How to Keep Your Team Relevant and Future-Ready in the Age of AI | Ep 248

Dr Steve Day: AI is here to stay. It\'s becoming as ubiquitous as the Internet is for small business owners. Without AI, we\'re going to get outcompeted. Because the companies that are embracing it and adopting it into their daily practices are going to become more efficient, more productive and just get more done with less. Therefore, become more profitable and have more money to put back into their businesses, marketing, etc. And therefore, they\'re going to be able to outcompete anyone who doesn\'t adopt AI into their daily practices. And herein lies the problem.

From my experience of my own staff, and also from dealing with hundreds of staff members in other people\'s companies, I don\'t believe that small business owners are having the conversations they need to with their staff about their training and learning about AI. This needs to be something that is dealt with now. Because very soon, if your staff members aren\'t embracing AI, if they\'re not using it in their daily practice to improve productivity and efficiency, etc. Then they\'re going to be obsolete. And you\'re going to be looking to hire somebody. Who can basically do the same work they can in a tenth of the less time. And to a higher standard by using AI.

So if you like your staff members, if you like working with them, which I hope you do, then these conversations that I want to discuss in this episode are the conversations you need to start having now. To ensure they understand how the landscape of employment is changing. And people that aren\'t adopting AI into the daily practice are going to become obsolete. So if you\'re like your current members of staff. If you\'re not totally nailing AI in your business right now. Listening to this episode, it\'s going to have some important insights.

Of the way that I\'m dealing with this with myself and my staff. And also how I\'m helping clients to start these conversations and bring this to the forefront of their team members\' minds. I\'m recording this episode because I like my staff. I like working with them. They\'re good people, they\'re honest, they\'re reliable, they\'re loyal and I want to keep them. However, as a business owner, I can\'t just keep people because I like them. They\'ve got to actually be adding value to the company.

And if I can get a similar person to do the same work, but in a tenth the time and to a higher standard. Then as a business owner, I\'m going to have to start making those difficult decisions. And having some difficult conversations. What I\'m talking about here is that staff members who are adopting and learning how to utilize AI in their day-to-day about understanding how it can be used. To benefit so many parts of any single task or process or system.

And if they\'re not embracing that and realizing the opportunities available to them, then at some point they\'re going to be either replaced entirely by AI. Or they\'re going to be replaced by somebody who is using AI to increase their productivity, their efficiency, et cetera. Now, as I said, I like my team. I want to keep them. So I want to make sure they are upskilling in order to stay competitive. And in doing so provide more value to me as the business owner.

If I can get my existing team to truly embrace AI, then they are going to become super valuable to me. This means I\'m asking my team to think about how they can replace themselves in their own role by using AI. That may seem strange. It may seem like I\'m asking them to replace themselves out of a job. But what I\'m trying to do is actually create AI savvy employees. People who can see that so much more can be by using AI.

There\'s no risk to me right now of running out of things that I can do in my business. If I had a team of 50 people, I\'d get a hell of a lot more done than I do with my little tiny team of three people plus me. So there\'s no end of work that needs to get done. It\'s only about what we have the capacity within our team to do. So if I\'ve got a team member, for example, who\'s currently dealing with my comms, they\'re checking my emails.

They\'re making decisions about what needs to happen next and they\'re replying to people. They\'re creating tasks, they\'re actioning them, or they\'re forwarding things to me for review. Like if I can get an AI to do that, that will save hours and hours every single week. Which that person can then utilize that new AI’s skills they\'ve developed as they\'ve systemized an AI version of that comms management project. They can then use that new skill set and apply that to another part of the business or another part of their role.

And keep on doing that until we become super AI efficient. And their role then becomes an, in effect, AI developer or an AI maintenance person. Who\'s constantly checking like can we improve this automation. Like why is it, why is this prompt not giving us the results we want. Where are the errors in this. And that becomes their role about utilizing their expertise and experience. They had in being, for example, my comms manager. But then actually using that skills to see how can we apply AI to that specific role.

In order to actually reduce the human input required to an absolute minimum and get more consistent results. Regardless of if that person goes on leave or leaves the company or is off sick or whatever. So we can use the skills that people already have, add AI to it, and now create an AI driven system that is then much more consistent, reliable, like I said. But then in doing that, we\'re upskilling those individuals to become the AI experts in our business.

And that skill set is highly valuable and will become more and more valuable as you\'re going forward. That\'s kind of the benefit to me as a business owner. I\'m reducing the number of human hours needed to do stuff. But I can see also that I\'ll probably increase the number of human hours needed to work on AI. So as a business owner, I don\'t see it as a right now a massive net gain in the number of hours I\'m going to need people to work.

I\'m just going to get a lot more done. So this person who used to spend say two hours a day doing comms will hopefully now have say 90 minutes free to work on something else. That means I\'m going to get more done for the same number of hours I\'m paying. That\'s hugely, highly beneficial for me, especially when I\'m working with people that I trust. That are loyal. That I can just ask to do stuff and they get on with stuff.

It\'s not about going out and hiring and training new people all the time. It\'s about moving your existing team into different roles where you feel their skill set and their aptitude would be applied much better by using AI to replace them in maybe some of their existing roles. And for the staff member, and this is the key, the driver, the thing that should be pushing them also the “carrot” as well, is that by them doing this, they become much more valuable in the workplace. And they remain relevant.

Because just like if you imagine hiring someone today who had no idea what the Internet was about or how it worked or how to log on and they don\'t use a mobile phone. I mean, 20 years ago that would have been acceptable. You would have trained them up.

Now you expect it. You expect people to understand how the Internet works and to have a mobile phone, a smartphone, to be able to use things like WhatsApp, whatever. You expect people to have some understanding of basic things that are how we function as business owners. And AI is going to become that very, very quickly. So if your existing team aren\'t skilling up, they\'re going to become obsolete.

And I believe that you, as a business owner, to do your business right, you\'re going to have to start finding people who are more tech savvy. Who are more excited about the opportunities that AI has available. Who can actually help you see the opportunities in your business rather than them continuing to work in a very manual way. And just getting stuff done because that\'s the way it was always done.

We\'ve got to embrace things that are available to us. Technology advancements such as, like AI, like I\'m talking about now. We\'ve got to be on that. It\'s not like we have to radically change everything we do in the business. And overnight have AI running all parts of the business.

It\'s about having a mindset. For me, it\'s been the mindset of systems for years. It\'s about understanding that I don\'t want to hire experts forever. If I hire an expert into the business to help me understand how, you know, a certain piece of software works. Or how to build a marketing funnel. I want to do that once and to get that knowledge. I want to start building some systems around that. So that therefore I\'m not relying on a high, highly expensive expert forevermore to get that stuff done.

And that\'s the same with this. Is that I want people in my business to have the level of expertise needed in order to utilize AI to get the stuff done. I don\'t want to be hiring AI experts every time I need to do any sort of AI stuff. And I believe AI is just the extension of the systems process.

The difference with AI, we can actually ask it to help us design the system that we\'re building the AI to use. That is one of the key differences. The revolutionary ways and mindset shifts about how we can be adopting and using AI. So we need people to get that. To understand that no matter what the task is that\'s available using AI, we can actually learn how to do something.

It\'s about how we then bring that in using tools like NAN, for example, for automating AI sequences. About using the AI tools like chatbots, et cetera, built into softwares and CRMs, et cetera. If we have people that just see the opportunities that go, hold on a minute, why am I doing this manually. Why I am, why am I the one checking the Facebook group. Why don\'t I set up a bot to go and do that.

And then use AI to make a reply and then flag up anything of concern. Like that is the mindset that I need people to be in, in my business. So it\'s not me driving all of the thought about where can we use AI to improve what we\'re doing. Like that shouldn\'t be purely on me, I believe as a business owner anymore.

I want people who are actually seeing the opportunities for themselves. And for them to do that, they need to understand how it works. So asking them to look at their and say, great, from now until, you know, give them a target in two weeks time when you come back and tell me how can we use AI to improve efficiency. Improve productivity, or replace you completely in this role.

What\'s like, what do you see as the opportunities here. What do you see as the risks, the challenges, like how do we actually make this work in reality. And by doing that, you\'re getting that person to start thinking in a completely different way, which they may have never done before. But as I said before, once they\'ve got that mindset, it\'s a bit like when people work with me as a client and I shift them into a systems mindset.

Suddenly they see their business as a series of systems rather than a series of or a collection of experts who are basically making it happen. If we can get that systems mindset installed into a business, suddenly the business can scale. It can scale beyond the business owner. Can scale beyond the individuals in the business. And this is the same with AI.

It\'s just an extension of systems. It\'s utilizing the best technology out to make it basically make our companies as efficient, as reliable and as reproducible as possible. So that we can meet and exceed our client expectations even when key individuals aren\'t there.

And AI is going to make this so much easier to do. So my big take home from this is not that you should need to just jump on this AI, shackle your staff and basically have AI doing everything for you. But it\'s about understanding that if you don\'t start having conversations about AI with your existing team, about getting them to see why they need to skill up for themselves.

I believe the motivation needs to come from them, from within. They need to see that if they don\'t do this for themselves, they will become irrelevant. Whether it\'s working with you or working with somebody else. Once you give the opportunities to help grow that skill set within your business, they\'ll be thankful for you for then skilling them up into the new world of AI.

And but you as a business owner benefit massively. Because your business has become more efficient. Because it\'s been helped by AI in lots of different ways, which maybe as you as the business owner, you\'re not going to have time to think about and apply yourself. And so then getting your staff involved is how we can do that.

So that\'s it for today. I just wanted to share my current thoughts on how I\'m trying to get my staff and my client staff to really embrace the world of AI. And to see the opportunities available to them. The risks if they don\'t. And how that can massively benefit us and them in order to actually keep our businesses and themselves current and relevant in the coming months and years. Thanks very much.

How to Keep Your Team Relevant and Future-Ready in the Age of AI | Ep 248

In this week’s episode, I share how I’m helping my own team use AI to:

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Empowering Your Team to Embrace the Future of AI in Business

BEST MOMENTS: Insights on Guiding Teams Through AI in Business

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

Episode Transcript

LINKS TO CONNECT WITH THE HOST

ABOUT THE HOST

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