0:01

Ted Audio Collective. Supercharged

0:30

exploration of AI that I'm sure

0:33

so many of you are encountering

0:35

right now. So,

0:37

Frances, talk to

0:39

us. Tell us where your mind is on this

0:41

AI revolution right now. So,

0:45

I'm just totally

0:47

intrigued and down for the count for

0:49

AI. Like, I see the upside

0:51

and it's so palpable. So,

0:54

for example, one thing I've created for private

0:56

use, I'm not yet ready to share it

0:58

with public. I've

1:00

put all of our writings together

1:02

into our own custom chat GPT.

1:06

And I can ask it questions. So,

1:08

if I can't get to you, I

1:10

can ask it questions and it will

1:12

simulate your voice. And

1:15

I'm going to be honest, you're

1:17

better than it most hours of the day.

1:21

But if I could go to the chat

1:23

GPT or you after 4

1:25

p.m., I'm going to the

1:27

chat GPT. Yeah, this whole morning brain

1:29

is strange. Oh, in the morning, you

1:31

dominate AI in the morning. But I'm

1:33

not sure you dominate AI after 4

1:36

p.m. I think you're generous with

1:38

4. Wow, I think

1:41

this is going to improve our marriage. I'm

1:46

Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership

1:48

coach. And I'm Frances Fry. I'm a professor

1:50

at the Harvard Business School and I'm Anne's

1:52

wife. And this is

1:54

Fix-a-Bowl from the TED Audio Collective. On

1:57

this show, we believe that meaningful change

1:59

happens fast. Anything is fixable

2:01

and good solutions are usually just a

2:03

single brave conversation away. Let's listen to

2:05

today's caller. Hey Ann,

2:08

hey Francis, thank you for all listening. My

2:10

name is Mark and I work for a software

2:12

company leading a team of technical sellers. We

2:15

are a SaaS company, Software as a Service,

2:17

and we're creating new products pretty much two

2:20

or three products every year. Also, our

2:22

existing products are getting deeper and deeper. My

2:25

team needs to be experts in all

2:27

of these products and the problem we

2:29

are finding is because the portfolio is

2:32

becoming so wide and so deep, it's

2:34

impossible to be an expert in every

2:36

single thing. The way we've

2:38

tried solving it is making specialists, but the problem

2:40

with that is as we go on to meet

2:42

customers, we have to show off with a bus,

2:44

we have to show off with 10, 11, 12

2:46

people, and that's

2:48

an extremely costly sale. I'm hoping

2:50

you can help me with that. Thank you.

2:52

Bye-bye. This reminds

2:54

me of the curse of winning.

2:57

We usually think of the blessing of winning,

3:00

but when you get really good and you

3:02

get into that flywheel of really good, more

3:05

and more and more things, and

3:07

you're poor employees. Yeah,

3:10

that can absorb the pain. Yeah, so

3:12

it's great for the organization, but it's

3:14

so often on the backs of employees.

3:16

And so how do we set employees

3:18

up for success when the

3:21

organization's success is just

3:23

doing more and more. Hi,

3:37

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a condition called writer's block. It

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writer's block. Ask your boss if

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designed for work. Canva. For

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really to I've got some huge

4:09

news to Kotor is moving to

4:11

Mondays and Thursdays running a second

4:13

episode the show on Mondays. Whether

4:15

classic interviews, Ceos and other troublemakers

4:17

I like, we're going to have

4:19

to start having conversations about how

4:21

do we pay those jobs that

4:23

can be done by a I

4:25

and on Thursdays will be explaining

4:27

big topics in the news with

4:29

version porters. Experts and other friends of the

4:31

show. As. A new generation of people on

4:33

the internet. Google search has always sucked. For

4:35

than so Athena, there's no reason for them

4:37

to be loyal second, just. Go to

4:40

on this is will really fun! I'm very

4:42

excited about this sub go subscribe reverie getting

4:44

hot as now. Mark

4:48

welcome the six the both. Thank you!

4:51

Excited to be so! Let's. Let's

4:53

jump right into it. You need

4:55

a sales team at a software

4:58

company and your team is having

5:00

trouble managing. Their. Complexity

5:02

and the brats. Of

5:05

the are growing product portfolio

5:07

is that affairs summary The

5:09

situation correct. The only thing I would

5:11

changes it's a pre sales team so it's

5:13

a technical sales team. So he worked very

5:15

cloudy with our sales counterpart. but we are

5:18

responsible for the technical aspects of the feals.

5:20

Got it? And so how. Is

5:22

this. Since I'm showing up in.

5:25

Practical. Terms. Yes,

5:27

I give you an example so I'll

5:30

I'll talk about how things are today

5:32

and then maybe we could talk about

5:34

how to can be tomorrow. So today

5:36

we have the Us is divided into

5:38

twenty reasons and we have one person

5:40

in each region, but that one person

5:42

is responsible for all the products. Use

5:45

that we south so. Bad.

5:47

fifty products use that this one person

5:49

is responsible for and it could be

5:52

across different industry so monday they could

5:54

be fighting to a bank tuesday they

5:56

could be speak go manufacture wednesday they

5:58

could be speak to a retailer And

6:01

we are expected to show up as experts

6:03

in all of these meetings, which is impossible.

6:06

So that's really where the tension grows because

6:08

the sales team sort of pulls us in

6:11

as experts. But because there's

6:13

so much with it's impossible

6:15

to play that role efficiently. And

6:19

then the regional logic is that these meetings are

6:21

live. So you

6:23

want someone local who can show

6:25

up for the meeting. Correct. Costs are

6:27

also a big factor. So we don't want people

6:30

traveling all over the country. So we want it

6:32

to be as local as possible. And

6:34

you described in your voicemail some painful

6:37

sales meetings where

6:40

because of this, you had

6:42

an army of people in the room.

6:44

Will you walk us through an example?

6:46

Yeah. So we tried sort

6:48

of saying instead of this one person knowing

6:50

everything, which is impossible, experts

6:53

have specialists who specialize in

6:56

a few of those sub products. But

6:58

the minute we start doing that, especially

7:01

given the customers, because we do sell

7:03

to larger enterprises. So customers

7:05

don't care about our SKUs. They care about

7:08

the problem that they're trying to solve. And

7:11

we may be solving that problem using multiple products

7:13

on our side. So now you

7:15

have a specialist in each of those products. And

7:17

suddenly that call has 20 people

7:20

from our company showing up, which again,

7:22

is not efficient.

7:25

Got it. And when

7:27

people are buying, when you

7:29

close business, what's your

7:31

theory of the case? Why are people excited about what

7:34

you all are doing? Because our product

7:36

is astounding. Like as a technical salesperson,

7:38

nothing's more awesome than being able to

7:40

stand in front of a customer and

7:42

say our product will do that. And

7:45

the product actually does that. So

7:47

when they use the product, right,

7:49

it's a great product. And also

7:51

because our company has different

7:54

products which work with different pieces

7:56

of the company, but it's all on

7:59

the same platform. So it helps. break

8:01

the silos in our customers as well.

8:03

The finance department, for example, will know

8:05

exactly what the sales department is doing.

8:07

We will know what the service department

8:09

is doing. So when customers use our

8:11

products smartly, they can really break down

8:13

the information silos that exist in their

8:16

own organizations. Great. From your

8:18

perspective, what happens if you don't solve this

8:20

problem? So two things. One is the

8:22

business impact, and then secondly, the employee

8:25

impact. So the employee impact, I'll

8:27

talk about it first, is their heads are

8:29

going to explode because there's just too much

8:32

knowledge to fit in there, and they

8:34

feel they don't do a good job

8:37

because when they show up in front of a customer and they

8:39

ask the question, which they really have no

8:41

way of knowing the answer, but they

8:43

don't like that feeling in front of customers. Right?

8:46

So it's tough for the employees.

8:49

From the business side of the house, because

8:51

we don't even know the right ways to

8:53

ask the questions, I feel

8:55

we leave a lot of money on the table,

8:57

which if I was someone who really knew banking,

8:59

and I was speaking to a bank, I would

9:01

be able to expand my deal a lot more

9:04

and close the deal a lot faster as well. And

9:07

how is this problem impacting you? Because

9:10

I manage the team, I want my

9:12

team to be successful. I feel there'll be a

9:15

lot of burnout and a lot of attrition, and

9:18

it will lead to, because we are in a sales org,

9:20

we all sort of, we have our target numbers, you

9:23

know, it'll be, it's getting tougher and tougher to hit

9:25

those quotas as well. Yeah.

9:29

What's your own job satisfaction today on

9:31

a zero to 10 scale? I love

9:33

it. I love it. Like, I think pre-sales is

9:35

my calling, right? Like, I never knew such a

9:37

job existed till I got the job. And

9:40

now I don't want to do anything else. We

9:42

get to sort of show up as experts, right? So

9:44

if everything else was great, the

9:47

only problem is we're almost a

9:49

victim of our own success. Like, we've been so successful that

9:51

we want to do more and more and more. And

9:54

the current model that we have won't scale. So

9:56

I'm sort of exploring if there are other models

9:58

out there, which may. Awesome. What

10:01

are you hoping to get out of this

10:03

conversation today? I

10:06

don't think we are in a unique situation.

10:08

Like I think other software companies may have

10:10

gone through these kinds of questions or issues

10:13

before. So I'm interested to see if

10:15

you've sort of seen this somewhere else and if someone

10:17

else has sort of found a better

10:19

answer than what we're doing. I'm

10:22

willing to try anything at this point. Awesome.

10:26

I like it. Frances, any other questions

10:28

before we dive in? Well,

10:30

if I can, I'll put some

10:32

structure around the problem. Mark,

10:35

it's not just generalizable to

10:37

software. It's actually, you're describing

10:39

a very generalizable context. And

10:42

how I would characterize it is

10:45

when the rate of operational complexities

10:47

increases at a faster pace than

10:50

our employee sophistication can keep up.

10:53

There is a widening

10:55

gap between operational complexity

10:57

and employee sophistication. And

10:59

what do you do then? And I would say

11:02

that that is true in

11:04

every industry today. The gap is wider

11:07

today. So, and- What

11:10

do you do for that? I love it. It's

11:12

a cliffhanger. So I'll say something that won't be

11:14

surprising, but you have two levers. You

11:17

can either reduce the operational

11:19

complexity or enhance the

11:21

employee sophistication, right? So we'll just

11:24

begin there. I

11:26

will say that if we recommend

11:28

a sequence, enhance the

11:30

employee sophistication as much as

11:32

possible, and

11:34

then you have only one choice, which

11:38

is to reduce the operational complexity.

11:40

And I think that's what you've

11:42

been doing, right? You've been enhancing

11:44

the employee sophistication. I'm sure people

11:46

are getting trained, but you get trained on all of

11:48

the regions and all of the industries and

11:50

all of the verticals, and there's a

11:52

limit to it. So that's a very noble effort.

11:54

So you've done that. And now

11:56

we have to reduce the operational complexity. Now,

11:59

there's two ways- to reduce the

12:01

operational complexity. We could simplify

12:04

it or

12:06

we could partition it. Simplify

12:10

it is like let's say that it's just a

12:12

very complicated knot and we figure out how to

12:14

just do it in a magically

12:16

simpler way. Or

12:18

I can't change the hundred units of complexity

12:20

so I'm gonna give you only ten access you only

12:22

have to deal with ten and you only have to

12:24

deal with another ten and you have to deal with

12:27

another ten and that's what you've been talking about with

12:29

the specialist and generalist part of

12:31

it. But there is

12:33

no silver bullet although there is

12:35

a silver bullet coming but that

12:37

is it's the divergence of

12:40

complexity and sophistication and you have

12:42

to close that. So let

12:44

me just start there does that resonate because I'm

12:47

seeing you nod Mark. No yes that makes complete

12:49

sense and I think that we've been exactly

12:51

to your point that difference

12:53

in the slopes is

12:55

getting wider and wider and wider right. Yes.

12:57

So I totally I totally agree with that.

13:00

Yeah and successful companies it

13:02

gets wider and wider and wider so

13:05

this is actually a sign of success

13:08

and you have like lovely aspects of the

13:10

complexity that are all good signs like if

13:12

I only sold into one part of the

13:15

business it's not but

13:17

by very nature business is better if

13:20

if division A takes it and division B takes

13:22

it because I get the interaction effect between A

13:24

and B. So you're actually the more

13:26

complicated it is the more helpful it is to the customer

13:28

so this isn't a sign of badness this

13:30

is a sign of goodness. So

13:34

what do we do and I would

13:36

say that we have in

13:38

the last three months

13:41

I'm gonna call it there is a

13:44

magical thing come around the corner that

13:46

can help enhance employee sophistication. Okay.

13:50

Is this the magic bullet you were referring to? This

13:53

is the magic bullet and we didn't have it six

13:55

months ago but we've had it

13:57

for the last three months and we'll have it

13:59

more tomorrow. than we do today, and this is the

14:01

magic of AI. And

14:03

so when people hear about artificial intelligence, and you're like,

14:05

oh my gosh, what is it? This

14:08

is it at its most practical

14:10

way, which is artificial

14:12

intelligence is actually my

14:15

personal companion that

14:18

will help improve my sophistication.

14:20

And we can go into it more, but the

14:22

reason I get optimistic now

14:26

is because I don't think your world

14:28

is gonna become that much less complex.

14:30

But I am very excited about how

14:32

much more you're sophisticated your employees are

14:34

going to be with

14:36

this amazing companion that

14:38

didn't exist four months

14:40

ago of AI. And for

14:42

instance, if we think about this in a very

14:45

practical way, and we

14:47

go back to Mark's sales moment

14:50

where there's three people in the room

14:52

and there's 10 people on Zoom, and

14:55

it's this awkward- Yes,

14:57

army of humans. And that was the partitioning the

15:00

complexity, right? So you have an army, if I'm

15:02

gonna partition the complexity, so no human can handle

15:04

more than 10 units of complexity, and there's 100

15:06

units of complexity, I gotta bring 10 people. Yep,

15:09

so imagine that Mark

15:11

is persuaded theoretically that

15:14

generative AI can solve the problem. Can

15:16

you think of an application in that moment in

15:18

this room where AI solves

15:20

the problem? Oh, I can.

15:23

So let me

15:25

first just say what AI does, but

15:28

essentially what AI allows me to do

15:30

is any question I have,

15:33

I can type it in and get an amazing answer. And

15:37

so real time, if I'm in the room, I

15:39

probably won't go into the room alone, but two

15:41

of us will be all we need. Because

15:44

one of us is gonna be

15:46

querying the generative AI. So

15:49

I could either be talking to the client or I could

15:51

be doing, asking it, but you

15:53

will get real time answers that will be

15:56

better than the 10 people. And

15:59

that's the part. that's incredible. I ask

16:01

a question in my language and

16:03

it gives me an answer that

16:05

is tuned for my context. Like

16:07

I can say, what's the answer

16:09

in one sentence? Like I can

16:11

ask it for whatever level of

16:13

specificity. I have that real time

16:15

with the client. I

16:18

can be as sophisticated as

16:20

the hundred units of

16:22

complexity. In fact, it will make

16:25

it independent of the sophistication. So

16:27

AI to me is an employee

16:29

sophistication accelerant. Mark,

16:32

what's your reaction? I love it. And

16:34

we are starting to see AI tools

16:37

that we use to, for example, curate

16:39

real time demos that need customer needs, or

16:41

to your point, you know, a knowledge base

16:44

to find answers from that knowledge base. So

16:46

we are using it, I think we are

16:48

a little bit away from doing it sort

16:50

of live in front of a customer. Like

16:52

we use it right now for prep versus

16:55

in live areas, right? But as AI

16:57

grows, as our comfort with AI grows,

16:59

I think that that's a possible answer.

17:01

My question, Francis, is what stops the

17:03

customer from doing that? Like do we

17:05

do they even need to

17:07

interact with us? Well, I'll

17:09

just tell you where my head was

17:12

going in this conversation, too, is if

17:14

your salespeople are losing

17:16

control of the complexity of this

17:18

product, I'm sure that the

17:21

customers are having a customer version

17:23

of that experience. You

17:26

know, at minimum, not knowing the full power

17:29

of what this machine that

17:31

they've bought can do. And

17:33

then where you were going, Francis,

17:35

I got excited about the power, eventually,

17:37

of bringing AI into the customer

17:40

experience. In fact, the answer to

17:42

the question is, I sure hope

17:44

I become obsolete. Imagine how good

17:46

that would be, that you didn't

17:48

even need me as the

17:51

middleman for that level. And then you'll

17:53

just have me for the more sophisticated.

17:55

So AI at its best

17:57

is going to pull forward to Ann's

18:00

point and we should

18:02

be equipping our clients with

18:06

really educational, like really curated uses

18:08

of this. So I would be

18:10

delighted for the client to see

18:13

what I'm doing, what the second

18:15

person on the team is doing

18:17

with the queries. Delighted. It's

18:20

like when you go into a bank and the teller

18:22

is just doing stuff and you don't get to see

18:24

it, but when they turn it around and you both

18:27

get to see it, how much more trust

18:29

and do things and how much more awesome it

18:31

is, like well let's find out what

18:33

it is. Like oh my gosh. The

18:35

open kitchen restaurant. And then you get

18:37

to take that openness home, holy cow.

18:39

And then the latest knowledge will always

18:41

be at your fingertips. I

18:44

mean it's such an empowering thing to

18:46

do. So Mark, where's

18:48

your head going? And I'm curious where

18:50

your heart is going to, for

18:53

lack of a better word. Emotionally,

18:56

how are you receiving this

18:58

conversation and this brain? So

19:00

there's the intellectual part of me which sort

19:02

of says this makes complete sense, right? And

19:04

then there's the emotional part of me which

19:06

sort of says sales is also a human

19:08

thing, right? And

19:11

I don't know if at some point, maybe

19:13

the machine can replace, I don't know, 90%. I

19:16

don't know what that magic number is. But

19:18

there would be some human element, some trust

19:20

building element to it as well, right? Yes.

19:24

And I don't think it takes away

19:26

the human. What it does is it

19:28

takes away the humans for the rudimentary

19:30

questions so that the humans are only

19:33

doing the value added.

19:35

And the value added, there's a hygiene factor

19:37

of value added that gets raised higher and

19:39

higher and higher. So I'm going to get

19:41

to ask you deeper questions which by the

19:44

way is going to make you be able

19:46

to sell more breadth. Yeah.

19:48

I mean we think about the brain

19:50

simply as just bandwidth. All of that

19:52

bandwidth that was going towards trying to

19:54

retain information is now freed up to

19:57

focus on what does my customer

19:59

need? How does my customers business work?

20:01

How might this tool accelerate the

20:03

performance of this other person's

20:05

organization? And that's where

20:08

you have the kind of like

20:11

rocket ship growth that takes this

20:13

company to the next level. When

20:15

you can really invest that bandwidth

20:17

into solving problems, not retaining information.

20:19

I love it, I love it.

20:21

And so our company is investing

20:23

a lot around building AI into

20:25

the products that we sell. I

20:29

think going forward, there'll be a lot

20:31

of investment in AI on just

20:34

how we sell those things. And how do

20:36

the employees do stuff as well, right? Yes,

20:38

yes, yes. And you're sparking another

20:40

thought for me that I just wanna say out

20:42

loud and make discussable. Part

20:45

of my goal for this

20:47

conversation today, Mark, is that you

20:50

walk away in a productive, productive,

20:54

can-do, problem-solving

20:56

stance, which

21:00

we see far less frequently in

21:02

the sales function. So they're

21:04

parts of the business that have full

21:06

cultural and

21:08

job description license to experiment,

21:10

to try things on, to

21:12

fail, to learn from that

21:15

failure. Where you are

21:17

right now, and then even contemplating like

21:19

the integration of these kinds of tools,

21:22

this is gonna be a beautiful

21:24

iterative journey that as Francis

21:26

said, is a sign the organization is in

21:28

a really exciting place. Like this is a

21:30

very high quality problem that you

21:33

need to solve. One of

21:35

the opportunities you have as a leader is

21:38

to emotionally set that tone

21:40

for your team. Yeah, they're salespeople. They're

21:42

used to being given a quota and a

21:44

script, and clear

21:47

rules for how to get the job done. And

21:49

where you are right now as a business is

21:52

in a place where you're figuring out, you're writing those

21:55

new rules. You're throwing out

21:57

the script. You're bringing in new tools, and that's

21:59

a really. different crouch than

22:01

this function is used to. I

22:04

think a really important part of your job right now

22:06

is to signal that that's

22:08

okay. This

22:11

is a problem that you are going to

22:13

figure out together as a team and you're

22:15

going to get smarter tomorrow than you are

22:17

today by being really thoughtful about the learning.

22:20

I love it. I love it. I think,

22:22

and exactly to your point, doing that with

22:24

our team. But as we are hiring, because

22:26

we're hiring a lot, this becomes part of

22:29

my evaluation criteria to see if

22:31

the person who's coming in is

22:33

able to embrace this

22:35

chaos, if I recall it that, and

22:37

find the joy in this chaos. Yes,

22:41

joy. I love that you just

22:43

used that word, Mark. Yeah. In

22:45

fact, if before you would hire people that

22:48

could remember a lot of things, now

22:50

you're going to hire people that like to solve puzzles.

22:53

Yeah. Are there any red flags? Are

22:55

there any things that I should be

22:57

sort of watching out for as

23:00

I'm doing this? Yes. So

23:03

one thing is that the

23:05

way AI works is that you have

23:07

a knowledge base. And so you put

23:09

into it your knowledge base. This

23:11

is how the product works or whatever it is. When

23:14

people are going to query it, you

23:17

want to make sure it doesn't hallucinate. So

23:19

you want to say, I know the answer,

23:22

I don't know the answer. Because salespeople need that.

23:24

Nobody's business. And you can say to it, please

23:26

do not hallucinate. Like you can have that as

23:28

one of the things. So that's the first thing.

23:30

But the second thing is you want someone every

23:33

single day to be looking

23:35

at the queries that happened and what

23:38

the answers were, and assessing, are those

23:40

the answers we want to give to

23:42

those queries? And

23:44

if not, you get to what we call

23:46

tune the AI so

23:48

that it will give the answers we want.

23:50

But you wouldn't know how to tune it

23:52

in the beginning. You only know how to

23:54

tune it by looking at it. So you

23:56

have to maintain this on a daily basis

23:59

of looking at what are the questions. questions and

24:01

what are the answers it's providing. And if

24:03

I don't like the answers providing, I upload

24:06

an answer and then automatically every single

24:08

time anybody ever asked that question again,

24:11

they get that answer to it. And

24:14

I have a totally different answer. What's my

24:16

poet was answer to

24:19

this question. I'm very curious, very

24:21

operational. I really

24:23

want you to be the emotional leader of this

24:25

team right now, Mark. This

24:28

is a moment when there's

24:31

frustration, there's probably a fair amount of anxiety.

24:34

I think sales

24:36

is the lifeblood of so many organizations.

24:39

I have so much respect for it as

24:41

a function, as a lifestyle choice. Part

24:44

of the payoff, and sometimes this is

24:46

quite literal, is that you

24:48

have a lot of clarity

24:50

around how you are performing.

24:54

And this is a moment right now

24:57

where it's not a

24:59

clear one-to-one relationship where I try

25:01

harder, I do my job right,

25:03

and I get this particular return.

25:06

So that can be a destabilizing

25:08

shift. And I want

25:11

you to own it, see

25:13

it, make it discussable. So

25:15

this isn't something that's happening to

25:17

them. This is a

25:19

solution that they are co-producing as the organization.

25:21

There's so much anxiety sometimes around, am

25:23

I going to lose my job? Am

25:26

I training my replacement? Am I going

25:28

to be no longer required?

25:30

And that'll be the core reaction to

25:32

some of these

25:34

changes. How do I navigate that? I

25:39

think you wade in very directly and

25:41

you narrate, you

25:43

say out loud, the assumptions you're

25:45

making, which is that this is

25:48

not about replacing anyone on this

25:50

team. This is about creating the

25:52

conditions where you can hit it out of the park,

25:55

build an incredible career, get

25:57

rewarded for it. That is

25:59

the entire thing. higher objective of this

26:01

exercise. And

26:04

we are going to inflate

26:06

your brain with

26:08

this. And we're gonna make you

26:10

better, like you were so articulate about that frustration.

26:12

That frustration, the fact that they're standing in front

26:14

of the customers and they don't know the answer.

26:17

And you're talking about creating conditions where

26:19

they have a beautiful answer

26:21

to every single question that anyone on

26:24

the planet could be asking them about

26:26

this product. Because the company has given them

26:28

the tool to stand up at the front

26:31

of the room and be the

26:33

man and the woman in

26:35

that room and crush it. Yeah.

26:38

And the parts of their job that were most

26:40

painful, they no longer have to worry

26:42

about. Yeah. Now their job is to

26:44

go in that room and connect with the customer and solve

26:46

that customer's problem. I'm pretty excited about this actually, to

26:49

be honest with you. I

26:52

was gonna ask you, how are you feeling now compared to

26:54

when we started this conversation? I see light. And

26:56

we end up with light. Yes!

26:59

That's what we want. But

27:03

it will be a journey. It's not gonna

27:05

be a straight line. It's gonna have twists

27:07

and turns. And I

27:09

think the two pieces,

27:11

like Frances, the operational

27:13

piece and the emotional

27:15

piece, I think the magic will be weaving

27:17

these two things together. And

27:19

not losing sight of one when

27:22

you're doing the other. Mark,

27:25

you just described our mouth. Ha ha ha ha ha

27:27

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

27:29

ha ha ha ha ha. But only Frances can be replaced

27:31

by I am. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

27:33

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

27:35

ha ha. I can be augmented, not replaced. Canva

27:46

presents unexplained appearances. It was

27:48

an ordinary work day until...

27:50

That presentation appears out of

27:52

thin air. Also, it's eerily

27:55

on brand. Wait, did that

27:57

agenda just write itself? Words

27:59

about... here making this

28:01

unexplainable case. Unexplainable? It's

28:04

Canva's AI tools. I can

28:06

generate slides and rows and seconds. Really?

28:09

The real mystery is why I'm

28:11

only learning this now. canva.com, designed

28:13

for work. Princess,

28:18

let me ask just a super direct question on

28:20

this. For those of us who aren't running a

28:22

technical sales team, which is a very specific application

28:25

of these questions, what's the lesson

28:28

from this conversation? What's the lesson

28:30

from Mark's experience that

28:32

you think listeners can take away? Yeah.

28:34

I think when you're in an environment

28:36

where things are getting more complicated and

28:39

I can't keep up with it, you

28:42

have two choices. You

28:44

either increase the sophistication, and that

28:46

can happen in two ways. I

28:48

can either training and development, or

28:51

honestly, the more painful one is I swap out

28:53

the people. Right. I

28:56

don't like that. The

28:58

training and development has a new

29:01

really dear friend, and

29:03

that's AI. That will help me

29:05

keep the people and make them

29:07

more sophisticated. Of course, the lesson

29:09

I will underline is

29:12

the importance of being an emotional

29:14

leader of your team. I loved that part

29:16

of the- In organizations of... In

29:19

moments of dynamism and fast-moving

29:21

change. Because in moments of

29:23

dynamism and fast-moving change, it's

29:25

scary. And fear is an

29:27

emotion, and we need

29:30

emotional leaders to do that. And so

29:32

the irony that in the greatest technological

29:35

pace of technology advancement, what do we

29:37

need most? Emotional leaders. It's so

29:39

true and so counterintuitive. Yeah.

29:42

Daniel Goleman of Emotional

29:45

Intelligence fame calls it primal

29:47

leadership. And when you

29:49

are in that leadership position, you have

29:51

a broadcast function on everything that

29:54

you're feeling. So your own emotions are a

29:56

really powerful lever. And that's what I

29:58

think I'm proudest about. conversation as

30:00

you could see his emotional arc and

30:03

by the time we were at the end of it I wanted

30:05

to follow that guy down the path. Yeah. Yeah.

30:07

Because he had the confidence and curiosity

30:09

and empathy to

30:12

get the job done. Thanks

30:17

for listening everyone. If you want to figure

30:19

out your workplace problem together please send us

30:21

a message. He would love to have you

30:24

on the show. Email fixable at ted.com. Call

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30:58

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