This is how I used ChatGPT in my first 100 days as returning CEO to transform GoodUp's strategy

After a 4 years absence, I returned as CEO of GoodUp this January. #ChatGPT had just made a breakthrough. When I first used it, I had the same revolutionary feeling as the first time I entered a search query in Google or searched for a song on Spotify. I opened it in my browser as a tab and never closed it since. I'm never alone because I always have a co-pilot nearby.?

GoodUp is the all-in-one platform that allows employees to collaborate on initiatives that make their company more sustainable, social and inclusive. In this article, I share step by step how I used #ChatGPT as a CEO Co-Pilot to transform GoodUp’s Strategy in my first 100 days.

1 - Mapping trends

To get a new perspective on the world in which GoodUp operates, I first asked ChatGPT what the most important trends are in employee engagement, #sustainability, and social impact. Within a short time, I got an overview of the most important trends.

• What are the key trends in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?
• What do Millennials & Gen Z expect from their company in terms of Sustainability, and provide examples of studies that demonstrate this?
• Provide an overview of the top 10 reports on employee engagement and sustainability over the past 5 years, put them in a table with a link to the source.

#ChatGPT is trained on a dataset that runs until September 2021. So based on the generated list, I went on a search in “good old” Google for more recent reports. I then downloaded these and copied their texts into ChatGPT, asking ChatGPT to summarise the reports:

• Summarise this Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends in the 10 most important bullets?
• What are the general trends in employee engagement in sustainability across all reports?

2 - Analysis of our competitors

In the competitive analysis, I started with our biggest competitor because #ChatGPT has more information about them than about our own company. From here, I began to map out our most important competitors.

• What can you tell me about <your biggest competitor>?
• Create a table of the 10 largest competitors of <your biggest competitor> and add who their main customers are, how many employees they have, revenue, funding raised, and website link per company.

I then went to the websites of our most important competitors and copied the texts of their website and white papers. I then pasted these into ChatGPT and asked ChatGPT to summarise this information into bullet points and organize it so that I could compare it better.

3 - New Value Propositions + Tagline

Based on insights from trend mapping and competitive analysis, I worked with #ChatGPT to write a new value proposition for GoodUp that responds to the most important emerging trends and sets us apart from our competitors.

• What is the "job to be done" for a CSR manager, and how can we translate that into a value proposition for GoodUp?
• What are the biggest "pains and gains" of sustainability and CSR managers, and how can we address those as "pain relievers" and "gain creators"??
• What is the business case for corporations to engage employees in topics such as sustainability and social impact?

With all of this input, I also asked ChatGPT to help me come up with a good slogan, and out of the top 10 options they provided, we chose "We Engage Your Employees to Drive Change."

4 - New Website Copy

Next, I translated the new value proposition into a new website. I first determined the structure for all the webpages (introduction, 3 brand promises, 3 case examples, 3 product features, business case, and summary of benefits) and used the persona of a Sustainability Manager as an example to fill in the content.

• Act as a marketing copywriter and describe (briefly and concisely) the 3 benefits of an employee engagement activity platform for the Sustainability Manager persona.
• Come up with 3 examples of activities that companies can initiate to engage employees in making their business more sustainable.

Creating the first page focused on Sustainability Managers was quite a bit of work, but then I was able to copy the structure and content of that page into #ChatGPT and ask it to generate a similar page with the same structure, but now for landing pages for Corporate Social Responsibility Managers and Diversity and Inclusion Managers. It is now even possible to do Account Based Marketing (ABM) based on this approach and generate landing pages for specific industries or even companies.

5 - LinkedIn Content Marketing

While before we created content three times a month, with the help of #ChatGPT we are now able to generate high-quality content three times a week for our LinkedIn page. ChatGPT helps us generate ideas, develop content, and even create a content calendar.

• Create 50 eye-catching hooks for blogs about employee engagement, sustainability, and social impact.
• Write a blog titled "5 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement in Your Sustainability and Social Impact Strategy." Write in the style of Harvard Business Review – engaging, business-like, and enthusiastic.
• Generate a LinkedIn content calendar for the next three months with three new content items per week, ranging from blogs, videos, carousels, white papers, and memes.

The articles that are just generated by #ChatGPT are not good enough. I often start by entering a rough structure for the article, then ask ChatGPT to fill it in. Writing is also a co-creation process where I come up with improvements for each paragraph, such as asking for three different ways to describe something and choosing the best pieces.

6 - Legal Docs

#ChatGPT is also good at reading, summarizing, interpreting, and generating legal documents. I use it to better understand the legal documents that are sent to me. In addition, I have used it to make improvements to our own legal documents (terms and conditions, privacy policy, license agreement, etc.).

• Summarise this contract in layman's terms in the 10 most important points
• What are the main points to consider when signing this contract?
• Act as a lawyer and write a response to the liability paragraph to limit the risk of potential fines.

During negotiations, I have also called on #ChatGPT for help. We negotiated a complex sales contract and used ChatGPT to respond to their legal department. But even with a customer who had not paid an invoice for 3 months, I had ChatGPT draft a formal email to give them a deadline for payment, after which the money was in our account within 24 hours.

7 - Employee Handbook & Sales Scripts

To quickly gain insight into how the team is doing, I wrote and sent out an employee satisfaction survey with #ChatGPT. Then I entered the answers into ChatGPT and had them summarized. The points that came out of this were discussed with the team during the quarterly meeting, and we agreed on a number of improvement points that we will address next quarter.

• Write a 10-question employee satisfaction survey on topics such as eNPS, hybrid working, communication, management, engagement, and culture.
• Provide a table of contents for an employee handbook.
• What topics do we need to work on to create "a great place to work"?

We have also used ChatGPT to write scripts for our sales team. And during sales negotiations, we have ChatGPT run example scripts to prepare:

• Write an example sales script to validate whether a company is a sales-qualified lead for a SaaS company.
• Can you write a script for a conversation with a customer who wants to pay after the fact instead of in advance, applying the principles from Chris Voss's book "Never Split the Difference"?

8 - Product & Engineering

Of course, there are many opportunities for us to apply #ChatGPT to our Product & Engineering team. ChatGPT can actually write HTML and Python code itself. Our software developers are experimenting with it and testing plug-ins that help them write code. Some developers (especially front-enders) are extremely enthusiastic and have already changed their way of working. One of the senior back-end developers said he would still prefer to debug his own code rather than ChatGPT's for now.

We have planned a Dev Day to think together about what #ChatGPT can mean for our SAAS platform and develop some experiments there. It is always wise to involve employees from your software development team to show the rest of the organization how it works and what the possibilities are. They are also really good at writing good prompts.

?? Conclusion – Co-Pilot & Personal Coach

Working as a CEO at a SaaS scale-up used to consist of 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Now it's better balanced for me, allowing me to use more of my ideas and creativity while letting #ChatGPT do the hard work. I enjoy it ?? more, and we make progress much faster. Before, I used to struggle with a long to-do list and had trouble starting something like writing an employee handbook. But now, I don't have to face a blank screen anymore because ChatGPT gives me a kick-start, and once I start, I get into the flow.

When I was working late at night and unsure whether I should keep working to finish my task or go to sleep, I asked ChatGPT for advice. To my surprise, ChatGPT provided a balanced response, listing the reasons why sleep is important but also giving me the option to continue working while advising me to take a short break and drink some water. So now I also have #ChatGPT as a personal coach ;-)