Weekend Reading – The AI Revolution is Here: How to Get Ahead with Generative AI

“AI Will Make Us More Human, Not Less.“             – Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft

Last weekend’s Open AI drama made the headlines in most newspapersworldwide next to the multiple global crises. While it appeared to be the stuff for the next Netflix mini-series (judge for yourself, here’s the best inside track I could find), the attention and the bold strategic moves – particularly by Microsoft’s Satya Nadella – were more than warranted.

Generative AI is here to stay. Some clients are rolling out Microsoft’s Copilot while I write this.

So, why should you care? Because every of your colleagues who starts using Copilot, Chat GPT, Bing Chat, Google’s Bard, Anthropic’s Claude, or combinations of them will be radically more productive than you and either get their stuff done in less time or get ahead faster than you will.

Let’s look at a few simple scenarios.

1. You are about to rush into a meeting with a supplier. You know he has recently published a whitepaper about the technology you want to discuss. With everything that’s going on right now, naturally, you have not had the time to read it.

Suppose you know the URL (or have the document handy). In that case, you can prompt Bing Chat or Google Bard) within less than a minute to provide an easily readable three-paragraph summary (much more to the point than the whitepaper anyway 😉) and walk into the meeting armed with the critical information.

2. It’s early December, and you will have your annual three-day face-to-face international team meeting to close out the year and align on Q1 projects. As usual, you would like to treat your colleagues to something unique and local in the late afternoon/evening of the second day of the meeting. Sadly, the department’s assistant has just come down with Covid, leaving you to your own devices. You have been to the Christmas market last year and the year before, so it’s getting a bit long in the tooth.

With four prompt lines, Bing Chat will provide three great alternatives, including opening hours that naturally fit the specified time window and links to the venues for more information or booking. (I have recently used this approach on a trip to London; the results were just brilliant!)

3. Since you are having the meeting anyway, your manager suggests using the first day as a „strategy workshop“ for the upcoming year. As your resume included a stint at some consultancy, she has determined that you are the ideal person to organize it. Unfortunately, it is late in the year, and you don’t have enough remaining budget to call us.

Again, it takes four lines of prompting to develop a detailed agenda centered around the „Team Alignment Canvas“ by Patrick Lencioni, including the suggestion to hold the workshop off-site and links to planning and facilitation guides. Suppose you have essential facilitation skills and spend some time preparing. In that case, this recipe will yield a workshop that’s almost guaranteed to be more productive than most “strategy” workshops I have had to endure in my management career. (I have copied the example prompt and the Bing Chat w/GPT-4 response below.)

4. During the workshop, your manager drops that the executive team has recently decided to implement SAFe as a corporate-wide framework to align execution with strategy. Having collected some browny points with your workshop design and facilitation, you want to keep up the good impression and ensure you survive the evening conversation.

Using Bing Chat on your iPhone during a break, you gather ten bullet points with some quick insights into the benefits, possible challenges, and the factors determining the duration of a SAFe implementation that keep you from staring blankly at your manager’s explanations during the team dinner.

(If you find this impressive, here’s a link to three research papers that push the boundaries of GPT-4’s capabilities and explain why some claim that AI already shows emergent properties of natural intelligence.)

Most of what you will have to do to get results is provide instructions and information to the chatbot/model of your choice, aka „prompting.“

From my LinkedIn feed, it almost seems that „prompt engineering“ is some new form of magic and that you will have to take (paid) courses offered by seasoned prompt engineers to get results. That’s not the case. The models are incredibly forgiving; you can and should experiment to your heart’s content.

Some prompting basics that I find to work well for me:

• Being clear about what you want („Write, summarize, compare, …“)
• Providing context and/or examples (more is often better)
• Ascribing a role to the AI („You are a Scrum Master.“)
• Setting limitations („In three paragraphs.“)
• Setting the level of the expected response („Expert,“ „ten-year-old“)

The rest is experimenting, copying, and modifying proven prompts (Prompt Bard or Bing Chat to help you!).

Remember to fact-check your results! During my recent research for a project, GPT-3.5 „made up“ two studies supposedly published by top consultancies that were nowhere to be found using a „classic“ Google search.

If you do not have Copilot access in a corporate setting, you want to be careful with company information. But even using the free versions of Bing Chat (with GPT-4 for free!) and Google’s Bard with ‚generic‘ prompts like in the examples above will provide you with massive productivity gains.

Here are some pointers to free resources that will get you started:

40 Best ChatGPT Prompts To Save You Time at Work

A great list of prompting examples by Tech.co’s Aaron Drapkin for anything from writing emails to creating meeting agendas and much more. 

Click to view!

Here’s the workshop example referenced above:

Prompt:

I am the executive assistant to a department head in a large corporation. The department has five sub-departments, each headed up by a director. I am tasked with creating the agenda for a strategy workshop that will help to devise the strategy for the coming year. Can you create an example agenda and point me to resources that will help me build a successful workshop?

Bing Chat’s Response:

Sure, I can help you with creating an example agenda and pointing you to some resources that will help you build a successful workshop. Here is what I suggest:

Example agenda for a strategy workshop

The purpose of this workshop is to clarify the strategic direction of the department and its sub-departments for the coming year. The workshop will be facilitated by the department head and will involve the five directors of the sub-departments as participants. The workshop will last for one day and will be held offsite from the office.

9:00 – 9:30 Introduction and overview

• The department head welcomes the participants and explains the objectives and agenda of the workshop.
• The participants introduce themselves and share their expectations and hopes for the workshop.
• The facilitator presents the Team Alignment Canvas¹, a tool for clarifying and communicating the strategic direction of the department. The canvas is based on six questions that every organisation needs to answer to succeed, as presented in the book The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni².

9:30 – 10:30 Why do we exist?

• The facilitator leads a discussion on the first question of the canvas: Why do we exist? This question aims to define the core purpose and values of the department, the reason why it matters, and the impact it wants to have in the world.
• The participants brainstorm and share their ideas on why the department exists, using sticky notes or an online collaboration tool. The facilitator guides the participants to cluster and prioritise their ideas, and to draft a concise and compelling statement that captures the essence of the department’s purpose and values.
• The facilitator writes the statement on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.

10:30 – 11:00 Break

11:00 – 12:00 How do we behave?

• The facilitator leads a discussion on the second question of the canvas: How do we behave? This question aims to define the core behaviours and norms that the department expects from its members, the way they interact with each other and with external stakeholders, and the culture they want to create and sustain.
• The participants brainstorm and share their ideas on how the department behaves, using sticky notes or an online collaboration tool. The facilitator guides the participants to cluster and prioritise their ideas, and to identify a few key behaviours that are essential and distinctive for the department.
• The facilitator writes the behaviours on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.

12:00 – 13:00 Lunch

13:00 – 14:00 What do we do?

• The facilitator leads a discussion on the third question of the canvas: What do we do? This question aims to define the core business and activities of the department, the products and services it offers, and the value proposition it delivers to its customers and beneficiaries.
• The participants brainstorm and share their ideas on what the department does, using sticky notes or an online collaboration tool. The facilitator guides the participants to cluster and prioritise their ideas, and to summarise the main aspects of the department’s business and activities.
• The facilitator writes the summary on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.

14:00 – 15:00 How will we succeed?

• The facilitator leads a discussion on the fourth question of the canvas: How will we succeed? This question aims to define the core strategy and goals of the department, the competitive advantage and differentiation it has or wants to achieve, and the key performance indicators and targets it uses to measure its success.
• The participants brainstorm and share their ideas on how the department will succeed using sticky notes or an online collaboration tool. The facilitator guides the participants to cluster and prioritize their ideas, and to formulate a few strategic priorities and objectives that are aligned with the department’s purpose, values, and business.
• The facilitator writes the priorities and objectives on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.

15:00 – 15:30 Break

15:30 – 16:30 What is most important, right now?

• The facilitator leads a discussion on the fifth question of the canvas: What is most important, right now? This question aims to define the core focus and action plan of the department, the most urgent and critical issue or opportunity it faces, and the specific steps and responsibilities it assigns to address it.
• The participants brainstorm and share their ideas on what is most important, right now, for the department, using sticky notes or an online collaboration tool. The facilitator guides the participants to cluster and prioritise their ideas, and to select one or two key issues or opportunities that require immediate attention and action.
• The facilitator writes the issues or opportunities on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.
• The facilitator then leads the participants to develop a SMART action plan for each issue or opportunity, defining the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound actions, the expected outcomes and impacts, and the roles and accountabilities of each participant.
• The facilitator writes the action plan on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.

16:30 – 17:00 Who must do what?

• The facilitator leads a discussion on the sixth and final question of the canvas: Who must do what? This question aims to define the core roles and responsibilities of the department and its sub-departments, the scope and boundaries of each sub-department, and the coordination and communication mechanisms among them.
• The participants brainstorm and share their ideas on who must do what using sticky notes or an online collaboration tool. The facilitator guides the participants to cluster and prioritize their ideas, and to map out the main roles and responsibilities of each sub-department, as well as the interdependencies and interfaces among them.
• The facilitator writes the roles and responsibilities on the canvas and asks for feedback and agreement from the participants.

17:00 – 17:30 Wrap up and evaluation

• The facilitator reviews the completed canvas with the participants and asks for any final comments or questions.
• The facilitator thanks the participants for their contributions and commitment and explains the next steps for implementing and monitoring the strategy.
• The facilitator asks the participants to fill out a short evaluation form to provide feedback on the workshop process and outcomes.
• The facilitator closes the workshop and invites the participants to celebrate their achievements.

Resources for building a successful workshop

To help you prepare and facilitate the workshop, I have searched the web for some useful resources that you can use as references or inspiration. Here are some of them:

(1) One day strategic planning workshop Facilitation guide. https://www.strategyfieldguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Strategy-Field-Guide-one-day-strategic-planning-workshop-facilitation-guide-v1.11.20200426.pdf.

(2) A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop | SessionLab. https://www.sessionlab.com/blog/planning-a-workshop/.

(3) One day strategic planning workshop Facilitation guide. https://www.strategyfieldguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Strategy-Field-Guide-one-day-strategic-planning-workshop-facilitation-guide-v1.11.20200426.pdf.

(4) A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop | SessionLab. https://www.sessionlab.com/blog/planning-a-workshop/.

(5) How to run a strategy workshop – The event – Intrafocus. https://www.intrafocus.com/2018/06/how-to-run-a-strategy-workshop-the-event/.

(6) How To Prepare For Facilitating A Strategy Workshop. https://rockyourstrategy.com/how-to-prepare-for-facilitating-a-strategy-workshop/.

I hope this helps you with your task. If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. 😊

Source: Conversation with Bing, 24/11/2023