Helping you succeed despite relentless change
Attended a big in-person startup conference this week … as might be expected, a significant theme was AI.
The consensus of VCs, speakers, entrepreneurs: we have only seen the start of the AI wave.
It may well grow to tsunami level …
Learn how to surf it now so you don’t wipe out later 🙂
That is a question being asked a lot (and worried about a lot). But it is the wrong question … at least until AI reaches full human capabilities 😉
Most humans cannot compete with AI in areas that AI excels.
The better questions:
How are you answering those questions in your business or your work?
If you are a leader, how are you helping others answer those questions?
Is it sunset?
Or sunrise on a better day?
Up to you … not AI!
P.S. I’ll be running a brain trust collaborative event on this soon … let me know if you want the link to participate.
What should be our reaction to all the AI/ChatGPT frenzy?
Ariel Simpson said it well in a comment to my post last week about AI-enabled leadership training:
“I love this concept. Asking whether or not AI is a “threat” to modern workers is so short-sighted. It’s a tool! Let’s equip leaders to use this tool well and responsibly, without losing out on the benefits the tool offers.”
AI will only be a threat if you ignore it. Or do nothing. Or wait until the dust has settled.
Not taking action now is the risky move, not the action itself.
No one can tell you *exactly* how things will fall out.
You can, however, up your leadership game and help your team to take your best shots now to figure it out.
If you’d like to discuss how to do that, you can set a time (click here) to discuss your needs, or if you prefer, contact me via email (click here).
Consider this: in normal times, 80% of businesses get the leftovers in the market, if anything is even left over:
➳ The 80% get only 20%
➳ 20% of businesses get 80%
➳ 4% achieve 64%
➳ And just 0.8% achieve 51%
❗ This means about 1 in every 100 businesses get HALF …
Those are the “normal” 80/20 curve effects.
That was before the now AI-enabled tipping point of major change, before COVID changed the workplace in many ways, before societal changes affected how people work over the last few years …
It may well be becoming a 95/5 ratio right now.
Meaning 95% of businesses will get just 5%, while the top 5% get 95%.
It might even become 99/1 … and those on the bottom end of the curve will have little left indeed.
Some are making comparisons to when electricity was introduced, and the impacts on both business and life (e.g., Do most people now depend on a kerosene lamp for light at home or work? Use animals or people to power machines? A washboard for cleaning clothes?).
Many businesses and industries were both destroyed and created almost overnight.
This isn’t about being an alarmist, but being a realist.
Don’t get caught in the 80% … or 95% … or 99% that get scraps.
The time for evaluation and any needed action is now, not in a year or two when others have seized the opportunity. And this is a time of opportunity.
👉 We’re here to help. If you want to explore further, you can set a time to talk (link here) or, if you prefer, contact me via LinkedIn message or email (link here)
📩 If you’d like information like this via email instead of the hit or miss of LinkedIn feeds, send me your email and I’ll add you to the list.
Whatever you do, make sure you “do” …
Will ChatGPT or other AI technology rip your company and your life apart? Again? And how?
By now you’ve probably aware that ChatGPT has become the fastest adopted product in history. After introduction last November 30, it reportedly achieved 1 million uses in just 4 days. 100 million in 8 weeks. An unknown number now, amid continuing swelling of interest.
The new version of ChatGPT is also considered “human” by current AI detectors around 95% of the time, compared to the prior version’s 5% average.
ChatGPT and related technologies are already taking a wrecking ball to Internet marketing, including content generation.
But it won’t stop there … there are epic implications for knowledge and communication in any business, not just marketing businesses or marketing departments.
Whether we like it or not, the current wave of AI embodied by Chat-GPT will be far more disruptive than most people think.
This wave is on top of changes still rippling from the “other” pandemic like the “great resignation,” “quiet quitting,” and sweeping alterations in workers’ expectations. Call it what you want … tsunami, earthquake, wrecking ball … organizations are in upheaval.
It will be both a matter of survival (for many) and fortune (for some) to determine what this tipping point means specifically to their business and their lives.
One thing is certain.
The last 3+ years have accelerated the changes needed for effective leadership and management. ChatGPT, its offspring, and cousins have accelerated them again.
This is why we have invested during the past 2 months to alter our existing programs to better equip leaders to deal with these changes.
One result is the “AI-Enabled Leader” program, in soft release in early March and open April 3.
The program includes the proven Applied MBA Peer foundation, where participants apply in their workplace what they are learning during the program, addressing the Achilles heel of ineffective traditional training.
It also incorporates the unique Compounded Performance Projects Method that can produce a positive ROI … the program both pays for itself and produces continuing, real returns.
With unprecedented change, comes unprecedented challenges.
Leaders need relevant skills to effectively manage the challenges – and they need to start learning and applying those skills *now* … not next year or the year after,
❗ Not changing now is the risky move, not the change itself.
👉 We’re here to help. If you want to explore further, you can set a time to talk (link here) or, if you prefer, contact me via LinkedIn message or email (link here)
📩 If you’d like information like this via email instead of the hit or miss of LinkedIn feeds, send me your email and I’ll add you to the list.
Accountability for failure is a key leadership hallmark … and sadly missing all too often. Greg Larkin noted some recent gaps in a LinkedIn post about how “failing fast” created … failure (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-screwed-up-its-my-fault-greg-larkin/). We have also seen many examples of “celebrity” executives that preside over the sinking of the company ship then go right to another key role.
The danger is usually in the extremes … “fail fast” including failing in the mission/ultimate goal, and “failure is not an option” including any “failure” along the way (e.g., https://novusleadershipinstitute.com/2017/06/10/failure-not-option-produces-failure/).
Thinking those are the two options creates a false dichotomy.
“Fail fast” can work and be valuable when it’s learning for course correction along the way to the end goal, or to decide that the end goal is unrealistic and take another path. It won’t work amid either a risk averse culture or a mindset of infallibility and irresponsibility in final outcomes.
Creating an understanding of what “fail fast” should look like and balancing accountability with different levels/types of “failure” is hard leadership work. And it is continuing work, not just a “one speech and done.”
