This episode is sponsored by Elmo the Complete AI Workforce Platform. It unifies HR, payroll and rostering on one platform with native AI that turns connected data into trusted answers. You can act on the best prepared person in the room wins right. But when your day is back to back meetings, unread emails, and conversations you haven't had time to think through, preparation feels like a luxury you can't afford. But Joseph Lyons has a better answer, and it comes down to
how he uses AI. Joseph is the president of Elmo Software, and I love this conversation because he isn't just talking about how he uses AI in theory. In this chat, he pulls back the curtain to share how he's using AI every single day in super practical ways. We get into the personalized daily intelligence brief his entire exec team
wakes up to every morning. We talk about how he turned a six hour strategy workshop transcript into something that was actually usable and actionable, and the way he now roleplays tough negotiations and difficult performance conversations with AI, including on his drive to work. Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits rituals and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha imber Joe. I want to start with this ELT productivity agent that you have built.
Can you tell me what this is and what it does?
Yeah, Look, I think we have been fortunate in that at Elmo, we've been able to deploy a pretty amazing tool called Glean and that's like an enterprise AI layer that we've got and it integrates with all of the various systems that we have. So we've got, you know, obviously our g suite, We've got Slack, which is used extensively Salesforce, a range of different tools. And then what's exciting about that platform is that it's actually allowed us
to build agents in natural language. It doesn't mean that you need to have an engineering background, you don't need to understand how to code. You're pretty much able to describe what you want the agent to do, and then it connects to the data sources and runs. So what we've been able to do for our ELT is actually build a productivity agent and then it allows us to pretty much run.
For daily for each of our exec team.
It connects all of the applications that they've got and it pulls together a prioritized daily brief, summarizes all the key emails that we need to do, outlines the next seven days of meetings, any sort of open action items.
It surfaces and flags.
What's high importance, what might need to go to the board, any key customer meetings, or any major risks or escalations. So it's been a massive timesaver for all of us in the exec and it makes sure that we're acting on the things that we need to do, and it is delivered beautifully into Slack every morning for us.
That's amazing. And so does every member of the ELT get their own personalized version of that report based on what they need to know?
Yes, exactly.
Wow, that is absolutely amazing. How much time do you reckon that has saved you in terms of all the things that you need to be across Joe.
I think it's not just saving time about planning for that day, but it's also saving time in between a very full meeting schedule because it allows you to have a reference guide and a layer to move through the day.
So I reckon it's saving at least than an hour or two a day.
Now. I know that you know using AI to improve how effective we are with meetings is pretty common. But tell me about a six hour workshop that I think you attended this week, and tell me how you used AI for that, because that is a very long workshop.
Yeah, it is. I mean it's a big time commitment.
It was an important strategy workshop that we were running, and we had a number of senior execs that were in there, and there were some important strategic conversations that we needed to get through, and I found that Zoom AI companion it really only gives you kind of a surface level, bullet point recap of what was discussed then, particularly when you're talking about a six hour conversation that
could cover a range of different topics. We did get a zoom summary of it, but I found it didn't provide us the full detail and get to us a clear set of outcome. So I went back into Zoom and that actually pulled out the full detailed transcript of the day and I uploaded that into Claude.
What came back.
Genuinely kind of blew me away, because what it did was it captured all of the wisdom and intelligence of everything that we discussed, the strategic decisions that were made. Also the ones that were still opened. It pulled together all of the key themes and the changes that the room agreed on. It then tabled for me the next steps. It summarized who were the key owners, and then it reorganized everything by topic and sort of the chronological order.
Of the day.
I then prompted it again to pull together an artifact which I could use to share and cascade with the team members that weren't in there, and then a full email and common structure that I was allowed enabled me to.
Use that to cascade to the rest of the team as well.
So it was pretty mind blowing and kind of went a much larger step further than what you would typically get with Zoom.
That's so interesting and just the value that you got from taking that out of Zoom's AI companion and into Claude. Can you tell me some of the things that perhaps you were thinking about when you were prompting Claude to get the best possible output from it, and whether you know you used the thinking model or just on AUDO, tell me a little bit about that.
Yeah, so I'd already used Claude to prepare, help me prepare the agenda, help me prepare and consolidate some of the pre context and materials, and then you know the outputs in the objectives of what we had for the day. So Claude already had the context of what I was hoping to achieve for the entire workshop, and then having the full transcript and conversation that was following that it already had connected the dots between the conversation and what
the goals were. So it was then simple to be able to prompt it in saying based on everything that you knew of what we wanted to achieve the entire span of the conversation. And then we were really conscious while we were in the meeting, like no one needing to take notes as you typically would. We would actively talk to the AI and make sure that we were clear on capturing actions that needed to be done or
owners or timeframes. So it did make the summarizing of the full day far easier because it did capture everything that was spoken.
Throughout the day.
I love the idea and something we do at Inventium is that if we are gathering in person for an off site or something like that, generally Granola is our meeting transcription tool of choice and we will just pop a phone with granola running in the middle of the workshop room, and it just allows us all to be so much more present because no one is needing to take notes, no one is needing to capture things on
a whiteboard. And then because we've got that full transcript, we can put it into any AI tool that we want prompted in ways that are going to get the best output. So I love that example, Joe. Now, something that I would imagine your job as president of Elmo involves a lot is negotiating. Can you tell me how you've used AI to help with negotiations?
Yeah, I mean, we're also fortunate that we've deployed a tool called Gong, which is also a pretty mind blowing platform because what it does is it captures every single interaction that we have with our customers, so every call, every meeting, any piece of content that they've engaged with, any presentation or even voice messages that may be left. So it gives us a complete history of the relationship with had with either a new customer that we're looking
to engage with or an existing customer as well. And then I guess where it gets really powerful is when you feed that history into AI. Before I walk into a conversation or a negotiation. Because what I've been able to do is extract all of the intelligence from any of the pre meetings that have occurred with some of our team. I can upload the detail of the partnership
contract that we're trying to work through. What I can then do is prompt and explain kind of what my commercial position is, what theirs may be, Prompt and understand what is some of the likely objections that might come out of the discussion, and then help define pretty much a cheat sheet that I can keep hoping during my laptop in the call, and effectively it's kind of mapped out what the game theory of that negotiation might be.
I don't just rely.
On the intelligence though what we've got in Gong obviously, make sure that I'm always speaking to the humans that have engaged with customers or prospects as well, because it is important to get that human overlay as well.
I'm wondering, Joe, is there an example of a meeting you know that you've had in the last few weeks that you know maybe has required some tough negotiation and just some specific examples of how that has helped you. Because it sounds incredibly powerful. I'm very aware of gong. We don't personally use it an inventium, but yeah, a
super cool tool. Yes, I'd love to hear an example maybe of where in this AI world do you approach the negotiation differently and got to a better result than you know three or four years ago.
Yeah, we had a partnership agreement that we were looking to strike and this has only happened just over the last couple of weeks. We had what their position was on the commercial terms, what mine and the businesses were both on pricing, on contract duration, and on some of
the sort of technical components. So it allowed me to prompt it to say, well, where were the points of contention and help empathize what the partner's position was, but most importantly what ours was, and then what would be some recommended solutions that we could come to terms on, and most importantly, how to kind of build a talk track and an empathy layer so that we could actually
reach a conclusion. And fortunately we've just had sign off and we're moving forward with getting a contract stood up, so it did actually work.
Yeah, awesome. I would imagine that that would also change your kind of mental and emotional state going into a negotiation, which can obviously be quite stressful situations.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean I think it allows me to feel more confident knowing all of the variables, feeling really prepared, knowing what's transpired before, and then knowing what the points of contention are and then you know what option AB or C might be on how to respond to that.
Now, something that I know a lot of people use AI for is role playing conversations. And I would love to know for you as the president of an organization, and I feel like people think of, well, you're running an organization, like surely you're confident, you don't need to like you know, PA for meetings, like you know you've got it. But I know that you do use AI in this way, Jo, And i'd love to hear like a couple of examples of where and how you've used AI to prepare for tough conversations.
Yeah. So it's a good question, Amantha.
I recently had a pretty difficult performance conversation with a team member that I needed to have and wanted to make sure that I was really well prepared and that I'd thought through how I was going to frame that feedback the specific examples, and I quite often use the drive into work as time to think. And I have connected Clawed Voice directly through so I can actually speak
to it in my car. So I was able to just in a conversational way explain the situation, explain the person that I was dealing with, the specific challenge that we were having to face into the feedback that I needed to provide. And it was amazing what it came back with in terms of giving me a pretty cohesive talk.
Track and how to approach it.
And I could then refine it based on further prompts to make sure that it was engaging, that we got to a clear outcome, and that it was a mutually beneficial conversation.
And how are you prompting the AI in that kind of an instance, Like how much or how little information are you feeding at the start of that conversation if you like, in the car, I think.
The more the better.
So it's explaining who the person is on the other side, what role they're in their history, either working with us or it might be a customer for example. You know, what are the key challenges or the opportunities that we're needing to work through being as specific as you possibly can, so that the AI has full context of the environment of what we're chatting about.
Now. Obviously, as a leader, like you're getting so much input from so many sources, you're getting I would imagine weekly reports from different teams, different functions. Can you tell me how you're using AI to synthesize all that information that must be incoming in your world.
That's probably been the biggest game changer for me, and particularly in the last few months. I'm sure many of your listeners and most leaders would experience this. You find yourself getting different reports in different formats from five or six different functions, and each presenting their own complex data sets. They might have their own perspective, and in many cases there's not really any single person that's holding the full picture.
So what I've experienced particularly lately is that now I can ingest the range of different information I can pull. Sales data in might be marketing metrics, it might be customer insights, it might be performance cross border with different currencies.
It might be product and engineering updates as well. So I can ingest a lot of different formats and data sets, and what I'm finding is that the AI can now produce really cohesive and consistent and useful reporting, which I think previously would have taken hours and hours and hours to consolidate. And what I'm seeing is that the quality is incredibly high because it's spotting patterns across the data and things that I may have missed if I've just read each report individually.
And how is that set up behind the scenes? Is that an automated process now is that you're manually uploading documents to Glean or to claude, Like, what does that look like behind the scenes.
So initially it had been using claw to be able to pull that together in prompting it, in defining a well formatted set of materials that are structured with clear recommendations for.
The week ahead.
And now we're in the process of being able to automate that utilizing Glean with an agent, which means that on a weekly basis, I've got all of the inputs of the reports coming from different teams and functions, and then producing a format and an output that I've landed on as being the format that's relevant, that provides cohesion across the metrics, but then more importantly, recommendations and insights for me to act on that.
Sounds absolutely amazing and such a timesaver as well, to know, Joe clevisely like a large part of a leader's role is strategic thinking. And you know, I think in the AOL conversation we hear so much around all the productivity benefits and the time savings, but I feel like people talk less around how it is augmenting the quality of their thinking. Like I'd love to know, Joe, you know some other ways that you use AI to stress test your thinking, to bounce ideas around, you know, anything that's
improving the quality of your thinking. How are you using it in that way?
Yeah? Pretty much.
Any input that I'm getting where my instinct to respond to it may not be as quick and I need some time to think about it. So it might be an email, it might be a Slack message, it might be you know, just the thought that's come to me after a meeting. I'm very open and willing to just feed that into a claud or whatever model that I'm using, and then prompted to help me evaluate what the issue with is, what the challenges are, how am I consider it and give me two or three options about how
to move forward with it? So it's increasingly becoming my system in pretty much everything that I'm doing, which is allowing me to be far more productive and more effective in the moment for what that issue is that's coming my way.
Amazing, Jo, it has been so great having you on. I feel like it's not every day you get to speak to the head of a company just really transparently around how they are using AI and how it's really transformed, like really a lot of what you do in your role as president of Elmo. So thank you so much for sharing and for being so practical with all those examples that you have given.
Thanks Amantha, it's been great talking with you.
If you want to explore how Elmo is building AI into how Australian organizations manage and develop their people, head to Elmosoftware dot com dot au and of course to follow How I Work wherever you listen to your podcasts so you don't miss what's coming up next. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the Coulan nation.