The AI Edge: Can You Achieve More?

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This week, we're looking at AI in high-performance leadership.

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The AI Edge: Can You Achieve More?

Last week, I noticed a new pattern sneaking into my behaviours. I have started using ChatGPT (AI) instead of Google Search many times each day, for work, home life, hobbies, and simply feeding my curious mind.

I’ve noticed how much more efficient I am. Fascinating!

I ran a LinkedIn poll to see if others saw a similar shift. Thirty per cent were doing the same as me, and another 33% were using both. So it’s not just me, then.

Within a business, ?AI tools can monitor team and operations performance, identify bottlenecks, and streamline workflows, then provide actionable recommendations for reallocating resources or improving collaboration.

I wanted to explore the more personal use of AI to improve performance, especially effectiveness and productivity, at the highest levels. Where are the greatest returns?

Quality Emails

One of my CEO clients has a transactional email style - she makes her points through lists and short sentences. While that’s logical and efficient for her, 360 feedback has suggested some would prefer a warmer tone. She feels warm and friendly, but she doesn’t express that in her emails.

As a result, this CEO was spending longer crafting emails to get the tone just right. ?

Enter AI.

She now types out her usual email style and asks AI to write it in a friendlier tone. Instantly, she has a draft that she can tweak to make sure it says what she means and send it out. The bonus is that she’s seeing what an alternative email style looks like and is learning from it.

I’ve had other clients with perfectionism who would spend up to an hour crafting the perfect email. It's tedious, frustrating and a huge time sink.

Now, with AI, they can enter the bare bones, ask AI for a rewrite and iterate quickly until they’re happy with it. This can save huge amounts of time over the week.

One skill in using AI is not accepting ‘the’ answer to any question but asking for targeted revisions. These can include ‘rewrite in a more formal/informal style,’ ‘simplify complex sentences’, ‘change to active tense’, or ‘set the reading age to 12.’

If you are perfectionistic or find crafting emails tedious, how much time could you save with faster and higher-quality emails? Using AI, you can ensure your communication is impactful, consistent, and targeted, which enhances relationships and influence.

Power users of AI for quality communications create a ‘brand voice’ document that describes how they naturally sound and how they would like to communicate. You upload your brand voice document and refer to it in the AI prompt: ‘Write XYZ using my brand voice document’ or ‘modify this email to match my brand voice.’

(By the way, AI can even help you create that document).

Covering the Bases

If you need to write a report or prepare for a discussion, you can ask the AI to list the salient points on that topic, making sure all the bases are covered.

This saves significant time by quickly compiling key points and anticipating questions, allowing you to focus on strategy rather than research. It ensures thoroughness by covering all aspects of a topic and identifying potential gaps, reducing the risk of oversight.

This gives you greater confidence, as you can tailor your content and have ready answers to potential stakeholder questions. Ultimately, it improves the quality and impact of your work, making you more effective and prepared in critical business interactions.

You could even copy and paste your report into the AI, and ask it what typical questions the C-Suite team may ask about it, for example. You can then tweak the report or have the answers ready.

AI can also analyse your report, suggest improvements, and recommend visual aids to improve your message.

Strategic Planning

AI is great at creating a rough draft of an idea that will be discussed, because it does it so quickly and with little effort. Then, your team can add refinements, deeper insights, and creative input in brainstorming sessions.

You can use AI for scenario planning and forecasting too. AI can simulate various business scenarios, predict outcomes, and provide leaders with clear strategies to navigate uncertainty and achieve long-term goals. Because the 'answer' provided includes the reasoning, pros and cons and can include areas to consider, it can also help refine the strategy further.

I personally enjoy asking AI ‘what if’ questions. Last week, I asked ChatGPT, ‘ What are the long-term financial and societal implications of eliminating UK inheritance tax?’ Nothing to do with my business, I was simply curious. But you can usefully ask ‘what if’ questions about strategic options in your business planning.

New Roles

At executive levels, moving between functions, industries, and sectors is common. Even though your leadership and operational skills are absolutely transferable, there is always a lot to learn about your new environment. And you’re expected to hit the ground running!

Asking others for basic information can feel awkward, but without that information, you are less able to contribute, or you may feel reluctant to speak up and risk revealing what you don’t know.

AI excels at explaining terms, theories, and dynamics in a clear, concise way that would save you hours of painfully wading through websites looking for the information. It simply gives you the answers. Ask AI any questions you have; your first 90 days will be easier than ever.

The Caveat

The productivity gains can be huge with AI, but it is essential to understand its limitations.

Firstly it is not secure and it will use any information you give it for it’s learning and then share with others. Don’t hand over your IP! Although you can get secure, versions for business use, if you are using public versions, even paid ones, make sure you use AI for generic, non-sensitive queries and applications.

Secondly, AI is not always right. I once had it do investment calculations, and it got it wrong three times! Fact-checking is a real weakness, although AI companies are becoming better at citing sources of information. I recommend that you always ask where it got any information that you might want to rely on.

Before writing this newsletter, I asked ChatGPT how AI could make executives more efficient. The reply said AI makes execs 30% more efficient. When I asked where it found that statistic, it replied that it had inserted it as a placeholder! Always check!

Lastly, I don’t see AI replacing creative humans. I explored some ideas and refined some clunky sentences here using ChatGPT, but the writing is mine. It is based on my experience working with executives in high-pressure environments, as well as my research. The AI-generated articles I've experimented with perviously, are average, bland and lack the human touch. Of course :)

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It is still early days for integrating AI into daily work. However, as you saw from the poll at the top of this article, only 4% (of respondents) have not tried AI at all. If that’s you, I recommend exploring it soon, as it will become increasingly impactful.

For now, cherry-pick applications and areas where you can get the most performance improvement, and keep your eye on developments, as AI is moving fast.

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What I’ve loved this week:

In 2010, I coded an automated investing ‘robot’ while playing around with some trading ideas. At that time, I had to learn the code language and tweak, debug, and test it. I used it for a while, then forgot about it.

This week, I decided to resurrect it, but I used ChatGPT to do it. I uploaded my old code and asked ChatGPT to update it to the latest version and insert comments explaining the steps. (I’d forgotten a lot). I spent the weekend playing around – I’d ask it to explore different approaches and conditions. We’d clarify the intent, and then it would write code for it, and I would test it. It even helped me position the strategy risk, define a testing plan and create an Excel spreadsheet for my results.

No, my little robot is not going to make me a billionaire (I’d keep it secret if I thought that), but by taking all the slog out of creating and testing a code, I had a lot of fun!

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An action step you can do this week …

Just try it! Think about where AI may make your work easier, faster or more productive and try it out. Especially the drudging parts you least enjoy!

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I’ll explore tools for high-performance leadership in future issues too.

Do subscribe and share!

I’m Tara Halliday, creator of the Inner Success programme for deep leadership transformation to create effortless confidence, unflappable calm, improved emotional intelligence and resilient authenticity. (By the way it eliminates imposter syndrome too)

Message me or book a quick 15-minute chat here:

Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend and enjoy the holidays!

Tara

P.S. Thank you for reading to the end of the newsletter, I appreciate your interest and attention!

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