The worst thing a CEO can do with AI

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah. Yeah. So thirty years of higher education background. I've always worked within a college setting, measurement and assessment company as a strategist for about six or seven years. And most recently the last few years, decided to go full time in my consulting. I've always done consulting on the side, but decided to, you know, go all in on that. you're probably gonna ask me why I didn't did that. but I I felt like I wanted to be able to scale my impact in this later journey that I'm on professionally. So when I do retire, I can look back and realize that I had a lot of influence and impact to helping people.

Yeah. Yeah. I think now's an interesting time in globally, right? We've we've really been forced to recognize that we've we've existed in a world of intelligence scarcity in the past. And all of a sudden we are living in a world of abundance of intelligence. And so I would say most leaders are struggling with their own paradigm shifts and leadership evolution. one of the things that that I often tell people is you know, you don't have objectivity when you're in the middle of a crisis in your company. And some of the best, you know, impact that I can have is is coming in and really helping them tease out, you know, let's talk about what are the targets you're trying to hit. And you never want to leave, leave people behind. We cannot lead with the new technology that AI is bringing. We have to think about the the human AI, human advantage. And that's really what's gonna create competitive moats and advantage for companies. but if you the worst thing I say the worst thing a CEO can do is go and learn, take a workshop and learn how to use ChatGPT or Claude over the weekend. Come back and tell all their their staff I'm so excited. We're moving forward with AI. Because what happens is people start to question and make assumptions about what it is that means for them and their role. And you know that fear can can set in. And so a leader really needs to understand there's a a very strategic approach to having the conversation and moving your culture through the social adoption, you know, reaction curve, if you will.

Yeah, you know, put a put a lot of thought and energy. I I work with, you know, several sectors. obviously within my my company. I work with higher education and obviously academia is is, you know, faced with the challenge right now of navigating this this great conflict between academia and AI. And should students use AI and faculty are using AI, but they don't want their students to use AI. And so there's a lot in that space. I work with nonprofits. And a lot of the nonprofits I work with are in that, you know, education to workforce ecosystem and then business and industry. And across all those sectors, what I realized is it doesn't matter what anybody does as a job professionally, as humans, each and every one of us, you included, need to recognize what are the seven human capabilities that AI cannot replace and how are we going to navigate, you know, the the technology that is available to us. And so obviously, Joey list those, I can list those. so how detailed did you want to go into this? That framework's pretty exciting. Everybody needs to to learn it.

Yep. First thing that they do is they start listening to their teams when they come to the their their teams will come and say, We need to get a license for CLOD we need to get a license for, you know, co-pilot or whatever the tool of the day is. And the big mistake there is that the very first thing that a leadership team should be doing, and a CEO needs to really be the sponsor and the leader on this, is, you know, I'll if I was to go into an organization and ask their C-suite. How do you see AI impacting your success? Everyone's going to have a different answer. So the first step is to have an AI governance workshop. And that's something I facilitate. It takes about a day and a half. We work with the C-suite. And we we frame around what's our philosophy statement about how we believe and where are we showing up with our own core values around using AI. And then we talk about boundaries and guardrails and the risk tiers that are specific to that industry. And make sure that everybody has alignment and is on the same page. And we actually formalize and publish a AI governance charter. It keeps everybody honest as we start making the decisions. Who gets to own the decision? Because there's numerous considerations and you never want to not go through that process and have that foundation in place first. Never lead with the technology.

Yeah. I I would say that statistically that's actually, I think that's understated because it's human nature. If you're not safe, there's this in my 12 domains of of AI adoption, one of them is psychological safety and readiness, human readiness. And so if you're not psychologically safe in an in a culture, you're not going to Raise your hand or put yourself out there for experimentation because A, you don't want to look inept. B, you don't know if your job might be eliminated or not. So you're just, you're, you're, you're probably experimenting. There's this thing in the United States here we call shadow AI. And shadow AI is it's what aren't you seeing? People may say that they're not using it, but really, are they? And in most cases, they probably are. And they might be using it on their phone, a free version at home. They're probably learning behind the scenes. And what leaders need to understand is they need to model, a CEO needs to model a culture of learning and learning transparently to be able to say, we're all going to learn together. We're all going to experiment together. Here's the guardrails that we're going in to experiment within. And give people that psychological safety so they don't have to leave room for the assumptions that can cause them to have some head games with themselves.

Yeah. So yeah, I would say as a solo entrepreneur, I have AI agent employees that I orchestrate on a day to day basis. I've given them names. I have an Ava, a James, a Claire, a Fletcher. And I would say that, you know, I've I've got a gentleman on my team who is fantastic with. building the agentics system and and organization and then all I have to do is is human AI human it right I would say my use case my one of my favorite use cases is I have an action desk and so my my model that I'm using is trained in my voice and my knowledge. It took many, many many months of building that brain if you will around what I know and It is literally scouring the internet for speaking engagement opportunities, thought leadership articles, RFPs, proposals, conferences, you know, things that I need to be kept up on. And I get an action desk in my inbox each day with things that are a fit for me to focus on. What are the things that are I might not want to overlook? Because I would never be able to keep up. with all the opportunities and potentials that exist. And then I can click on that link and source. So maybe I want to submit a proposal to speak at a conference somewhere. Maybe I don't, but it waves that in my face so I can see it.

All agents will misbehave. That's why you have to have human in the loop. you're, you know, the these are not people, these are this is data. And the reality is that you know, there is data drift, there are biases, and there is hallucinations. And you cannot trust, you always have to keep your eye on what is happening with your, you know, your technology. People make that mistake. I've actually helped clients that have called me, people have called me freaked out because they tried to use AI to wrangle their data, qualitative data. It's like, nope, you ha humans have to annotate and label data. You cannot give that to an AI. you can use AI to synthesize it after it's labeled and annotated, but there's there's I I like to say AI is not going to steal our humanity unless we allow it. And the reality is it can amplify us because with AI, we've just ten times our potential and we've really truly given ourselves a a human advantage.

Yeah, it just can't replace judgment. And and I think the one thing that I try to tell my clients and students that I work with and people that I coach, you need to understand your your own human distinctiveness. You know, if it we were created with our own unique gifts. Not a single one of us is identically the same. AI is pretty much you're gonna, you're gonna get what you get. And the human the human nature, we are amazing human beings with so much to contribute. And we cannot get lazy and let technology take over. So we have to be a c we have to be focused on what's called collaborative intelligence. And that means that we're thinking you know, you're we're thinking without outsourcing the judgment.

Yeah, it's not going to replace the the judgment, of course, the the creativity that the artistic ability. it can it can help us, you know, with problem solving, but we are are the only ones who are gonna be able to really sit back and say, hmm, from a, you know, an align in alignment with my core values, is this the right thing to do or not? Or Is this is this authentically in my voice? Is this authentically, you know, something that I should or shouldn't do? Just because you can use AI doesn't mean you should. And, you know, I I I often like to say, you would never kill a fly with a bazooka. Right? Just go get a fly swatter. The reality is sometimes people try to overcomplicate and and they get lazy and they think, I need to draft that. You know, I need to send a thank you card or I need to draft a a letter to somebody, and they immediately go to their AI. Just write the note. Just write the note. It's gonna take you two seconds. You know what you wanna say from your heart. Just write the note. Like, why are we why are we trying to over AI things? so it's that judgment. And you know, working with I'm gonna be speaking at a STEM summit here in a few weeks to K-12 educators here in the United States. And I'm leading a session on still human. how educators can teach AI s without losing, you know, losing the skills that AI is gonna replace, isn't gonna replace. So it's it's all about I'll give you an example. A teacher may in the past may have written an article, research, you know, clean energy models, right? And write a paper. Well in nine seconds, that student can have that paper. produced and handed in. But what happens if you start with that AI as instead of making the what's going to be the output the artifact, if you ask yourselves, what can AI replace? Can AI do this submission? Make it use your AI to research renewable clean energy and cr critique and summarize what were three things that AI got wrong or couldn't Clearly. And or read look at your your local geography in your in your area, in your county. what are the trends in your county for renewable energy? Because then they have to have that subjective, subjective approach and lens. Where do I live? What are the agencies around me? and then the third the third one from a durable human skill would be debate and discuss this with a classmate. Do they agree or disagree with your philosophy on whether or not your government should be pursuing those models? Those are the human skills. And AI is not going to replace that. But if we're not making space for that in our classrooms, in our day-to-day with people, we're we're truly going to put ourselves at a disadvantage and get lazy. I think that I think that AI is great. I'm a little biased, right? I'm in I'm in the AI industry. But it's because it should be making more time to go deeper on our subject and it should be really giving us more time to be able to engage with people more. Cause we're not stuck behind the computer doing redundant data entry and and things that our agents can do for us.

Yeah, it's silly. Yeah.

Yeah, it's human nature. Yeah.

But what's crazy about it is you can build your content engine in a way that your eyes see everything and that it's in your own voice. I'll tell you, when I started using AI at first, you got slop because the model wasn't trained on me yet, wasn't trained on my voice and who I am and how I think and talk and speak. But over time, it improves. And it If you're correcting it properly, it's going to learn what not to do. It's like a teenager or kid, right? You're not going to do this. But if you let it get away with it, it's just going to continue to give you problems. so you you've got to know how to do that. I I would say that it's sad because people are only scratching the surface of its capacity and what it's capable of doing. and You know, one of the things that I I do, I've I do a lot of speaking and leading faculty development academies and workshops for universities. And oftentimes university leaders will bring me in to to have the conversation with their faculty about okay, we're going to love and embrace, you know, changing our curriculum and and instructing and letting students use AI, but we've got to change our assessment. And I feel for academia. I feel for faculty because let's face it, a lot of these they went to college for a long time to become subject matter experts. You're in the classroom, and they're proud and their value and their identity is anchored in. I'm a subject matter expert. I've got knowledge that people need, right? And all of a sudden, AIs come along and do do do people can pull up what they've known and worked hard to acquire. But The one thing that I tell Academia is this, you need to make your paradigm shift from no longer subject matter expert to meaning maker. Because without you as a faculty member, if not you, then who is going to be the meaning maker to translate and to really help these graduates enter the world of work that quite frankly isn't the same world of work that you came through. It's different now. So you've got to be changing your assessment and you've got to be be really leaning into those human skills. Because if you don't, you're doing our our graduates a disservice. So they don't always like like the message, but at the end of the day, they know I'm right.

Yeah. Sure. Well, definitely my website is profitquiver.com. and I have lots of information out there. look me up on LinkedIn. my I'm I have all my phone number, my email, all that good stuff out there on my LinkedIn page. I believe in, you know, people picking up the phone and just calling me and having a conversation. the the other thing that I would say is If you if you hear of anybody who has rolled out AI and they're realizing that their adoption isn't sticking, I love going into organizations and just helping clean things up. And what I mean by that is giving the leaders clarity, kind of taking a step back and saying, okay, let's look at your culture, let's look at what's happening with your technology, and let's maybe do a little bit of a do-over and fix that. and I think the next thing I would say is I, you know, I'm always up for doing more podcasts and more speaking. So I like to stay busy. This has been great.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.