Latest / Leading in Change / 4 Things Leaders Must Do to Build a Team That's Ready for AI
Transcript
- Kellie Bourque: Hi, I'm Adrian. I'm Devin. And we are here to talk with you today about managing your team in the age of AI. So last time we talked about managing your career, and some of the things that we hit on were being excellent at what you do, you know, really having mastery and and staying ahead of the curve. We talked about having r strong reciprocal relationships. So relationships with people that you could count on and that would count on you. and then the third thing we talked about is being able to articulate your impact in a clear way and demonstrating your impact. Was there anything else from the conversation that ⁓ you wanna recap for people? You know, I think that's a great recap. And I would just say that I think a lot of our conversation was just AI is another change and it's a big change and that can be pretty scary. But end of the day you come back to some things that are just solid. And I think those those three things are solid. And hopefully that gives people a bit more of a feeling of, well, I can't control what's happening around me, but I can control how I show up and the things that I do. that will help me be at impact and ⁓ contribute my work to my organization in a meaningful way, even with the ongoing change, biggest piece of that being AI. Yeah. I think that's right. ⁓ one of the things I remember you said is ⁓ you can ⁓ the portability of career, right? Like you can take it with you. It's not stuck to a single organization. ⁓ So today we're going to talk about managing team. Before we dig into that, ⁓ I would love ⁓ if you could, we're gonna do an icebreaker, my favorite thing. Tell us one way that you are a using AI right now. Tighten things up a lot of times, taking things that I've written or things that I'm putting together and collapse it into something. meaningful or incorporate into something meaningful that can be used really quickly. So I'm loving it for summarizing lots of data from ⁓ surveys. Just launched one this morning. I'm looking forward to being able to do that quickly so that we can turn around and as a board use that. ⁓ it's a pre-capital campaign ⁓ survey. And I'm not sure that we would have enough time if not for AI. I'll be able to take that data from two hundred plus people and turn it into something that a board can take in two hours and identify themes and strategic priorities. And I I think those are the kinds of things that can be really helpful. And then ⁓ just helping things that would take a lot of time. People ask for something and you know the answer and you do a quick, you know, brain dump and then put it into AI and let it do its thing so that I don't have to spend a lot of time with all the little connecting words. I've just got it the good stuff. Yeah, it can take the good stuff, embed it, and turn it into something. So those are a couple of the the big ways I'm using it right now. And I realize that that is nowhere near what it is capable of. But those are the little things that help me every day. Yeah. I love that example. I think for me a ⁓ similar things for sure in the day-to-day work. I'm also like planning a vacation and, you know, trying to create some automation, like offloading of stuff that I don't like to do ⁓ through leveraging AI. So that's pretty nice. ⁓ just in terms of we have a side hustle and sending invoices and you know, putting things in folders and like all of that kind of stuff, creating some automation there. So that's been cool. ⁓ okay, so then let's dig into how, you know, teams can ⁓ thrive in the age of AI. So one of the questions that I keep hearing in coaching conversations is not really about necessarily the tools or the technology, but really about like how do I build my team for the future and how do I lead my team into the future when I don't know what the next two years is going to look like. And I'm curious, you know, what are your thoughts around that? ⁓ I'm seeing teams already hold off on hiring because they're not sure is AI going to replace this job? Is do should we backfill it? Is it the right job? You know, what are some of the questions you hear people asking and how are they navigating this current moment? think the big question right now, a lot of people are still just at the beginning when when they're really trying to figure out how how how they should be using AI. I mean, I still feel like I'm having on the ground plenty of conversations where I'm saying, are you using AI for that? Are you using AI for that? So it doesn't don't think it's fully hit. I think that organizations are also trying to figure out how to incorporate it, right? Should we ⁓ get everybody access to certain AI different tools. Tools. So I think then the bigger questions come. I think that that's when the scary part starts. Once those things happen, what does that mean for us? And I don't think people know. So anytime you don't know, you're scared. Yeah. ⁓ so helping a team through that. I just had a conversation the other day at a credit union, and you know, she was asking her team. to do something for a customer or member, we should be doing this. And she could see, knew that it was doable, but could see that person, this leader, panicking a little bit because she felt like the change would mean that it would impact her people. And I think that's always scary. So as on as organizations go down this road, I think team leaders, I mean it starts with the team leaders, they've got to think about AI and what that's gonna mean and what that will mean to their people. But I think if you're doing the right thing, you've just got to figure out where do we need to go. And you figure out the people's stuff later and you help your team through it. I think there's going to be so much that we can do that we haven't done because AI can help. Yeah. I mean, I think all those projects, you know, even around here, what are all the projects that we wish we had time for? And we never get to because we're in the minutiae. And that's the way I think about it. It was like AI can help us with all that. So we can do really cool things and we can do the things that sit on the back burner and we can get there faster. Yeah, I love that analogy. I think about two things. One of the things you said is, you know, s people are slowly rolling it out. And I think because the labor market is kind of stagnant right now, like people while I know a lot of people that are interested in looking, a lot of people are s kind of staying put in jobs right now. Like it feels uncertain. And I think that stagnant that s stagnation is not giving people a lot of insight into what competitors are doing or what other people are doing. You know, so I don't know that everybody has visibility into how other teams are using AI. And I'm seeing some teams really accelerate and use it across the board. I'm working with one client who's like, I I'm getting rid of project managers. You know, she's like, I I've built built, you know, ⁓ a whole automated system for me for our project management and we don't even need them anymore. I think that's an overstatement. Right. But There's there's that end of the spectrum. And then there's another team I'm working with that's just now rolled out Enterprise Chat GBT. So they've gotten Chad GBT access for their entire organization. And so I think that spectrum is broad and wide. ⁓ the other thing I think about that you said is I do think people are treating this like a technology problem and a lot of times it is a leadership and a change management problem. And where I'm seeing failed adoption or slow adoption, like it feels so obvious from the outside looking in. That people aren't ready emotionally for for the change. I'm thinking about your blog, and you know, you write about we have a leadership design problem. And I think that's what you're heading towards with what you just said. You know, what does it look like from a design standpoint to have an organization, a team that's ready for this? And because there's there are two things. Are we ready for AI? ⁓ From a to use it, to have it our organizations, but do we have the systems, the structure, the kind of communication and the way teams need to work set up? And I think what you were saying is we kind of don't. So yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about that. I think you know one of the biggest things is is decision making. You know, when you think about ⁓ traditional organizations, they're Extremely hierarchical. You know, we work a lot in Petrochem and healthcare, where hierarchy is critical, right? There's clear decision rights up the food chain, down the food chain is how things are talked about. Information is often siloed. And when you're going through, I think, broad technology transformation, but especially AI, where the pace of getting work done, like you just said, you can get so much more done. You can get to all those new projects. But also, you know, translating information, you know, synthesizing information, somebody can have that in their hands in a moment. Wha how do you change the way the information flows up and down and across the organization? How do you think about decision making in in a world where things are moving a lot more quickly without creating bottlenecks? I think some of that shifting is what's gonna have to happen to I I hate to call them like legacy organizations, but traditional hierarchical organizations. Yeah, I think the very nature of the environment we're in, right? Because if we bump this up against the environment we talk about, which is high change, ⁓ cha a a little chaos, then you say, Well, we have to be able to move fast to meet the change and to meet the market. And to do that, you know, how do you move fast? You know, AI can help you move fast. But there also has to be all the other things that can move faster. And when you have an organization where you've got the the slow move up and down, right, inherently you can't that doesn't match what AI can do for you. So that's why you've kind of got to close that that gap that that you talk about, the the readiness gap ⁓ around the people and the s the systems, the old systems that we've created for decision making and communication and problem solving. Yeah. So when you look at, you know, I I'll call it like industrial era ⁓ model, which is like predictability, you know, scaling through consistency, clear hierarchy, ⁓ leaders expected to be have the be-all end all of knowledge, right? Valued for expertise. Guess what? Expertise is like kind of irrelevant right now. So how do you start to break open that bottleneck and and and shift the thinking when ⁓ like how have you seen that work before? I mean, I'll just ask it plain like that. How have you helped organizations kind of open up and and shift out of that siloed mentality? Well, on an individual level, where it's getting people out of the mode where they think that they have to be the answer man or the answer woman all the time, because that's part of the problem is if things have to if you have to be there and if you have to have the all the answers, the organization can't move very quickly. I've been in you've probably been here too, where you're you're you've got a bunch of people in the room and no one people are walking out to take calls. They're on their phones because no one can move without them. And they're always like, sorry, problem at the office. Sorry, I really need to talk to them. Well, that's a problem if you can't be away. That means something's not happened on the other end. And then I think that critical thinking, right? If you were making all the answers, you're not creating good critical thinking in the organization. And that is a risk. It's a huge risk not to have people who can think and solve problems. So you know, we've got to help people understand that as they increase the capacity of their teams through their critical thinking through their ability and allowing them to think and solve problems. But the way that starts is you're not answering all the time. You're asking questions. You're saying, tell me what you think we should do. Yeah. Take me through the pros and cons. What do you want to do here? And they learn through that. And then you know a lot of people make some mistakes. So you know on an individual level, you know, leader level, you've got to be doing things like that. But on an organizational level, I think absolutely you know, what has been created around communication and the culture of letting people try things and have little fails that they learn from. And so sometimes the organization keeps them from it. They're like, you know, my boss expects me to know ever everything. And if mistake is gets made, that's on me. And so how do you change that culture? Because if you don't, you're really gonna have a hard time keeping up, being competitive in this environment. It just moving too fast. So ⁓ you know, you talk a lot about distributed leadership. Yeah. I think I got that right. And I think some of that is part of it. So it's one thought I that I had as you say that is I we so in in traditional organizations think about leadership as a role and it's a function. But I think in the future people need to start to think of leadership as like a fluid position. Right. You're leading on this thing. You've got decision rights on this project. you know, sometimes the person closest to the work n needs to be the lead on this. And that's just a shift, I think, from the way people have operated in the past. And so if we look at leadership as more distributed or decision making rights as more distributed, or or teams as a more autonomous, you know, that you might have a team. over here that's directing work and a team over here that's directing work and then they come together to collaborate in some way, but it's not top down. How how do those, you know, one, do organizations get flatter, maybe probably? I I think they absolut I I think organizations absolutely get flatter. I think you've got to have so, you know, in a traditional leadership development model, you've got, okay, hey, you're an individual contributor, so you should be have really good technical, clinical, functional skills and be good at what you do. And then it you get promoted, maybe you're a a manager of people or a supervisor of people. And now you've got to have some some people skills and you've got to be able to communicate and delegate and ⁓ you know, lead on goals and and then at the executive level it's more it might be more strategic and political and ⁓ you know, innovation and where are we going. And what I see is that we're looking for all those things earlier. What that means is that people have to be in the know quicker. ⁓ they are getting pulled into things. And so they've got these opportunities to work with lots of people and to increase their business acumen ⁓ and to be part of things sooner. And so I think you've got to create an environment that that can happen. ⁓ you know, when we think about leaders and we think about teams and we even think, you know, I like a sports analogy, Adrian, so sorry. But, you know, the coach or maybe the leader, you know, prepares the team, but what they count on is that when that team's out on that field that they're making some of those decisions and leadership comes from lots of different places. It's not just maybe the, you know, the if you're talking about football, it's not like just the quarterback. Like everybody is leading at times and stepping up and stepping back. And sometimes one person has a greater role in the moment, depending on what's happening. And and a lesser role depending on what's happening on that field or on that court. And so I think truly it's an opportunity to have a real team dynamic. You know, great teams have leaders throughout at many different levels, leading at many different times in order to be responsive to what's happening on the court or the field. So I love that. I love that analogy. ⁓ it reminds me of The you you've heard me say this, the Stanley McChrystal quote from Team of Teams, moving from chess master to gardener. Like instead of being the chess master controlling every piece on the board, how do you create the conditions for people to thrive? Moving from command and control to creating the environment and and cultivating the conditions for leaders to thrive. But I what I really like about the team analogy is that it's the expectation that everyone is operating at a A bar of excellence, right? You to for you can't have weak links on a great team. And I r was listening to a podcast the other day, and one of the things they said is that the majority of people have never been on an excellent team. And that like crushes me to think about because so many of my formative leadership experiences come from having very high standards of excellence, not only in competitive play through gaming, but also. being on a really high performing team where we had a leader that had clear expectations, high bar of excellence, clear metrics for success. And if you never experience that environment, which this podcast was saying that the majority of people have not, you know, how do you create those conditions? So I'm curious what you would say to that someone who does l love sports and think about that kind of coaching mentality. You know, often when I'm doing workshops and we start talking about teams. I'll ask when was the last time you felt like a team? Or when's the last time you felt like you were on a really great team and what made that team great? And you know, there are a couple of things that come from that conversation. And it's interesting because some people say sports and some people say work teams. But there are a lot of parallels in in kind of what what people come up with. They said, you know, well, we had a really clear vision of and really clear goals. And so we were kind of all knew what we were working towards. And, you know, we we were creative together and we spent time together and we celebrated together and everybody on the team was trying to get better. Like there were there were, you know, things and and that's true of sports and and of work. But ⁓ a really interesting thing was after Katrina, which if anybody's familiar with, I'm sure everybody's familiar with Katrina in New Orleans, I would ask that question at workshops and after Katrina, and a really interesting thing happened that kind of blew me away. And that was that I would ask the question, when's the last time you felt like a team? And I cannot every workshop, someone would say Katrina. This really blew me away because I was like, how could you name this thing that was arguably one of the worst things that happened to most people? So disruptive and so tragic and so many awful things about it. But what they were saying is it was so cl they felt so together in what had to be done. It was so clear to them. And people just kicked in and started doing what had to be done. They didn't wait for a leader to emerge. ⁓ that was like people just came together and started doing what had to be done. And it felt even in the midst of tragedy, tragedy, it felt like a team. And I think one of the big lessons that came from that for me was that we think of things, disruptions and change and AI as like, well, it's a really it's a time of disruption. And it can be. But change and even hard things can also be a time when people can come together. But as you said, you kind of have to create the conditions for that. You have to not, you know, is there is there conflict or togetherness when these things happen. And that's part of what the leader's job is to do, or whoever the leader is at the time, is it is to create those conditions where people don't see see this as it can cause a lot of conflict, right? And so they really work to make sure that it's not just conflict ridden, but that whatever's happening they could I think you can create space for people to come together around that by helping people see that they have a part in it and that they're still they're they're important in it and they can creatively we can do this together and we can figure this out and all those things can be part of it. Yeah. Not sure where we started Adrian. I think that's great. That's the road on it now. I mean, so we've talked I think we've framed the problem really well. And so then how do you create those conditions, right? You're naming some of the things. ⁓ but one of the things I think about is scaling for adaptability or agility instead of certainty. And so like how do you do that? ⁓ I think there's a lot of fear right now that teams are gonna shrink, ⁓ that head, you know, they're not gonna replace headcount. What the early research is showing from HBR, Harvard Business Review, is that AI is actually creating more work for people. The volume of work is increasing. Because there is this expectation that you're using it to get more done and they're constraining resources, right? I'm working with one ⁓ you know, billion plus company that is nitpicking over headcount at every level. You know, they they are so focused on keeping CapEx costs down that they are, you know, decl denying or not backfilling positions across the board in the organization. That's creating so much compression. on these teams. And the answer has been just use the AI to get it done. And so I I think that that's going to default to some bad behavior, right? Not strategic, like ⁓ just think about how how you do it differently in my head. It's look at what AI can automate or take off your plate or condense the timeline to do. And then think really intentionally about what tasks you replace that with. You know, how do you take the Steering wheel back instead of feeling like this is just work is running away with you. I'm curious about your thoughts on that. I mean, I I a hundred percent agree with you that that AI will make will will allow us to do more work and may mean that there are changes in the people that you need. That's always been the case, right? There there are plenty of ⁓ of of times throughout, you know, the history of of work where we've gotten automation, we've gotten new things, and it's changed work and it's changed maybe the number of people, the skills that you need, what people do, how people work. And I do think there's a lot of wanting to jump on the AI band bandwagon without really being thoughtful. And I think if we slow down and we're, you know, I mean there's some things you should slow down for. And that is one of them. We have to slow down and say, okay, for us, where are what are the opportunities with AI? And it can't just be let's get AI and not hire and do away with people. That's that's not going to get you where you want to go. So really, and we may talk about this a little bit next time around the organization, but organizations really have to build this in, include it as part of their strategy. And then potenti potentially, and I think you've said this before, then dig in all and have an AI strategy where you're really looking out and saying, for us, and that's going to be different for every organization, what does this really mean for us? And how do we deploy AI, but also how do we think about the humans that we're gonna need, the people that we're gonna need, what skills do they need, and where do they fit in with all this? Because they absolutely fit in. I don't think you can not, I think for most businesses, you can just not not have people and think that you're gonna pull this off. And part of that is because organizations aren't ready, but honestly. Society is completely ready. So you've got to figure out what those lines are. Yeah. I think that's great. I w one of the things that I I want to dig into for a second that stuck out, you know, you said ⁓ that you need to create an AI strategy. So I th I believe that is a leadership exercise, right? That is not a technological tool problem. It's what is the work that we do? What is the work we want to be doing? What are our priorities as an organization? And how can technology support us in getting there? And a lot of people are not slowing down to answer th those questions, right? Where are we going? What is our true north? You know, and so I think that point of just slowing down and talking about it and being intentional, like this is that kind of slingshot moment to pull back so that you can fling forward. Well, there's that saying, right? Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Yeah. And I think you've got to take a beat. And what I'm seeing mo mainly is I talk to people and they say, Yeah, I think they're getting ready to get us all clawed or Chat GPT or we hired someone to come in and put something in place. And honestly, they I don't even know most people still don't know why they're getting their subscription or what this organization's actually gonna come in and do for them to incorporate AI because they haven't done that part you just talked about. Right. They don't really have an AI strategy embedded in their gl their broader strategy. Yeah. And I think it's like we said, where are we headed? Now we know AI needs to be a part of this and we know that's going to impact our business. Let's be thoughtful about it. And then we can go out and we can actually do some, do the right things. And I think when you do that, it becomes less scary because it also gives you you've got a great this is where the business is going. We've got a strategy for this. This is what it looks like. This is what it will mean over time. Then I think you can get people on board. If you're not com if you don't know that and you're not communicating that, then it is does just feel scary. That's right. And so like at the individual team level, if your organization is not taking that approach, I think you as a leader can still have some internal locus of control, right? You can look at what is my team ultimately accountable for? What are the tasks that we execute on? How can AI you can kind of go through this at a micro scale, right? What what can AI help us do smarter, better, faster? And then what priorities does that allow us to get to? That really let humans be the best of what they do, which is creative thinking and ideation and relationship building, you know, and and layering in all the context that makes the work product great. ⁓ you know, I think that's when we say slow down, one of the other like just tactical, technical things, structure your data really well. Get your data all in one place, you know, because all of these AI tools, be it agentic AI or be it LLMs, it all r relies on data infrastructure. And so s like taking a beat, look at your data, look at your t do a task audit, and then think really intentionally about how you're gonna layer the tools on top of that. So I love what you just said. And, you know, you were talking about earlier, and I think we always try to talk about this as like what can I actually do? And I think absolutely, if you are a leader of a team, at whatever place you're at in an organization. Number one, we don't spend enough time just thinking about the business, right? You're too busy in the day-to-day. It was a great exercise to for and a great leadership exercise for the leader to take a a bit of time, go get some place where they can think, ⁓ put AI, right, or or on the on the on the top of the page, and then do would say do a s a SWAT, would I mean just that's so basic, but it's a great place to start about, you know, when I think about, you know, artificial intelligence, what do I believe are strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats, I would add to that an environmental scan where you're taking a look around you and saying what's happening around us in the right now and in the near term from a variety of angles, technology, socio cultural, ⁓ environmental, economic, political, That may influence some of what we do as our global strategy. And then what does that mean for how our our risk and opportunities with AI and find some of those opportunities and themes? It does two things. One, it might give you some short-term things you can start playing with with your team and including them in that. The second thing it does, I think, for a a a leader at any level is it's going, we talked last time about getting ahead of things. You will be more ready to have the broader conversation with the other leaders in your organization if you have done at least a little bit of this work and applied it to your your world. And I think from that, you can probably extrapolate that to the bigger organization. But a lot of people are going to go in those conversations not prepared. And it could also spur going to other leaders or your boss and saying, like, hey, I've been playing around with this and thinking about it. Are we having a bigger conversation? So what you can do, I think that hits two levels. It starts getting you thinking big picture, which is a great just development experience and action. But I think it also I would choose one or two things for that and say, you know what, let me grab my team and in a way that that maybe can be baby steps and helps them get their arms around it, save space. We can just start talking about this and playing this, playing with this. And I think if you do it right, sometimes people are amazed. Like you could really excite your people over some of this. Yeah. I think that's a great point. I and I think we missed that opportunity. So if you can do some things, don't let your people why would you let your team live in fear when they don't have to? And some of that's just about getting out front. With the communication and thinking, including them in the conversation. Yeah. And it becomes less scary. Yeah. I love that. ⁓ okay. So we've talked about ⁓ really, you know, how do you start to scale for agility and look at things at the task level and be intentional about the time savings? ⁓ the next thing we have is really building your team's capacity for decisions. So if we are more distributed, if teams are more autonomous, how do you really build that ⁓ decision making muscle and how do you shift from that hierarchical the decision maker is up here to the decision makers are down here. I think one, you've got to your first step is to not think that you have to make all the decisions and and ⁓ and start to have ⁓ different kinds of conversations with your people. So on a really basic level, it's when people come to you, it's it's asking them. And that tell does a couple of things. One, it and empowers them to come up with some of the answers. It also tells you a little bit about their thinking. And you need kind of need to know where they stand right now. and Sometimes people have really great critical thinking. When you ask them that question, they like amaze you. And then you go like, Absolutely, you're thinking about that just right. That's terrific. You also get to see if they're a little gun shy, because I'll be honest with you, if you've been in an organization or on a team before where you have been shut down for, you know, and have to mother may I things, it can be hard for people that that muscle is likely atrophied. So think figuring out where your team is at with that and starting to expect that, I think you can do that individually. when people come to you with questions, turn it around and ask them. They're great questions to ask, ⁓ which we talked about earlier. I think the other thing is at your meetings, start bringing things to the team and asking them for input. And I think you've got to be thoughtful about that because the same people that are very verbal will be the people that keep talking. Yeah. And so if you know your team a little bit, you can say, Hey, I won't really want to talk about this. ⁓ I'd love I've got a couple of questions that I want to pose at our next meeting and I'd love for you to have some thoughts about that and want to hear everybody's input and then create space for all the voices. I think that's great. Which is something that we forget to do. And so the same people end up in the conversation. So when we talk about how do you build capacity of the team, more people included, more people invited, more people having a chance to have input and asking people their ideas and what they think should be done. And that's going to give you a good feel of where your team's at, both in their their critical thinking, but also in their comfort and how empowered they feel to be part of those conversations. ⁓ so I think that's a a really easy and good place to start to start that doesn't really cost you anything. Yeah. And ⁓ and then including them maybe in the path forward related to AI. So, you know, right off the top of my head, I'm gonna think of more things, but right off the top of that head, those are a couple of things that are very easy to do. And we talked yesterday and I want to talk about that more and you can just about general things you can do. AI is just a big change. Things we can All do to lead better in change. Yeah. Yeah. Through in. I want to talk about that. Okay. Okay. We'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. I write yourself a sticky note. ⁓ so sticking on the idea for now of of decision making and getting teams better and more prepared to do it. One of the things I like that you said is ⁓ I think you use the word calibrate. You know, you've got to calibrate their decision making ability. I love the statement, ask them to show their thinking, because that helps you understand how did they arrive at the decision. That will also oftentimes elucidate where are they using AI and where are they not. You know, how are they using AI to help in their decision making and it's productive versus how are they offloading their thinking and it's not productive? It makes me think about when I was growing up, ⁓ my I did competitive sharpshooting. And one of the things that when you have a an a new gun that you're using is you've got to just get in some reps. You're gonna shoot, you're gonna aim, and you're gonna miss. And that's doesn't mean you're bad at it. It's a new tool. You you aren't calibrated to the machine yet. And so you go out and you do some practice rounds and and you and you try get get your reps in and you will literally see yourself getting closer and closer and closer to that target. And you know, you'll hit it really close and then all of a sudden you'll be off again. And you'll hit it really close and you'll be off A a little bit less. And you do that enough over time that then you can almost hit it with your eyes closed. And I think that's what a lot of leaders are afraid to do is let people get those misses. You know, let people get those reps. So how do you find those low stakes opportunities to take your shot and miss, but you recalibrate, right? It ⁓ it's not quite so literal, but I I love what you you're saying there. I think we've got to take a look and say what is the What is the culture of learning in our organization? And because learning by means that I'm doing things and I'm not gonna be that good at first. No way. Yeah. And also if you're expecting the people to be as good as as maybe you feel like you are, that's a trap. But the thing is, is that you're good at what you're good at in a changing environment. Who knows? Nobody's good at anything. So it's a great space to Try things and I love what you said. And and look, if we get back to sports analyses, what do you do? Lots of reps, right? Sharpshooting the the go and through plays over and over again to get it right. So I think that looking at that, that's another thing a leader can do and say, what's the culture we've got here? And am I creating space for people to learn and try things and make mistakes? And Is my team comfortable with that? And how will I help them get more comfortable with it if they're not? Because we have a lot of cultures where it's not comfortable, where it's ⁓ you know, and then what does that do? That drives all the decisions up because everybody's nobody wants to make them, right? Nobody wants to be in trouble. That's right. I mean, I think that's one of like the biggest shifts people have got to make is you've got to get comfortable with decisions being distributed, and therefore you've got to be comfortable with people making bad calls. And guess what? It's gonna be okay. And so how do you create the conditions? Again, going back to the Gardner analogy, the coach analogy, that people can get safe reps in, that people can, you know, grow into the capacity to really play at a higher level. Yeah. Well that's gonna hit hard on all our control freaks and perfectionists out there, right? No. No because that's and and look, what who gets in leadership? A lot of control freaks and perf perfectionists, right? Yeah. And so so All right, going back to sports one more time, I'll challenge, you know, ⁓ a group and sometimes it's around delegation. And I'll say, okay, coach's job to build a team that can take the field and perform. No matter how bad that game gets, guess what? Coach can't go out there and throw that ball or make that block or take that shot. And so if you think like that, then What can we learn from that? We can say, well, my job is to prepare a team that can be on that field and can make can perform and make decisions because I can't go out there. And what they have to be able to do for that is they have to have they they have to do things. And guess what? Even winning teams make lots of mistakes. Right? That game does not go perfect. Lots of stuff happens, but they're still getting to it to an end point. And so Whether you think about it as the gardener, are you thinking about a a coach really building a great team that has the capacity to go out there and work together and win games, right? Or, you know, grow, then I think that's a different way to think about how you show up every day. And your job is not to answer all the questions and do all the things, but it is to grow and build and nurture a group of people who can do those things. Yeah. And that allows the work to happen where it needs to happen. ⁓ I think that is such a good segue to our next section, which is talking about another place that I think gets perfectionists and control freaks really uncomfortable, which is bringing AI use out into the open. So leading teams in this moment, I I think it there are two things that are really critical. One, You talked about the pace of change accelerating. You talked about ⁓ how decisions are gonna have to be made faster. Communication has got to be abundant in that scenario, right? People have to have access to more information. It's gotta be less siloed. You've got to be communicating more. ⁓ and I think that on top of that, early research, again from Harvard, is showing that you need to be honest about when you're using AI. And I think you are so great at. doing this of saying, hey, I let Claude take a run at this. Tell me what you think. You know, I we talked about an example with a client where, you know, I said, okay, I'm gonna send Claude a voice memo of these points as we talk through them on a phone and and I'll flip back the memo to you, making it clear where am I contributing versus where is the AI contributing and getting people comfortable with that. But, you know, How do you start to open up those silos? How do you start to open up communication and bring visibility to how people are using AI across the org? Look, I think that's gonna be a huge barrier because think about it. You know, it it it goes down the lane of the thing everybody's worried about, right? If I say I'm using AI, then they're gonna think, well, why do we need that? Why do we need him or her? Because I mean, they just did AI. I can do it in AI if that's all they're doing. And so it Becomes a little bit of a yes, we should be talking about it. Why should we be talking about it? Because it frees everybody else up to say, ⁓ we yeah, absolutely, we should be using it for that. And ⁓ so when leaders get permission, when leaders say, Hey, I put this in AI and look what we got, and look what we were able to see. And by the way, instead of us taking a week to get this report ready for the board meeting, I did it in two hours. Now I can work on making sure we've got a really tight presentation for this at the board meeting, which I was rushed into at the end. So those are the kinds of examples ⁓ getting something for me, getting something to a client quickly versus them having to wait while I wade through stuff. I know what I need to do and say, I know where the information is. I even know what I would do with the information, but getting to pull that together really quickly so I can turn it over the next day so they can use it versus waiting for me for a week. You know, that's important. And the same thing happens inside organizations. So bringing it out in the open, like with any change, think about historically change, right? Like because sometimes people don't know what to say. They just don't say anything. What do you mean by that? Well, when when there's change and people are nervous or anxious, a lot of times leaders think, Well, I need to have answers. And the very nature of change means that we don't have answers. So I think we have to talk about things before we have it figured out. So in in the this example, talking about AI and talking about playing with it or using it, or even saying to your team, find one thing this week to play with AI on. starts making it something that's okay and not necessarily just attached to the fear. And I would could even say as a leader, like, hey, we are already one in lean. We have a lot to do. We need to be using AI to move faster and to get things to market or to deliver things from our clients. I mean, that's a good thing to say. And then you're you're attaching it to something positive versus ⁓ I don't know about using AI. So I want to drill into something you said. You were talking about how when people don't have all the information, they just don't say anything. And I think that silence is is like a death knell. I mean, I think it's really truly sets a bad tone because people fill in the gaps. Absent information, people fill in the gaps with their own knowledge. And I see this across so many teams. I'm working with a PE backed fast growing company right now. And they are so siloed in their information. And they have a board, you know, their C suite doesn't share anything of what the board is pushing them on with the l lower levels of the organization. But what that does is it creates a gap in knowledge that people then fill in with their own insight. And I'm up here having conversations with the board and down here having conversations with the teams. And I'm seeing that there's no connective tissue. You know, they are interpreting behaviors as leadership not understanding, leadership being absent, l you know, leadership making bad decisions. And it's like I see that this is just responding to the board and there's a longer term context that's not getting translated down, but it's because things are moving so fast and they don't have all the answers yet that they're not filling in those gaps. And so that's where it's like one of my recommendations to them just this week was share the board decks with your team. Translate down what is being directed in the long term, even though you don't have the strategy yet. If there's information that needs to be redacted, redact it. But the majority of the strategy should put be pushed down into the organization, at least with your senior leadership. So they can block and tackle for you, right? Because they can't make informed decisions if they don't understand where the organization is going in the long term. And if you don't know where the organization is going, a lot of times you you lose your Truly, we lose our best people when we're not including them and they don't know what's happening because they're like, if I don't know what's happening, it can't be good. Yes, that's right. People don't assume positive intent. They don't. So Yeah, I wrote down something earlier, and I'm gonna say this and then I'm going to talk just a little bit more about the communication piece. So there was this idea. And we changed the language a little bit around here, right? It's ⁓ we're gonna lead through change and lead our people through change, right? It was something like, you know, we're gonna lead our people through change, we're gonna pull them through this change. And I think the idea of leading in change is everything this conversation today is about. ⁓ but if if we're gonna lead people in change, one of the big things that has to be done is we have to communicate, and we have to communicate. Whether we know or not, like you said, and be transparent about that. But it is okay to communicate what we know, but also what we don't know. And part of what builds trust is for us to be able to, in a variety of forms of fa ⁓ and and fashion, say, Here's what I know, here's what we're still trying to figure out, here's what I don't know. But what I will tell you is when I do know, I will let you know. And Helping people take action around what you do know and also understanding, like, listen, we don't know this completely, but here's what we do know, and we can actually move on that. Or or this is actually telling us this. And I think people just rather know. And they would. I mean, as someone who has gone through multiple reductions in force, as someone who has led major strategic pivots. I was at one organization where I had five or six CEOs in nine years. I mean, that's just change after change after change, right? And transparency was always preferred to making up your own narrative behind the scenes. Yes. And I think if you're doing all the things we talked about in our last episode, then you know, change is just something that you're in and you are doing the things that are allow gonna allow you to be successful and change. And I think the same thing can be a true true of teams. What are the things we can do that are gonna be help us be successful? in in the change that's happening around us. So I would say communication and I would add, in times of high change, which we are in and we will continue to be in, don't underestimate ⁓ communication, but also visibility. And I think it that's another thing that happens, right? When you don't know what's happening and when things are in flux, a lot of times people pull back and partly it's because, well, I don't really know And it's gonna be uncomfortable and people have lots of questions. And if I make myself available, people will ask me questions, which I will not know the answer to. And you won't. And that's where that first part we said comes in, where you say, you know what, I don't know, but we're trying to figure that out. And when I know, I'll let you know. ⁓ and I that like that is the most perfect segue to our last lever, which is you've like, how do you get somebody comfortable? You've got to invest in leadership development. And what I see happening right now are companies making huge investments in technology and not making the necessary investments in the people to get through this technological change. And how do you get somebody comfortable saying what they don't know? How do you get somebody comfortable pushing decisions down? It's leadership development. A hundred percent. Well, when you think about the two things that every leader needs to focus on at a certain point, right? From from the from a mid-leadership point on up. I say it over aga over again. It's people and strategy. And AI and this change offers a huge opportunity for people to really ref when things are in flux, that's what you do. You focus on strategy and people and that is your path forward. And, you know, that kind of goes back to kind of the, you know, some the the four kind of forces and change that we've talked about in in other spaces, which is quickly get perspective about what's going on and what's happening around you and understand what that is and be solid on your mission and your vision. Your strategy will be adjusted based on on on the what's happening around you, right? It'll be influenced by the the new things, the environment and then people and then strategy people, then itself to like what are we going to create and problem solve and figure out together. So those things kind of work together in change. And from a leadership perspective, it's it's it's your job to orchestrate all this and make sure that you're doing the work and doing the work with your people and creating that team that that the individuals and the team can kind of thrive in a high change environment. What that makes me think about is I listened to a podcast the other day that was about the rise of AI work slop. And work slop was defined as an AI product at work that looks like it gets the job done, but doesn't meaningfully move the task forward. And like we've all seen this. It's like you get this four-page document that you're like, this isn't saying anything. This isn't doing anything. And actually I resent you for putting this on my desk because now. At the 11th hour, I'm gonna have to do the thinking to actually get the work done. And what the research around this has shown is that the number one predictor of whether or not AI is going to reduce the workload on teams and predict whether or not work slop proliferates across the team is psychological safety. ⁓ It's why does work slop happen? Because teams feel like they can't push back. They can't say no, I don't have the bandwidth. They can't say no, I don't have the time, they can't say no. I don't know. They can't admit these things. They don't have the s the the trust to be transparent in that way. So they just spit some slop out. And so the work of psychological safety, I think, and built trust building, let's just say it playing trust building for teams, I think is critically important in this moment and an investment that I do not see organizations making in an intentional way. And let me tell you last thing. You may think that you've got psychological safety across your team, or you may think that you've got trust across your team. But this is a totally new moment of paradigm. And so trust that has been built over years is going to carry you a little ways. But you have got to do intentional work around this technology transformation that is coming. Because even people that are high trust are like, is my job going to be okay? Like we talked about last time. Change will show the the the the cracks in trust. And you've probably heard this before, but ⁓ there's the saying, ⁓ change happens at the speed of trust. I love that. And I think that's very true. And it's not too late, right? Like if you understand if if change is bringing up a lot of these things, then I think that's a a chance to, okay, we got we got to reset and I've got to get this team ready. And that's leadership and that's team. building and ⁓ having the team work together to figure things out together, all those things build trust. And that's gonna be it's really important. If you I don't think you can get to where you're going without it. So just to paint a picture for people who may not who want it said plain In your experience, what does it look like when an organization is genuinely investing in its people through a period of disruption? what are the investments that they're making? What are the things that they should be focusing on? What should team leaders be considering in terms of investing in their people? I think you've gotta know where you're going. So I think you know, I'd love to say, I mean, look, it absolutely starts with people, but if you don't know where you're going, then you can't do a good job of building a team and people. You just can't. So I think good leaders, one, have to ⁓ it's a great time with AI, you know, just Bright here and and now to rethink or revisit your strategy, which most people have an opportunity to do, with that front and center. And I think from there it's really doing the leadership work. And the leadership work is do I have a a team that feels like a team? Do I have a team member team where people or th can think and where I they get to make decisions and they get to learn and they feel safe to do those things because it will take every bit of that. You cannot prepare and solve the problems of this environment by yourself. We need people at every level and the only way people can solve problems is to be included is to know the business, to have relationships. have the information. That's the only way we can be helpful to each other. It'd be like sending a team out on the field without the plays and without them having done reps together. And, you know, you'd be like, we're absolutely going to lose. Yeah. You know, we we we we're absolutely going to lose because we've not equipped this team with what they need to help the organ themselves or the organization be successful. And so what I hear in that are a few things. One, I mean, invest in coaching, you know, for for the leader and the individual contributors on the team, right? Like and part of investing coaching is like getting really honest with feedback. I mean, one of the benefits why I love team sports, having you know, playing team sports, playing video games competitively, it was you got real time feedback. You know, you miss a goal, you know you miss a goal. I think in the workplace, feedback is absent so often. And so one of the investments, like one of the lowest stakes, no cost investments you can make is giving your team real feedback on how they're doing, you know? And and like you said, kind of opening up those lines of communication so that way they see what's going on. And if your team's not ready for that, then get them ready. Make the investment ⁓ in their development. Yeah. I think team building and planning is a great way to do that. Like what is that? I I see it, there's the you know, there's the team building piece. And I always add kind of like there's a planning component. So if you and team building can be a lot of things, I you know, it can be everything from like, we're gonna go do the escape room or bowl, right? I mean, I think that's how a lot of people think about it. The way I think about it is something facilitated that allows people to understand themselves and others and identify the spaces where they can be communicating and more effective ⁓ with each other. And but I think there's also the planning piece, which is What do we need to be doing as a team that is going to help us be successful and drive our the goals or the things that we want to accomplish together? So, to me, that is sometimes you've got to pull everybody in and do a set or reset. I feel like I did I've done a lot of that in the last couple of years. People would call and say, We are dealing with so much right now. And this is coming off COVID, especially when people were coming back together after being not together and having it's like communication and teamwork got disrupted some. And then people were also working differently. So we're maybe they worked all together. Some of them were hybrid. Everything changed and w really did a lot of we need to reset as a team, especially around how we weren't moving forward in this high change. Things have changed and we also were know we're in a high change environment. And so kind of a team building the planning that sets the team up for what's next and lays that groundwork and allows people to push off from a better place. And that's a chance for the leader also to reset and to reintroduce and maybe new ways of doing things. Cause I'm not saying like some of these things we talk about today, people just either have not done. Or haven't done in the ways that we talk about. And so what's your entry point? Sometimes it is that. And then I think ⁓ coaching for leaders, and sometimes you just need help with this. And then coaching for people on your team that really need the help to build the muscle where they need to build muscle for the the moment that we are in and will be in. Love that. Okay. So let's wrap it up. Let's close it out. ⁓ I'm gonna Try to recap kind of some of the things that we've talked about. So, one, we talked about scaling for, you know, agility and adaptability rather than consistency. And some of the ways that you can do that on a tactical, practical level are looking at your tasks in an intentional way and thinking about, okay, if we're saving time, what are we doing? Slowing down to speed up, right? How are we going to use those time savings? ⁓ in an intentional way, getting really clear about ⁓ distributed decision making, so clarifying decision rights, helping teams get in reps in terms of making decisions on their own and executing without h hierarchical input. ⁓ we talked about the importance of bringing AI use out into the open. So, you know, going all in on AI transparency. And increasing communication and visibility at the same time. So you've got to be up and out, as you always say. ⁓ and then we said invest in your people. So have real development conversations, give feedback, invest in coaching and development of your team, team building, take ⁓ bowling, whatever that looks like. Is there anything I missed? No, I think that's a good hitting all the spots that we talked about today. And I think if I was going to to kind of roll that together in something, I would just say, you know, it's it's the leader's job to be up front with making sure there is space for looking at AI and being thoughtful and strategic about AI. And if you go there first and then you bring the team with you on that and create space for them to come with you through communicating and asking them great questions and having them be part of the moving forward good things related to the team's capacity to thrive individually and collectively in A high change, and in this case, we're talking about an AI environment. I think if you do all those things, everybody's gonna be better. And I really going back to something we said earlier, love the idea of whoever's listening to this, like get ahead of this. It is a great leadership action to get ahead of this and not wait. for your organization or other people to tell you where you're going. And that's really the the mark of a good leader. So do the strategic work, do the work with the team. Start down that road. It is going to make you better when the rest of the organization catches up if they're not there. And it's going to help your team feel like they can thrive. And your team will be more ready to add value and you'll be more ready to add value. Yeah. So if I could recap that put a bow on it. What I heard you say is the best teams that navigate this are not the ones who are investing in the right tool or having the right tech strategy. It's they're the ones who are building trust, you know, developing the judgment of their teams and really ⁓ investing in their people so that they can level up and and meet this moment. Yeah, just like we would say for the individual, I think it's the the same thing for a team. Yeah, love it. So thank you all for tuning in. ⁓ you know, if you if any of this resonated with you, if you want to talk more about how you can make some of those intuitional investments in your team, please reach out. ⁓ follow us on social where we write about this more in depth, sign up for our newsletter on our website, get in touch. ⁓ next time we're going to be talking about l leading through AI at the organizational level. We touched on some of that today, but we're going to be getting deeper into it next time. So I hope you tune in and thanks for joining.