and all those different tools to get a sense of how good a restaurant is or where we might wanna go, what we wanna As a result, the true restaurant critics that were highly acclaimed before and had high social status and influence now have A a last of a voice because of the democratization of this. Similarly, with AI and expertise, The things that you might have spent years to learn can now easily be accessed by people who’ve just started out Coding, for example, or creative work are two great examples here. There’s several tools on the market that will write code faster than a software developer could. Now you at this time, we still need software developers, but they’re gonna do things they’re not They’re going to do less coding and leverage more of these tools. Although many of them spend a lot of time learning how to code and how to code well. And went to school thinking that their university degree was a very secure investment in their future. Those things are changing. The same with creatives.

Ramona Shaw [00:14:31]:
Things we used to have artists do or creative agencies do are now at our Fingertips, and we can create them ourselves. Quick asterisk here. There is a lot of conversation around copyright as we’re leveraging AI. In fact, there’s a really interesting lawsuit currently that was filed by The New York Times suing OpenAI because OpenAI has been trained and uses content of the New York Times that’s behind a paywall. So as A word this is what I was saying with the wild, wild west. There’ll be more lawsuits like this that will change how information is being accessed at how we’re dealing with copyrights, with intellectual property rights, attribution, and so forth, but that hasn’t been established yet. So at this moment, whether ethically right or wrong, we can access and create things that in the past we needed the especially to do that now my 10 year old could produce within a few minutes. So expertise will be less valued.

Ramona Shaw [00:15:35]:
The second one is Information. The access of information and misinformation is unlimited. There isn’t a whole lot that’s not on the worldwide web somewhere, and everything that’s on the Internet is in those large language models that Fuel or feed the tools that we use such as ChatGPT, Bart, Croc, you name it. The model, however, is in the hands of a few. And this is where some of the risks and some of the buy concerns around biases comes from. So the Internet is not only accessible to everyone, but also everyone contributes content to the Internet, right, as individual content, as individuals, when we now take all this information, we dump it into a box, and then there’s some models running in the box. And then those models create an output, then the models that take all this input and generate the output, that is in the hands of a few. And because it’s so costly to run these models, big tech and some very well funded companies are able to do this.

Ramona Shaw [00:16:50]:
Even on universities at this time don’t have the capacity, to to create their own. So that is something to keep in mind. It will also change the way we look at information in beta. And the 3rd and last 1 here that I wanna call out is that Over 2024, that’s my prediction. Most companies will assess and look at every single task ask that they’re doing on a repetitive basis to decide if this needs to be done and handled exclusively by a human, If an AI tool can support a human or if it can be completely automated with oversight to mitigate risks. So these are 3 different ways to look at it. Human only. I have to be the one who’s picking up the phone call from a client.

Ramona Shaw [00:17:39]:
That’s a human only task. Can it be augmented by an AI tool? Yes. I could generate based on the script and based on past conversations. An AI tool could listen in to the conversation With a customer and provide suggestions or pull up information right away so that customer support will provide better answers that will solve the the customer’s problems or sell the customer whatever the intention is, be more accurate and be faster? And then 3, can this be completely automated? And that’s when we get into the chatbot sit situations where Do we even wanna do phone calls and pick it up, or do we wanna just offer a chatbot where customer questions or complaints or inquiries could be addressed. Each task will or should go through an assessment like this for most organizations and then decide what are we gonna do in the short term and what are longer term outlooks or perspectives. This is something that is really important for every single professional out there. Don’t be caught off guard or surprised by these kind of assessments and conversations. Put yourself in a driver’s seat.

Ramona Shaw [00:18:57]:
Learn about this topic now, and then set yourself up so that You are value adding whatever you’re doing and how you leverage these opportunities inside of organization. So I’m a quickly recap. It will the changes it’ll It’ll bring expertise will be less valued. There will be other skills that break problem solving, creativity, innovation, collaboration that will become more important. The information and access to information and misinformation will be in the hands of a few as a result of the models that turn input into output. And then 3, every task, a repetitive task, company should Start to assess and evaluate what what should be done by humans only, what should be augmented with AI, and what should be sort of delegated, right, with human oversight only. I hope that you listening to this got you excited as well, not fearful, but really Excited about what these changes will bring, the opportunities it will create. It will create shifts in how we are doing things and, what we’re paying for and what we won’t be paying for anymore, it will create shifts on how we access information and how we work.

Ramona Shaw [00:20:12]:
The more that you understand all of it and the more that you your eyes are open, your brain is Tuning in to the different signals and you’re seeing opportunities and doors opening because you understand what we’re looking for, That will put you in the best possible situation to be on that ride and be on the winning side. If you’re interested to join one of our trainings, Check out the links in the show notes. We will also have some public workshops and public events if you’re looking for an introduction session. So Just make sure that you’re subscribed to our newsletter. You can head over to archova.org or ramonashaw.com as you may have done in the past. Subscribe to our newsletter, and we’ll keep you in the loop of all the different offerings around AI training programs and workshops. And with that, I’m gonna wrap up this episode of The Manage Track In the future, out of 4 episodes a month, on average, there will be on average 1 episode that will focus on AI. And, again, this is because it’s going to be the most important leadership topic of 2024 in our predictions, and we wanna make sure We set you as a listener and as someone part of our community up for success.

Ramona Shaw [00:21:29]:
With that said, next week, we’re gonna talk about the more traditional leadership topic. So stay tuned, and I’ll see you then. Take care. Bye for now. If you enjoyed this episode, then check Add 2 other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes my best selling book, The Confident and Competent New Manager, which you can find on Amazon or at Ramona Shaw.com/book and a free training on how to successfully lead as a new manager. You check it out at ramona shaw.com/masterclass. These resources and a couple more, you’ll find in the show notes down below.