AI for the Time-Starved Leader

But the topic is around artificial intelligence and how artificial intelligence , how should leaders be thinking about it , using it to support them , what things they need to be aware of ? And so let me I'll do the intro and I'll tell you how I know David .

So Dr David Hooper is an executive change partner and the founder of Lunala AI , a consultancy that helps leadership teams lead strategic change through AI implementation and executive coaching . So I came across David .

We kind of connected on LinkedIn , then had a conversation and he just opened my eyes up to the possibilities of AI and what AI is being used for and what it could be used for , and it completely changed my world and some of the things I'm doing and accelerated some of the kind of more mundane stuff that I might have to do .

I just thought it'd be a great opportunity to get David on a call to talk about how AI and leadership might interact . So , david , let's just start by welcoming you to the call . How are you ?

So let's just start off by when we're talking about artificial intelligence and leaders . How do you see leaders using AI today ?

And I think the thing that anybody listening today should take away is that it's still early . It's still early , although AI officially has been around for quite a while . This new generative AI that we're all hearing about in the news , it's still fairly early days . The news , it's still fairly early days .

So I think that it's a really exciting time for leaders to be thinking right how can we apply AI to what we're doing , to enhance , you know , the human elements , to give ourselves more opportunity to have a bigger impact ? I think it's just a really good time for us to be considering AI , do you ?

Isn't isn't officially using ai effectively within the business . It's a great start and I've seen a lot of leaders starting to ask chat gpt questions or or claude , or perplexity or whatever , whatever you know ai that they want to use .

But the other side is when it comes to an ai strategy , is there a golden thread of ai running through every department , through every um , every process and throughout your strategy to um customer service , to all you know internal um processes ? Is there a golden thread running through or are you hiding behind ?

I've asked chat gpt a question , so I tick the box of yes , I'm using ai in the business , right ? Yeah ?

And , and I guess I would say sitting here now , neil and david , I don't think we should feel uncomfortable about that because , as you say , the topic is massive , the future is really exciting , but we've only just touched on the surface and most people probably don't .

And , as you say , I mean , one of the courses I saw on LinkedIn was about how to write a good argument when writing into chat GPT , right , I mean , that's how complex this is is . But if you were having a conversation with someone , you wouldn't ask you know a trivial question , right ? You'd be detailed and specific about it .

So I think the thing I'm struggling with is how does a leader get to do something with this ? Then I mean , what ? How do how do they put this in their armory to be the best leader they possibly could be ? How would ? Where do they go ?

I've enjoyed leading people in the past as well , and something that was always a challenge was things like getting the same inquiry a hundred times off , a hundred different people , when you know it could have just been written down , or trying to create some time for more meaningful , impactful work instead of those kind of more simple queries that you might get .

So let me give you a practical example of one way a leader could , in theory , create something that is is really impactful . So they get more time , they can have a bigger impact on their business . They can they can think big strategy instead of the micromanaging which sometimes we fall into the trap of .

So the first thing I would say is , whenever you're working with AI , it needs to come from a place of that big picture , thinking the strategy . So it's no good kind of just throwing AI at the wall and seeing what sticks it needs to be .

You know , this is the big picture , this is our actual AI strategy and this is how we're going to implement it , and the place that I come from in terms of the business Lunala , is that all AI implementation is essentially a fancy way of saying a change management project . That's all it is . It gets jazzed up with these different terms and with all change .

It takes time , it needs to be long-term and there needs to be support alongside that . So that's from leadership down to supporting staff and training and all those different things .

Now , once we've got that in place , we can actually start to look at a leader's work and go right , where are the bottlenecks , what's taking a lot of time and what are the higher impact activities that a leader might want to do ?

So if we think about the time constraints on a leader or kind of a senior manager , maybe internally they get lots of queries from their team . You know , can you send me the company PowerPoint presentation template that we use ? I need to get in touch with this client , but I can't remember what our policy was around X , y and Z .

You know there's probably a list of a hundred thingsa leader gets asked and they go oh , for goodness sake , I've said this about 20 times , but I'll send it to you this time and that you know that is the day in the life of a leader .

Now , hypothetically , what we could do is we could take a lot of those different documents , the FAQs , ai chatbot , that type of thing and we could call that .

Let's say , albert is the name of the leader , so we could call the AI chatbot Albert AI , and what that means is the employee , instead of bothering you , albert , who's very busy doing brilliant , impactful things . They instead could go well , my inquiry here to Albert isn't that important . I just need the template for the PowerPoint .

I could then get in touch with Albert AI and Albert AI could send me that PowerPoint and that means Albert input . I can take my higher level inquiry to you , to the real human , and we can have a much more impactful conversation . So , yeah , that would just be one way .

You know , really quickly , a leader could create a little bit more more time through AI and automation , but that's what you've just said .

But but you can see how it it's . You know , I say it's not a lot of work . David's been doing a lot of work in the background , but there's in terms of pulling the content together and creating , just loading files into ChatGPT , so that you've got that question it really makes .

But this is where I think leaders need to look at how can I add most value to my team , my customers and the stuff where I'm not adding value , how can I automate that and get AI doing that for me ?

We need to have our leaders with this coaching mindset , and what that means is , over time , when there are challenges and pitfalls , the leaders are really well placed to coach their employees through those challenges to ensure the AI sticks .

So when I'm talking about that macro strategy for a business , it's identifying what are those bottlenecks , what are the time consuming activities ? Why is there lots of human repetition ? You know , is there lots of data entry that's done by hand , for example , that type of thing ? Is there lots of emails being sent that are very similar ?

And when we start to group these things , we can start to build a strategy to go okay , ai could start to be that golden thread through what we're doing . When we've got that strategy in place , I do think there is some intrinsic motivation needed for leaders to actually go right .

I need to learn this new skill because there's a lot of fear around AI , there's a lot of imposter syndrome and , quite honestly , I was in that camp . So my background before starting Lunala was that I was a middle manager at a university , essentially , and I'd done a PhD in peak performance and coaching .

You know , I really love self development and improvement and there was an opportunity for me to take a role called an AI lead and I put myself forward and took that role , which was leading 700 people through an AI adoption process , and I was petrified initially . You know I was brave at the start and said , right , I want to take this role .

But then there was the experimenting and the learning and certainly the failing and trying to get my head around these different concepts . But that's natural , isn't with anything ? When you , when you're developing , there's always little setbacks . But I think leaders just need to be aware of that . There will be a learning curve with this .

But on the other side of that learning curve , we're talking 10 hours back per week , minimum per employee . Uh , that's kind of what what we I I always say when I work with people . So the goal cost is that pain of learning something new .

But on the other side of that , when we get a grip of okay , what AI looks like for a leader suddenly go wow , 10 hours a week , that's the best part of 500 hours back a year . I could do a lot in that time , which gets quite exciting .

Calendar ais and email ais that sort your email and they'll sort your calendar out into the most efficient way . Have you ever used any of those , though ? You , if you've got any that you would talk about or recommend ?

So there's something called Makecom , there's something called Zapiercom , there's something called zapier oh , there's , there's lots of these different kind of automation platforms .

Um , when you connect something called a , a rag system or a knowledge base and I'm not going to get too technical here , but all that is it's the information we've given the ai to work from . So if you've got a certain tone of voice or you talk about certain things , the AI is going to use that to write your emails for you .

So what we can set up is where you get an email . The AI would actually write that email and it could send it if you wanted it to . But what I would always suggest is you can put a trigger right at the end so that you can arrive at the end of your day , let's say 435 o'clock , you've opened your emails .

You normally get 300 emails a day and instead of going through all of them and deciding what you should read or what you shouldn't , what you should draft , what you shouldn't , what you should send . You could arrive with a draft you know , 300 draft emails in your outlook , ready for you to simply have a final check over and just send .

You don't need to edit it if you don't want to , but you could . So there's lots of these different processes where you can set up some automation . I mean , imagine that as a leader where you might get 100 emails a day , that takes an awful lot of time to sift through and decide what's a good email , what should you reply ? All these different things .

But you can set it up so that the email is pre-written for you . It's in your drafts and you could either just give it a quick scan and decide to edit it , or give it a quick scan and go , yeah , I'll send that , and you know that's that's going to bring a lot of the time down , for sure .

What am I going to do with my time if I'm not busy doing all these emails , because you know what it's like , people will hide behind . I'm busy , I've got a full inbox . I haven't got time to manage my team , and so I think there is two sides to that argument , isn't there ? I think , I think it's definitely sorry .

So if you think about a leader who now has 10 free hours a week , they could be um observed I don't love the word observing , but supporting their team going to work . Going to work , you know , collaborate more , perhaps , maybe going on additional courses to go in and learn a bit more .

Maybe they're going and um spending more time with clients , so improving that customer service .

I think that if we can and this is a really important point use AI to enhance those really the things we love and the impactful things , and use AI to get rid of the stuff we hide behind to look busy , I think suddenly a leader could be , you know , really doing , doing some great work and providing some some great support for that , for that team , compared

to , like we say , replying to all these emails or or sending those powerpoints or whatever that that could have been automated I ?

I think that's that's something that I think we should be saying to people here . Right , because if people came on here with thinking David Hooper is going to teach me how to be the best leader I could ever be he is indirectly , but you've got to put the effort in , guys .

Because the other thing that occurs to me is in terms of leadership is how can I be a better you know , how can I run meetings better , better , you know ? So that when we've got the team together , you know we , we run a really effective meeting , and and and get ai to build us what would be a great meeting with some great exercises and great content .

Yeah , so that , and and what might take me half a day to prepare , I can do it in an hour using an AI to help with that . So I guess that's where my head goes as well . It's not just about saving time . It's also about how do I make it even better . There was a great example . There were two of the tech firms in the US that announced this .

I heard it on bbc news but they're using ai to prompt their managers to recognize their people for great things . They've done so .

The ai links to performance , and it could be , you know , engineering performance of how well they're doing producing software code , or it could be sales performance , but that links to AI , and then that sends a prompt to the manager to go . Your employee , john Smith , has just done a fantastic job .

You might want to send him a recognition and you might want to say something like this and so that's enhancing the employee experience . What ? are some of the pitfalls to avoid then , david , so that enhancing the employee experience , yeah . What are some of the pitfalls to avoid , then , david ?

What are some of the ethical things we need to be careful with here ?

You know , my manager has taken the time to personally get in touch with with me . You know I really appreciate that human interaction . I think the bit we need to be careful of as leaders is the transparency when we're using ai . So there's a couple of parts to this .

Firstly , if I got let's take the example of that we were just kind of talking about you know , my my manager's been in touch with me , but it was an automated message and I can tell that it's an AI message . Suddenly I go , you know you can get lost .

You haven't taken the time to get in touch with me , but I think if it's the human part , then the value of that interaction is even better . The value of that interaction is even better and that takes us on really nicely to how a company uses AI or a leader uses AI .

The transparency is really important because I've had a few conversations where companies have been a little bit worried and they've said you know , I don't want my clients to think that it's AI , you know I want them to think it's .

You know I still want them to think it's um , you know , I still want them to think it's me kind of thing , and that's that poses real problems . So instead it's better to be really nice and upfront and say you know , for your example , you know we this is neil ai . Neil ai is an ai employee , but there is an option to speak to a human at any point .

You know that's not a problem and we as humans or consumers go okay , yeah , I can have this , especially when you start to see the interactions as an introvert myself . If I can speak to an AI that's replying like a human and I don't have to have that human interaction , that's a win for me .

So this is a bit kind of on the side here . It takes roughly 10 to 100 times more energy to use ai compared to a google search . So you know that our energy consumption in in the uk has shot up , as it has across the world , and there is new energy farms being built all over the place .

All these these things and that's something that the government will kind of well , are looking at at the moment . So I think , as a leader , although AI is brilliant , we need to also think about the repercussions of using AI when we don't need to . Will a simple Google search do ? Great ?

If it's a simple query we can use , we can use that , and also starting to be aware of the ai that pushes kind of the ethical and the green green initiatives . So google does that , microsoft does that . Open ai , which created chat , gpt does that as well .

So I think we just need to be aware of what's happening , you know , on a bigger picture , when it comes to ai and energy consumption and and how could you be aware of that ?

So if you imagine neural pathways in in the brain , there's something called deep learning , which is is how a the really clever ai is being built these days and it literally works like like a brain kind of those neural connections , that , that interconnectivity . But yeah , can can kind of simplify that any further ?

I would um , and when it comes to actual the , the tasks and the learning it's , it's just going to keep growing . So at the moment , a ai has certain parameters on it . So what that means is humans have given it kind of an overview of .

You know , you can do this , but you , we aren't telling you about this , that you know that , that kind of those kind of rules . But you know , when we think about things like I , robot , the , the , there's something called general ai or super intelligence .

It's got kind of different fancy names , yeah , and that's where the ai starts to really learn it's itself and to grow itself and we , we don't know what's coming where really um and and but that could , in in the future , happen , depending on the powers that be , kind of guide us .

But yes , that's hopefully a little bit of an overview of what it is , and the reason I asked that was to kind of demystify it .

If you could get more knowledge about what it takes to be a good leader , that's got to help you . If you could be more productive , so it gives you more time to be a good leader . If you could be more productive , so it gives you more time to be a good leader , that's going to help you .

Um , yeah , is there a day that this is going to replace neil and myself ?

Yeah , in terms of if someone asks us a question about what do we do here or how could we build this strategy , or how could , so I guess , to a point I'm just trying to think through at what point what is replaced and then what is still needed the real human being .

But actually , from a leadership point of view , are there good leadership traits from each of those that you could use to create the best leader ? Yeah , yeah , it's a fascinating thought . But then how would that ? I guess you can't wheel an AI in front of a board of investors to sell a strategic pitch on money , to get money into a company .

I don't know , david , what are you where your thoughts going with ?

You know , when I speak to Neil , he replies in a certain way , and then when I speak to Albert , he'll reply in a certain way , and you know , we couldn't bring all that into one massive kind of leadership avatar .

We could , but there would still be little bits missing that we would probably notice and go oh , you know , I prefer when albert answers like this , when I , so I'll speak to the human , um , so so that would be one thing , a bit of a curveball , but it might , might be .

An interesting topic is that it's been predicted that by um 2040 so kind of roughly 12 , 15 years , there will be humans in relationships with ai and that will just be something that is accepted and it's yeah , you know , I'm going out with this ai , which is an interesting thought , um , and I think that when it comes to can you wheel out an ai to do a

pitch for you in in person , there is and we are starting to kind of predict the future a little bit , but there is avatars that could be connected to an actual cyborg looking thing . There's been some real developments in america where they've got bartenders who are , you know , literal robots serving drinks and having conversations with , with , with customers .

So there is a world I don't know how soon you know the next 20 years definitely where they will walk among us , literally , I'm sure . So , yeah , it's an interesting topic , but for me , I think there isn't anything that will replace the human interaction . That will always be something that allows us to , to elevate what we , what we do .

That's always going to be there , right and and we should be looking at artificial intelligence as a way of supporting them to either speed that up or to make it better , right um ?

They'll do it in english , typically American or English , whatever . And one of the things David showed me was this piece of AI software or video software where you could take that speech , that town hall , that monthly update , whatever it is , and at the flick of a switch , put it into any language and it matches the lip movement to the words Wow .

And honestly david showed this to me , it's incredible . So you could go from you know , mark zuckenberg addressing his , all his employees , goble , goble . He's talking in american , but the person in spain is hearing it in spanish , the person in france in french , and and and , but they're seeing .

It's not subtitles , it's not dubbed , it's his voice , but it's an AI generated video . And version .

And then if you talk about a leader , a leader's talking to an international team that they've got right and they don't , and they don't have to worry about language or they don't have to worry about time , because it can be recorded now outstanding . You're right . I mean , the possibilities are endless .

Yeah , because other people will , and it's not about replacing you . It's about being a better leader , because you can spend more time with your people and more time with your customers .

Yeah , I think I mean just on the uh , the translation , kind of avatars , they uh , they do still struggle a little bit with jody , so we're I'm a little bit behind everybody on that um , but uh , no , I mean I think , yeah , if you're listening to this , you are ahead still of 90 of people and it takes around 20 hours of research to put you in the top 10

of people who know about ai . So find that 20 hours , whether it's over a month or the next two months or even three , and you're still going to be in in the , in the top kind of quarter of people who know about ai and identify in your role .

One thing that's repetitive , whether it's the emails we've talked about , whether it's the , the internal query inquiries , the internal inquiries and just think about how could you use AI for that and that will be a great start on your AI journey .

Yeah , and there is , and he's up front with it in the in the spiel , but there is . He puts you know , it's got all his content from all over the years and they just put every day he puts out a short , I don't know how long it is five , ten minute podcast , uh , which is completely generated , but it's arnold talking .

I mean , there is a chance that we'd have you back again at some other point . I think what I would say to our audience is , if you've got any comments or things that you think could add value in terms of how AI can help be better leaders , please tell us .

If you've got any big questions that you'd like answered as well , then please tell us those as well . And if that means that we get David back on to go through some of that , that would be really useful to do . But , guys , if you've got any suggestions out there , please tell us . But we've just had some really great insight from a great speaker .

Some really great insight from a great speaker . Thanks ever so much , david , for joining us . Great stuff .