23 Comments
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Kenneth E. Harrell's avatar

But can’t we just add AI and fix everything? (jk)

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Yeah.... maybe? If you're already doing the good work, AI can augment. If you're not... You have no idea where it's going wrong.

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Klaus Hubbertz's avatar

AI, even AGI is a tool, not a plan ...

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Good point.

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Alicia Brown's avatar

I like your initiative. Could you create a quick deck of bullet points on how AI will help us raise the bottom line? Please include an executive summary as I do not have time to read a whole 8-slide PowerPoint.

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Kenneth E. Harrell's avatar

“Sure”…Alright let’s do some prompt’n! Ok select all, copy comment . Open up ChatGPT, over the shoulder check. Ctrl v… lol

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Having created operations manuals and been on both sides of that equation, it's fascinating to observe just how different things are from how SOP suggests.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Always different! And normally, the SOP is pretty damn good!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I'll have to jot this down in some detail, but one of my business (US Grappling) was doing well in the early 2010s, so I decided to ask a lot of questions and document everything at every event for a while. People HATED this so much.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

What did they hate about it? The idea it could be formalized?

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Ah, no - this was all about the extra time it took to document everything. The company ran events, so we were always on a time crunch - and I wasn't incredibly diplomatic about winning people over to the importance of this project, etc. Mainly, I needed to learn how to communicate better.

But of course, it's fairly typical for businesses not to want to "waste time" documenting things. In the long run it's the exact opposite, but folks are often wired for the sprint.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Exactly right.

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JD Solomon's avatar

Very good insights

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Thanks

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Klaus Hubbertz's avatar

Actions speak louder than words ...

Anyone listening ??? ...

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Absolutely, frustrating that we have to keep reminding ourselves of that.

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Wyrd Smythe's avatar

I retired 14 years ago, so Six Sigma and CEOs are a thing of my past, but the "do what you say" ethic resonates with me. In my younger days, I loved the Spenser detective stories by Robert Parker. Oft repeated in those was Spenser's view that there are very few things one can control in life, but among the few is doing what you say — not saying you'll do a thing unless you mean to — following through and that your word is precious and never to be squandered. Really stuck with me.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

I like that. It must be a hard thing to do when so much of our wisdom literature contains this guidance.

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Wolfgang's avatar

Rgr, do what you say and say what you mean.

If you say you're going to do something - DO IT.

Don't make promises you cannot deliver on.

If you say what you mean and you mean what you say, to then not do what you say makes the first two steps a complete waste of time, emotion, effort and the trust acquired by the first two steps is now completely quashed/void.

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Wyrd Smythe's avatar

Yep.

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Alicia Brown's avatar

The part about wanting to be "Agile" so you don't have to follow processes cracks me up. In my experience this almost always come from leadership, who "don't have time" to follow the process they themselves signed off on. I believe in the power of processes but I think when they're not being followed we have to find out why and fix the breakage points. If leaders won't fill out the creative brief because they can't be bothered to look up the budget codes, then they need to empower someone else to do it or we need to automate the brief so they can find the code more easily.

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Trinh Cong Nhat's avatar

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Kyle Shepard's avatar

Agility without discipline is just chaos. Love it. Excellent piece.

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