Knowing what we truly need

Will ChatGPT make us dumber?

When I bought my new car, it made me dumber. It has an automated parallel parking feature, and for a month I used it every day.

But, one day, I accidentally pressed a button somewhere, and the feature stopped working.

And, guess what? I couldn’t parallel-park myself anymore. Just 30 days, and my skills had atrophied to the point where I’d have to try two or three times. Now, it only took a couple of days to regain the skill, but I wondered why I’d allowed the machine to de-skill me. I live in the inner city, where I relish finding challenging parking spots to squeeze into, so I never turned the feature back on.

I used to call this stripping away of base skills the ‘cash register effect’. I’m old enough to remember the days when registers didn’t calculate change - the cashier had to. As soon as digital registers arrived, guess what? Cashiers lost the ability to work out how much change to give out of $20 on an $8.85 purchase.

And now, some argue that ChatGPT and its ilk will atrophy our writing skills, dramatically.

I suspect that’s true, but I also think that the Dunning-Kruger Effect will take a place here: it’s when people who have low ability on a type of task overestimate their ability or knowledge. By this, I mean that people will not just lose the ability to write, but of?differentiating good from average writing. Therefore, they’ll lack the discrimination needed to judge what ChatGPT produces. This is what will really create the plethora of low-grade writing that’s about to flood our journalism outlets, business writing and sales materials.

Question: In an era of AI, how will you retain the ability to separate excellent from merely OK?

Ask your clients what they really want

If you’re reading this on the Friday morning of its release, I’ve just left Melbourne on a flight to Paris, where I’m attending an annual meeting of consulting colleagues, and then to Nairobi where I’m once again working with the UN on its environmental strategy. I’m back in Australia at the end of April.

My wife, Kate, responsibly insisted that the eve of a big trip was the perfect time to re-do our wills. So we put the word out to secure a lawyer who specialised in such things. The first we had recommended to us, let’s call her Denise, underwhelmed us. She didn’t listen (much) but instead told us what we needed. She answered our questions in legalese (she used the term ‘testamentary trust’ four times in a sentence without explaining what it was). She couldn’t commit to completion before our trip started.

So, we ditched Denise, and got another recommendation, this time to Alan and Karen. And, today, at the signing of our wills, I made a lawyer blush. I complimented them both on three things:

1. They listened to what we wanted - and made it obvious they understood
2. They clearly (and with good humour) explained the structure of the wills and powers of attorney we’d need (and I now know what a testamentary trust is)
3. They were consistently responsive, ensuring we had them before we travelled

Now, Alan’s been doing this a long time, so perhaps he knows that the three criteria above are what his clients want. But, if Denise asked me, I would have told her those same three things. Only thing is, she didn’t.

Question: What methods do you use to find out directly from your clients what’s important to them?

Just four things

A while ago I was running a strategy retreat with a client and we got to the final session where we discussed results: what future success would look like. The only problem was that I’d run over time - and we had a mere half hour remaining.

So, I suggested something risky. I said this: “We have 30 minutes. I want you to use half of that time, in groups, to propose four — just four — assurances that you, as a board, want to see. You don’t need to specify measures, or targets: just say what success looks like”.

This was an organisation that prevents youth homelessness and they came up with the following assurances:

1. Hundreds of young people have?stable tenancies.
2. Government increases?funding for youth homelessness.
3. Our clients are?deeply satisfied?with how we support them
4. Young people housed by us?go on to education and employment

One group, within 15 minutes, even came up with measures and targets!

This ‘forced experiment’ told me that insight-driven strategy is not just possible, but preferable. Since then, I’ve used this artificially time-constrained approach with dozens of clients, ranging from universities, to legal services, from hospitals to an entire state’s justice department (if you want to know the four headline assurances for each of these, drop me a line, and I’ll tell you).

But,?why?does this work? It turns out that people love simplicity, they thrive on the clarity of minimalism, people who are drowning in data, and over-burdened by reportables.

They love rising above all that and focusing on what really matters.

Question: What are the ‘big four’ assurances that you want to lay claim to as an organisation?

And, I love knowing that you’ve found value in today’s 5MSM, so please click the like below. It means a lot to me and my team, so please do so.

In the meantime, I’ll find plenty of strategic topics to observe and comment on in Paris and Nairobi, so I look forward to being with you again next Friday.

Andrew