116: What Leaders Need To Know About AI in 2025 | Geoff Woods

Transcript

Introduction to Geoff Woods – Damon introduces Geoff,highlighting his leadership expertise and focus on AI-driven strategy.

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you should be asking what are the skills I can master thatare so valuable they'll serve you no matter where you go

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your ability to think strategically that's the differencebetween growing your business or going out of business

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but if you want to climb the ranks within your organizationmore and more and more it's about imagine solving in

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minutes what used to take weeks or unlocking million-dollaropportunities and driving massive growth Our Guest

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today will reveal how AI can elevate your leadership to thenext level transforming how you think decide and

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lead in a rapidly changing World welcome to the learn itallpodcast the show for today's leaders who want to get ahead

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and stay ahead because we believe that great leaders aren'tborn or made they are constantly in the making I'm your

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host Damon lebby two-time best-selling author and CEO oflearn it a live learning platform that has upskilled

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over 2 million people over the past three decades today I'mthrilled to welcome Jeff Woods a Visionary leader on

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a mission to redesign the future of leadership in the AI eraas the founder of AI leaders ship and the author of Aid

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driven leader he's pioneered innovative ways for leaders tosolve problems and turn AI into your ultimate thought

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partner in today's conversation I'm going to be asking Jeffto share the mindset shift that transforms your

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leadership how AI uncovers million-dollar Solutions whilesolving challenges and minutes the four

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ingredients for crafting prompts that deliver gamechangingresults and much much more what was it that made you

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decide to make a pivot go out on your own and really go allin on AI yeah so I

Shifting the Mindset About AI – Geoff discusses how leaderscan redefine their relationship with AI as a thought partner.

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I got a piece of advice my senior year of college thatreally has shaped and molded my career and I was doing an

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internship with a tech company when I went to UC SantaBarbara and right before graduation I sat down with the CEO and I asked himwhat job should I

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get after school and he looks at me and he goes you'reasking the wrong question and this was the first time in my life

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that I was introduced to the power of asking the rightquestions and he said you should be asking what are the skills

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I can master that are so valuable they'll serve you nomatter where you go and what jobs will help you develop

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those skills um that literally has been a thread that I havepulled through my

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whole career from going into the world of sales from Xeroxto medical device sales first got into entrepreneurship

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because had the chance to partner with Gary Keller who wrotethe one thing with his co-author J papan and they said hey

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we'll teach you how to think and act like a CEO you run andscale the company but we'll be there to guide you and

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Coach you so I thought amazing skill development um after Iexited that company I had two

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years where I had to non-compete and I went in-house as achief growth officer for a public company out of India called

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gindel steel giant Steel company about 100,000 people and Ijust saw that as an opportunity to gain even more skills in

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terms of how do you drive growth of a large Enterprise witha footprint literally Global when I was there I saw

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AI for the first time it was December of 2022 so chat GPThad literally been out

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for maybe 30 days not even 30 days and when I saw it I sawthe next skill so I

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made a personal goal for the next year to figure out how canI master this at

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my level as a chief growth officer and very quickly Istarted to realize that using it to write a better email was a

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waste of my time but I started asking what really matters ata leadership level and this is when I came back to

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this belief that your ability to think strategically that'sthe difference

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between growing your business or going out of business youknow when you're an individual contributor it's all about

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how you can execute you move up to management it starts tobe about how you lead through people but if you want to climb the ranks withinyour organization

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more and more and more it's about how do you get out of theoperational tactical side and how do you live more at a

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strategic level and I started figuring out how to use AI asa thought partner

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to elevate my ability to think strategically and to help memake better decisions once I tapped into that A

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Whole New World opened up I was in India I was going thereevery quarter I was at the Chairman's house and I made the

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pitch I said this is the future and he goes I agree and Isaid I think this is so important that we should drive this

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through the whole company he goes I agree and I looked athim I said I really think you need to own this as

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chairman of the board and he looks at me and goes I disagreehow about you do it

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which amazing opportunity so I immediately great opport I'mon it walked out of his

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house and said oh crap because at the time I didn't reallyfeel like I knew

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what I was doing but this is when I learned from Gary Kellerthat anytime you're hitting a ceiling of achievement

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in your life you're just missing a person so who am Imissing that if I could bring into my world could help me

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drive this through our organization that became Google so Ipartnered with Google Now every quarter when I'm in Delhi I'm

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in their headquarters and gon and they're teaching me whatis the technology how does it work how do you identify use cases and tunemodels and

Lessons from Technological Disruption – Geoff sharesparallels between historical disruptions and the AI revolution.

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after driving that for a bit I I saw a much biggeropportunity to start my next company which is now ai leadership and

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to write my book the AI driven leader yeah and I was tellingyou before we came on a I I read your book I think I

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think it's fantastic and um you you talk about in it thatgoing into this you

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interviewed 200 Executives right what did you learn fromthose uh interviews

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this blew my mind I was so confident when I resigned fromjindel steel that

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if I started a company around AI I was G to have morebusiness than I knew what to do with right off the bat I

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literally interviewed 200 execs one-on-one 100% said AI wasthe future

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100% said they would adopt it less than 5% had done

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anything and this was a gut punch cuz I just quit a verylucrative big job that

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most most people wouldn't quit and I'm hearing that thisisn't a problem that we're trying to solve but then I started

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asking what is the problem that they have that if I couldsolve it could create new value and that was that they

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just didn't know how to go from zero to one they know it'sthe future but they don't know where to start and they think they're fallingbehind and so for me

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that really shaped the book from being a book around how doyou transform the organization to how do you as a leader

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start using any generative AI tool chat GPT Claude Geminiperp co-pilot doesn't

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matter how do you how do you use any of those tools at aleadership level in a

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way that matters because again you writing a better emailyou doing social media copy or marketing copy that is not

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your job as a leader so how do you use it to advance yourability to think

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strategically or to make faster smarter decisions thatbecame the focus of the AI driven leader so in order to do so in

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order to start like you talk about using AI to really havean impact on the top 20%

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of the work that you do where does somebody start somebodywho's a leader who maybe is like I know I need to get

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into AI but I haven't really done much with it besides justmaybe writing an email at chess upt yeah sure so so first

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we have to revisit what is the paros principle the 8020 ruleit's the idea

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that 80% of your results come from just 20% of your effortsin my experience

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most people who are using Genera of AI are applying it to80% of their tasks

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that only drive 20% of the value now I applaud those peoplebecause they're

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taking action they're getting started but I have built acareer on helping

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executive teams focus on the 20% priorities that drive 80%of the results

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so your time is more valuable than your money when you sitdown to use Chachi BT

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or any of the other large language models you have anopportunity to invest your time when you make an investment

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you expect a return you can use a use case that'll returnyou a dollar you could do a use case that could return

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you a thousand dollar or a $100,000 or a million dollars Ijust choose to focus

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on the use cases that matter most and what happens toorganizations where

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let's say I what I love in your book is you talk about thestory about Blockbuster right as an example of you

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know being completely completely disrupted by technologyright so if uh organizations

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don't move forward with AI what use that story as an exampleof how it illustrates yeah sure so in the early

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2000s Blockbuster was the king of movie rentals everyweekend you've got millions of customers that are driving

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to their local stores it's racking up $8.7 Billion Dollar inannual revenue and then Netflix comes along with this

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unique idea DVD DVD rentals by mail and as Netflix startedto gain tracktion

Building Strategic AI Prompts – Geoff introduces his“context, role, interview, task” framework to get meaningful results from AI.

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eventually Blockbuster asked that Reed Hastings fly toDallas and sit down with

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them and Reed saw this as an opportunity he pitched to theexec team Blockbuster that they acquire him for $50

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million this was only six% of Blockbusters total revenue he

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casted this vision for how streaming was going to disruptthings and how Blockbuster could create this hybrid

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model they almost laughed him out of the room and we nowknow this is one of the greatest strategic missteps of all time

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in business history well Netflix started to gain moretraction eventually John

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antioco who's running Blockbuster began to realize themistake because he had completely discounted how significant

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streaming would be he thought that brickin mortar storescustomer TR customer foot traffic penalizing you

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with late fees he thought that it had worked up to thispoint if it ain't broke don't fix it right well he knew

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now knew they needed to change he invested $400 million tocreate Blockbuster online to

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go toe-to-toe with Netflix and also to cancel late Feast butthis created a whole new problem because then you've

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got Carl icon steps in as an activist investor takes overthe board he wants Blockbuster online dead he wants late

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fees back this power struggle distracts the focus andexecution of the entire

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organization to the point that Netflix became so dominantthat it put Blockbuster out of business or did it

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here's the part of the story most people don't know mostpeople listening to this have heard that

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story guess why Hastings wanted to sell Netflix to

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John antioco they were running out of money they were $50million in the hole

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and they did not think they could win sing to Blockbusterwas their ticket to get out of business and break even but

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it was the lack of strategic thinking at the executive ranksof block Buster that

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put them out of business so here's why I think this mattersfor you who's listening to

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this how confident are you in the defensibility of yourcurrent business

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model and if you're not the CEO how confident are you in thedefensibility

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of your current skill set in terms of a future career

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Advantage great question I love to ask is what the businessthat'll put you out of business and how can I build it first

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how can you use AI to challenge those assumptions so easy

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so most people when they View using generative AI they thinkof it like a

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really smart Google that they can ask questions to and getanswers or they think of it like an assistant that they

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can delegate tasks to to get them done faster both bringvalue but the ROI is

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not as high as what I'm about to show you if you start toview AI as a thought partner and you turn the tables instead

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of asking it questions asking it to ask you questions

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to pull context out of your head whether it's to clarifyyour thinking help you

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think more strategically solve your biggest problems helpyou achieve your most ambitious goals so here's a

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framework that I use for a prompt um a prompt is just howyou talk to it and I think of it kind of like a recipe in any

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recipe you've got different ingredients that you put in I'mgoing to give you four ingredients that I think matter for

The Role of Leaders in Driving AI Adoption – Geoffemphasizes why leaders must champion AI adoption to future-proof theirorganizations.

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strategic thinking and and there I I structure it in thisorder context role

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interview task so context you describe the context of thesituation role you

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ask it to adopt a certain personality or to have certainexpertise because you

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based the data that this stuff is trained on you can engagejust about any expertise in the world and apply to your

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use case very powerful interview that's when you tell it toturn the tables into interview you by asking one question at

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a time up to a certain number three questions four questionsfive questions also that it can accomplish a task so

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context rooll interview task if you can remember that recipeI'll take you beyond probably 99%

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of the people in the world using AI right now so if you wantto use AI do

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you want to do it on the defensibility of the business oryour career which which do you want to go for defensibility of the businessokay great

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um so context I currently work for this type of a companyyou don't even have to

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say the name of the company we operate in this industrythese are the products that we currently offer these are the

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problems that we are solving for our customer um and deepdown I see AI as

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the future and I don't want to be disrupted by it I wouldrather that we

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become innovators and use this as an opportunity to build acompetitive Advantage I would have put all that in

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as context Your Role is to act as a

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growthmindset moat especially amongst technological

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disruption interview by asking me one question at a time up

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to five questions to gain more deep context about mybusiness and then I want you to complete the task of

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outlining the top five ways you could see our business beingdisrupted over

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the next 10 years and for each one of them the topstrategies we could deploy so that we're the ones that do the

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disruption that would be one prompt that's awesome and andfor our listeners

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out out there Jeff just did a master class on this obviouslyyou got to go out and get his book you could also just

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pull this transcript off YouTube and copy that in there anduse that yourself

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to help make assumptions against your own business right Imean it's it's crazy and it also comes down to a lot I

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heard you say this but I've heard others say this you knowthe prompt is only going to be as good as the information

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that you put in there so how important is clearcommunication when you're guiding it are you married or have you

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ever been married I'm married how important is communicationin your relationship got to ask my wife that cuz

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she'll tell you you need to get better at it but it'sincredibly important I mean communication across the board is

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important whether it's work your relationships everythingit's the same thing here with AI you know most people

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who are currently using it um I have realized at least formyself this has it AI literally held up a mirror to me and

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showed me the quality of my communication if you put garbagein you're going to get garbage out if you

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put quality in you're going to get quality out it's thedifference between um The Prompt I gave you which would be

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high quality versus um I'm in this type of a business tellme how AI is going to

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disrupt our business you will get generic vanilla answersfrom that

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because you gave it a generic vanilla prompt but if youfollow that framework that I gave you of context roll

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interview task and you really build it out you are notlimited by a little text

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window on Google you can type a lot in here or even talk toit and have it just

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transcribe your words or capture your words uh you will geta night and day

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result and you talk about this in your book and I think it'sreally important when it comes down to it you us are the

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thought leaders it is your partner you know you can't relyon it to be the thought leader yes so this is about

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redefining your relationship with AI you are the thoughtleader AI is your

Creating an AI Board of Advisors – Geoff explains how tocustomize AI tools to complement leadership styles and business needs.

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thought partner with your leadership you tell AI

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what you want it to do and as your thought partner it willdo the heavy lifting and bring you back a result but

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the biggest mistake and I think this is one of the greatestrisks that I see right now when it comes to AI is leaders

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abdicating their role as the thought leader I see this everytime somebody

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copies and pastes an answer from Chad gbt without asking doI agree you see

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people asking it to write an email or a blog post or acustomer communication and just copy and paste it without

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asking is this our voice do I agree with what it's sayinghow do I know that this

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is true uh so you are think of it this way if you're in acar you're in the driver's seat AI is in the passenger

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seat ask it to do the heavy lifting but at the end end ofthe day you need to have human judgment here and apply that

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to the situation absolutely you know you can't just rely onthe results I I have a friend who um put out a newsletter and

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um just cut and paste uh some stats with with nothingbacking it up and people call him out on it like where did it

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come from and at the end of the day he just made the mistakehe just trusted AI instead of you know factchecking it it

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gets you it gets you down the field but it it it can't getyou into the end zone as essentially what you're saying yes um

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let's say one of the things I loved about your book is yougot so many great uh you know case studies in there uh

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give us an example of a strategic problem where you used AIyou know in to

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help a customer or or friend uh there are tons of stories inthe book I'm gonna give you one that's not in the

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book that way even better when you read the book you getsomething new I sat down with a group of CEOs and I just

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asked what are the biggest problems you are facing that ifwe could solve them would unlock a new level of growth for

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your business now I want you to even think about thequestion I just asked them I'm not asking for What's a what's

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what's an easy way you could use AI don't care I care aboutI actually don't even care about AI I care about your

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business growing AI is a tool that can accelerate yourgrowth or distract you from it the difference that makes the

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difference is you and whether you are strategy FirstTechnology seconds so one

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guy looks at me and he says okay I got a good one I run amanufacturing company

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I leased a whole bunch of equipment from this company inJapan but things have shifted in the market and the debt

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structure is now killing us we're going to go bankrupt if itdoes not get

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restructured I look at him go oh my gosh I'm so sorry whathave you done he goes man we tried everything and he lists

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five different initiatives that they had deployed to get theboard to restructure the debt and he goes the problem is

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because this is a publicly traded company in Japan the boardis refusing to restructure the debt because they

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think it'll make them lose face in Japanese Society that'scrazy he I said

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that no no he said that to me oh yeah oh yeah yeah he saidthat he said that to me and I'm going you gotta be oh my gosh

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I okay and he looks at me and goes can AI help that was theright question any use

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case I don't approach with an expectation of a result Iapproach with curiosity can it help I don't know let's find out and then can Iuse really good

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communication ingredients like context rooll interview taskto generate a high quality prompt to get a high quality

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answer so I literally pulled up in this case chaty PTfollowed that same recipe

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context roll interview task context I run a manufacturingcompany we leased

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all this equipment from a company in Japan things haveshifted in the market the debt is now killing us we're going to go bankrupt ifit doesn't get

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restructured here's the things we've tried and I listed allfive initiatives in detail none of it has worked because

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this is a publicly traded company in Japan it's gone all theway to the board and they are refusing to restructure the debt because theythink they'll lose

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face in Japanese society that was the context Your Role isto act as an

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investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debtinterview me by

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asking one question at a time up to three questions to gainmore context so

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you can accomplish the task of generating five fivenonobvious

Real-World Applications of AI – Geoff provides examples ofhow AI is being used to solve complex business challenges.

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strategies I could deploy to get the board to restructurethe debt and I hit enter AI immediately

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asked do you have any relationships with influentialExecutives in Japan that this board would

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respect I look at the CEO and he goes whoa I would havenever asked that

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question oh my gosh I do and I'm thinking to myself ofcourse you wouldn't have you don't have 2, years of

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Japanese culture in your head but AI does and then it askedtwo more

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questions about how he had navigated Japanese Society in thepast it came back goes okay here's your five

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non-obvious strategies number one it labeled the Saving Face

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Consortium it said you have enough relationships with theright people in Japan approach them to acquire the debt

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give them really favorable terms your debt will getrestructured the board will save face

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Damon I look at him his whole body language had completelychanged and I

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can tell he's literally holding back tears he looks at me he

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says I haven't slept in 90 days I have literally been makingpeace

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with the fact that we are going out of business and in lessthan 10 minutes I

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got hope we texted a few months later and he said the ball'smoving and this is

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actually going to get done incredible um so what I hear yousaying it really is

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too what leaders managers we we all need to start looking atthings a little

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differently instead of thinking like okay how do I go aboutthis problem right how do I go about it how do I solve it who who do I bring inas

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individuals shift your mindset I actually set this out to myteam today Jeff by the way instead of asking that

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question start asking what can I what can AI do to help mesolve this problem

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yes I literally tell people when when we do trainings fortheir teams the one action I want them to take and I'm going

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to apply this to you I want you to grab a sticky note aSharpie and I want you to write how can AI help me do this how

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can AI help me do this and stick it on your computer stickit on your desk stick it on your monitor stick it

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someplace that you will see it every day because if you justsee that sticky note it will prompt you to ask the question

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for whatever you're doing in the moment and if you genu Elyapproach with curiosity like will it work I don't know

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let me let me use some good communication ingredientscontext role interview task for example um there are

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plenty more that are in the book by the way Page 73specifically but that will

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uh that will give you a good starting point and you willbuild confidence and

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and competence very quickly and it doesn't even have to beif you want to get in the habit it doesn't even have to

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be around work stuff it could be problems you run into athome I find myself just taking a a picture of

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something uh sitting to AI at home and say like how do I fixthis challenge or this problem and and rely on it I'll

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give you one uh my wife's birthday was coming up I have atrack record of being

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terrible giving her gifts and I and I wanted I wanted toreally knock it out of the park and so I went to AI

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contextual interview task context it's my wife's birthdaycoming up you know these are her love languages she's

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constantly said that she wants to feel taken care of andseen like I gave it lots of context Your Role is to act as

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an expert Gift Giver interview me by asking one question ata time up to five questions to gain deeper context and

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then your task is to outline the the best gifts that I couldgive her that would make her feel loved seen heard in

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alignment with her love languages and it conducted aninterview and it came back and it said well have you considered

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writing her a bunch of notes about what it is is that youlove and appreciate about her so much and you could create a

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scavenger hunt around the house where she has to go and shefinds a note for every single one and I said oh this is

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fantastic now conduct the interview of me to pull what youneed out of my head

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to structure the things that I love about her now I couldhave written all

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those things down but be there's something about whensomebody asks you the question things flow and here's the

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hidden value it's capturing all the addition words that yougive it and it's

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able to process them and to give them back the things thatit spat out I could

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have WR handwritten everything at least the ideas that itcame up with one it helped me do it faster two the writing

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was so much better because the things it pulled out of myhead it was phenomenal

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I guess the question is when you when you gave her thepresent did did you uh give AI the credit for coming up with

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the ideas no yeah there you go there you go now now now Idon't need to hide it

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either but because here's the thing and I see this incompanies still to date the majority of people are using

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it but they're hiding that they're using it and I think thisis a huge leadership opportunity to create a culture where

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it's celebrated to say I used AI for this rather thanthinking that this is

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something that is going to diminish your capability becauseI believe this is going to enhance you not replace you and

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in fact like there's a person on my there when I look at myteam everybody has to be AI driven we have to practice

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what we teach if somebody is doing things the old-fashionedway which is going to take longer and be lower

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quality work they don't have a right to be on my team Iexpect you to engage

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your resources so how can a leader take let's just say onestep to

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to start getting people to feel comfortable admitting thatthey're using Ai and and celebrating it amongst the

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team well all leadership starts with self- leadership nowthis also depends on where you fall on the org chart if

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you're the CEO or you're your SE Suite it's time to go firstand to start using

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this and talking to people about how you're using it let'sassume you're not in the SE Suite I think you have an

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opportunity to use this and find a really cool use casewhere you can then go to a senior leader and say I want to

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show you something that I came up with I mean this isliterally how I ended up getting put in charge of AI for the

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steel company I was just using it and I knew the chairmanwas using it and we were talking about it back and forth and

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I started showing him how I was using this for strategicthinking he was like

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this is incredible and I was like that's when I made thepitch and who better to

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to put in charge of championing this through the companythan the person who's already Champion it without being

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appointed to do so and so I genuinely believe for people andcompanies if you

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are listening to this right now and you're really gettingexcited about this you have an opportunity to create a

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career Advantage your job is nothing more than

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the skills you apply and the processes you follow in everytechnological

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disruption in history technology changed the skills thatwere valued and the

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processes that we followed so if you when you are hiding thefact that you're using AI you're clinging to the way

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things used to be rather than reimagining how can things bebecome so

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start you using it find a way to deliver value with it andthen start teaching

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other people how you're using it and helping them becomemore comfortable and

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successful with it and I think you'll have an opportunityespecially if you're willing to pitch a vision for the

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company in terms of what this looks like you'll write yourticket and it comes down to we talked about this

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earlier a little bit fixed mindset versus gross mindsetright if you're going to be stuck in your ways and and

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afraid of hey hey people this is inevitable you have to geton the train I mean it's it's not going to stop I mean I heard

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somebody say which is true that the change of pace is theslowest it's ever going to be in our lifetime it's only going to get faster andfaster so you

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got to get on board I I think that that is so critical nowthere is some truth

29:48

to definitely some truth to the risks of of AI you knowpeople are afraid of you

29:53

know it's going to replace me it's going to take away my jobwhat advice do you have for CEOs and team leaders of of how

30:00

to address that Jeff with their team sure so again I Iwanted to have data to

30:06

support what I'm about to tell you so I literally went backand studied the major technological disruptions in the

30:13

past printing press steam engine assembly line electricity

30:18

internet this is when I realize your job is the skills youapply and the

30:24

processes you follow in every disruption Tech change theskills that were valued in the processes that were followed um

30:31

as a trend more jobs were created than displaced will therebe job displacement

30:37

here yes but what you have to realize is it's not the job orit's not the person

30:43

that gets eliminated it's the skills and processes that havebecome outdated so

30:50

you regardless of your level have a huge opportunity if yourjob currently is

30:57

leveraging skills and processes that AI can augment or

31:03

automate what you currently do will change I'm going to tellyou six out of

31:08

the 10 jobs that exist today didn't even exist in 1940 so toassume that your job will

31:16

continue the way it is you're thinking like Blockbuster andnot like Netflix

31:22

you have an opportunity to acquire the next skills for forpeople who have a a

31:28

fixed mindset that is scary and I'm not they're not badpeople they just they

31:33

fear that change people who have a growth mindset see thatas an opportunity I am calling you to ask the

31:40

question how can who can I become in the future um I think agreat example of this Dan Sullivan wrote a book called

31:47

10x is easier than 2x he makes this claim that you candouble the size of

31:53

your company you can keep doing 80% of what you currently doyou only have to change

31:59

20% but if you want to 10x your company or as an individual10x your income you

32:05

literally have to stop doing 80% of what you currently dohold on to the core 20%

32:12

that brings the most value and then move all that 80% to acompletely higher level of

32:18

capability here's why I think this is good news in myexperience and you tell

32:23

me if you agree with the statement I think most of people'stime is consumed by thinks checking email sitting in

32:31

meetings and doing the things on their to-do list would youagree with that 100% now the things on their to-do list

32:38

are they filled with 20% priorities that drive 80% of theresults or clouded with 80% tasks that only drive 20% of the

32:45

results they're they're they're most of the Mund mundanetasks that are just getting in their way but Jeff it also

32:52

comes down to and I'm curious to see what you think about itis getting people out of their comfort zone to just

32:57

fall into the habit of of working on that that garbage so tosay yes yes well

33:02

and again this is why the mindset is is so important AI canalready augment or automate half of what you do that can

33:09

scare you or it can excite you um as a guy for the last 10years who was

33:15

coaching executive teams and and Advising companies andboards that first

Preparing for the Future – Damon and Geoff discuss howorganizations can integrate AI into their strategies to remain competitive.

33:20

scared me because most of what I did was asking thequestions and I looked at Ai and said I've already proven AI can ask

33:28

the questions so I could be afraid of that or I could viewit as an opportunity I chose to be abundant and

33:33

view it as an opportunity I've already created an AI modelthat's been trained on my book and has 10 pages of custom

33:39

instructions to get it to be me on my website at aileleadership.com

33:45

that now has excited me because now I can free myself fromhaving to be the person that asks all the questions and

33:51

now move to a higher level of capability and I'll tell you Ihave 10x No Doubt

33:57

and so I think you really have to start and just recognizethat you have an opportunity here what you have done in

34:04

the past does not have to be what you do in the future Iwould challenge you how can you use AI to free yourself from at

34:11

least half of what you've done in the past and how can youcreate an opportunity to make your skill set even

34:17

more valuable for the future you gave a great example of astudy in your book

34:22

about uh BCG where they took 758 uh consultants and and thedifference of

34:27

what AI did for them sure so Boston Consulting took 758 oftheir Consultants

34:34

these are you know mostly ivy league trained very highlypaid people they split them into two groups one group

34:42

keep doing what you were doing second group start using AIthey literally gave

34:47

them a Chad GPT account and maybe 10 minutes of training onhow to prompt the results were

34:55

staggering the people that used AI had a 40 4 40% increasein quality of

35:02

work they got it done 25% faster and they got

35:09

12.2% more tasks done just by engaging

35:14

AI as a co-pilot in what they did I mean the numbers speakfor themselves so

35:19

let's let's so I'm a I'm a man manager out here thinkingabout this going okay I got to get going on this what is a way

35:27

that they you know one of the things that a lot of leadershave to do managers have to do are performance reviews what is it what is a waythat

35:33

you can you can use AI to cut down drastically cut down thetime it takes to do performance reviews and not only

35:40

do them quicker but do them more effectively sure so let'sassume that you have a template

35:48

for performance reviews inside your company if you don't youcan ask it if it if you don't have a template ask it

35:55

to act as an expert in doing performance review to generatethe template it'll give you an answer and then ask if you

36:01

think that that will really work for your organization youcan have it interview you by asking one question at a time to identify what isgoing to

36:08

matter most in your company and then generate the templateget to a template if you already have a template you

36:13

literally can copy the P like click on the PDF and drag itinto any of these AI

36:18

models and drop it and it'll be right there say you are anexpert in HR and conducting performance reviews I want

36:25

you to interview me by asking one question at a time to gainall the information you need to fill out the

36:32

attached template once you have enough information generatethe performance review and it will literally start

36:38

conducting an interview of you and spit it out now themoment it gives it to you

36:43

do not just copy and paste it you're the thought leader AIis your thought

36:49

partner ask yourself the question do I really agree withthis is there anything that's missing you could then say great

36:56

now I want you to act as my direct report that I'm about togive this to give me feedback on what you like about

37:01

this performance review what you don't like about it and thetop things I could do to make it even better and it will

37:07

adopt the Persona of the person who's receiving the feedbackand give you that

37:12

perspective and then you can say great based on that nowenhance it I have seen people do high quality performance

37:19

reviews in under 10 minutes that blew any previous one outof the water I

37:25

agree man and I I look I've even used it before and I wouldask it I'd say am I being too harsh here or am I being too

37:31

nice you know give me some feedback on it and it really itreally pushes you to

37:37

it's amazing when to use it for that I'll give you anotheruse case um last week I was texting with a guy who's been

37:43

the core of our business is called the AI driven leadershipCollective I'm creating a executive AI network of AI

37:48

driven leaders where we get off site a few times a year toreally share and collaborate on how we're using this so

37:54

that we can give them all the road maps and playbooks sothat they just implement this way faster the guy said I

37:59

don't know if I can make the January offsite I have to cut$2 million from from our operating budget as mandated by

38:07

the board and I literally texted him back and said have youasked how can AI

38:12

help me do this and he goes oh my gosh no what would thateven look like and I

38:19

literally sent him the prompt context Ro interview taskcontext here is our

38:25

financial statements from the past and here's our financialprojections for the future here's what you need to know

38:32

about our business here's where we've been focusing here'swhere I currently perceive the greatest opportunities to

38:38

to cut cost Your Role is to act as a strategic CFO who'sAdept at cutting $2

38:45

million from operating expenses without slowing growthinterview me by asking one question at a time up to five

38:52

questions to gain deeper context and then complete the taskof outlining the road map for how I can cut $2 million

38:58

within the next 6 months without slowing down growth I sentit to him 5 minutes later he sent me holy crap

39:07

I literally saved him 45 days of work absolutely absolutelyand that's that's

39:13

what I'm just trying to get people to understand there it'slike a ridiculous the the game changer can be and the time

39:19

it can save by doing all this now as we kind of wrap up hereJeff we talk a lot

39:25

give you one more can I give you one more fck keep goingkeep going okay so um one of the guys who's in the

39:32

collective he's in the real estate space he has built a verysuccessful company flipping houses and he had his strategic

39:39

plan and he had sent it to me and I said have you used AI tobulletproof this and

39:45

he goes no what would that look like and I said literallydrag and drop your strategic plan into AI it had met the

39:52

security provisions which we could talk about in a second ifyou want and I said it to act as an aggressive growth-minded

40:00

board member in reviewing your strategic plan that your goalis that it

40:05

bulletproof it to challenge every assumption does the planhave the sufficiency to deliver the results that

40:11

he wants are there things he should be considering that he'snot considering are there things he's currently saying yes to that he should besaying no to

40:18

and to ask as many questions as it needed one at a time togain context so it could then tell it tell him what he

40:26

liked about his plan what he didn't like about his plan andthe top changes he would need to make to his

40:32

plan AI conducted an exhaustive interview and came back andsaid um your

40:38

plan does have the sufficiency to help you hit your goalsthis year in alignment with your 10year goals but

40:46

it's going to violate the quality of life that you want tolive as a person instead of

40:53

this my recommendation is that you stop flipping houses all

40:59

together and instead focus on multif family real estate andthe service-based businesses that surround them here's why

41:07

and it literally made an argument for why he should stopdoing the entire business that he is currently doing and

41:14

instead acquire buildings and companies that service thebuildings here's where this gets crazy

41:22

with that Insight in the next 30 days instead of going andgetting another

41:27

house under contract where he would net $10,000 he got abuilding under contract

41:33

that since he got it at such a steep discount the moment itclosed he netted $1 million come on dead serious from one

41:42

prompt so when I said at the beginning of this episode youcould use a prompt that could return a dollar or a million

41:48

dollars I actually meant it hey Jeff do all your buddiesjust call you up with all their problems or their business

41:54

challenges like all right let me get let me get let me sendyou a tax or let's just spend five minutes I want you to figure this out for meall the time no

42:02

uh no but I did I did talk to a guy yesterday who's startinga property management company and I literally sent

42:07

him the text to get AI to act as an analyst that conductcould conduct

42:12

research to identify the top things people love about aproperty management company and the top things they hate

42:17

about a property management company and the top nonobviousstrategies he could deploy to build a

42:24

competitive moat and then based on that research to thenconduct a prompt where

42:29

would act as a board member that would interview him tounderstand more about how he's visualizing the company with

42:35

the context of the top things they would like didn't likeand non-obvious strategies to then con create a

42:42

competitive strategy statement that would outline theprotective mode he's

42:47

building so if he shared it with any real estate owner orreal estate agent they would go we

42:53

need to talk to you well that's impressive for a lot ofreasons one is my family owns a property management company so I I I got to getmy uh

43:01

brother on it to to figure that out you know um now we'retalking Ai Ai and all the

43:09

skills that that are required to do it and we talk a lotabout you know curiosity what are other some of the key

43:16

critical skills that leaders are going to need outside ofyou know using AI to

43:21

to make it effective moving forward in the future changemanagement so everything we've talked about up to to

43:27

this point is me showing you how do you raise your

43:33

standards for your relationship with this technology insteadof using it as a Google to ask questions to or an

43:39

assistant to delegate task to to elevate its role in yourlife as a thought partner with you as the thought leader

43:46

that's everything we've talked to up to this point themoment you become proficient in using AI you are naturally

43:53

going to want to get your leadership team to start usingthis once you get your leadership team to

43:59

start using this you going to want to start strategicallyexpanding this in your company to the next set of people

44:06

but then you're going to need a skill set of how do we startto identify use cases where we could use this technology

44:14

to make things more efficient over time you are going towant to drive this through the whole

44:20

company to the point where every single person is AI drivenjust like every person uses the internet every person

44:27

knows how to use Word and Excel AI is going to be the exactsame it will

44:32

become that pervasive but you have to understand how to leadthat change which also is going to

44:38

require the conversations about how do people's rolestransform I'm telling you

44:44

that if we fast forward five years I think people's jobdescriptions

44:51

are going to look very different the skills they apply theprocesses they follow are going to be very different

44:56

and I didn't pick that number out of nowhere that camedirectly from Eric Schmidt former CEO of Google he said we

45:01

are going to be living in a fundamentally different world inthe next 5 years not 10 five every part of

45:08

your business is going to look different in the next fiveyears Damon he said

45:13

that almost a year ago so this is why there's thiscompelling reason and case

45:18

to take action now no longer as a leader can you say I'llget to it later or

45:25

somebody else in the company will figure this out if you arecurrently thinking that way you are abdicating your

45:30

responsibility as a leader I don't care if you're even inthe middle of the organization waiting for somebody from

45:37

on high to come up with something you are you are givingaway your power you have an opportunity to get in the driver

45:43

seat start building competence using this yourself as athought partner at

45:50

your level and start having the conversations up the chainof command

45:55

and seeing how you can control contribute to help create anaid driven organization you will not lose your job

46:02

to AI you might lose your job to the person that is AIdriven so I'm asking you to

46:09

become that person so you can displace yourself and create abigger opportunity one more question going back to your

46:17

book which I think is phenomenal and everybody should pickup what are your goals you're looking to accomplish with

46:22

your book I want to create the future of leadership Igenuinely want to create a completely new category or of leader

46:28

that is the AI driven leader this is a person thatunderstands their true human

46:35

strengths they focus it on the priorities of their role inalignment with the goals of the company and they

46:41

are supercharged with ai ai enhances them it does notreplace them for the

46:48

book I needed to a way to give a non-technical leader asimple road map

46:55

to go from zero to one using this technology in a way thatwould matter that is working now the

47:04

business of AI Le leadership is about saying okay great youyou get how to prompt and you get how to use the

47:10

technology how do you now start to drive this into yourorganization so you can accelerate growth and build a

47:16

competitive advantage and that's where the whole focus isthe collective because I I think the technology is just

47:22

moving too fast if you try to navigate this alone you'regoing to lose and so my V is that over the next 10 years we

47:28

will have 10,000 Executives all with decision-mak authoritythey have to be able to approve budget within the

47:34

collective where we get off site several times a year tohave the space to think strategically to learn from each other

47:41

but we're going to centralize all the knowledge of these10,000 people and

47:46

from that create the road maps the playbooks the systems andgive it to

47:52

everyone so like when I look at the offsite coming up herewe are going to have every person build their own AI

47:57

Board of advisers so if they have a real board this willhelp them collapse the

48:03

time it takes to prepare for the board meeting if they don'thave a real board they will create a custom AI Board of

48:09

advisors to augment their strengths and weaknesses as aleader so that they can have a board of advisors designed for

48:16

them that they can go to For Thought partnership I have onelike Steve Jobs is on my board for vision and product

48:23

design but explicitly he's not allowed to give me anyfeedback on being a better father or leader dead serious I

48:29

think that that could be a workshop in itself on orConsulting on itself on how I me that that is huge right there so we

48:35

talked about the collective and we also talked about yourbook where else can we connect with you yeah I would strongly

48:42

get the book um it's on p uh hard cover audible I actuallyit's actually me

48:48

reading it and the Kindle I have a newsletter uh that istruly worldclass

48:54

um my audience's leaders who don't read emails and I wantedto create something that was so valuable that you would read

49:01

the email and so every week we are sharing use cases realstories like the one I shared on here and the prompt that

49:08

was used to generate the results so that you can startapplying it and you can

49:14

get on the newsletter at ail leadership.com what about yourpodcast oh yeah I'm I'm launching a podcast same

49:20

title as the book the AI driven leader um if you check itout now you will just see a trailer episode but if you follow

49:27

the if you follow the show there will be episodes that I'm Gto be launching this year and I think what what I heard you

49:32

say is gonna be exciting about that is you do that and thenyou could use all those transcripts to to help create

49:38

prompts and everything else afterwards I there's so muchways to repurpose everything Jeff you've been beyond

49:44

awesome I mean we talked about how you want AI where you'rethe thought leader it's your thought partner you know how

49:52

you got to get out of the fixed mindset because you have tomove forward with this how you could PEX your employees

49:58

how you need to focus on not what everybody else is doing onwriting better emails or social media copy but

50:03

really the things that matter most and what I like a lotright there at the end

50:09

is building your own AI Board of advisers Jeff you'reawesome thank you

50:14

and everybody out there do me a favor go get Jeff's book andthen also go in and look at his uh online his thought

50:21

leadership um or thought leader that is um he's trained toto to work with this

50:27

book I played around with that last night and the freeFoundation course that you have on there there's so many

50:33

great takeaways that people you know there's prompts andeverything that people can actually apply themselves I

50:39

literally created most people are charging money to teachyou how to prompt I gave it away for free so on AI

50:45

leadership there's a crash course it will literally help youunderstand the prompt ingredients and how to use it and

50:51

I design I wanted the book to be interactive which is why Imade the thought partner something like you can literally have a conversationwith AI

50:57

Jeff about the book to understand how to drive it into thecompany thanks Jeff and everybody stay curious keep learning

51:05

until next time have a good day you could grow in in myopinion into a leader but you have to want it you have

51:13

to want to lead people it's not something you just getpromoted because you're really good at a skill

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