Reflection, AI Aptitude, and Humanity Working

Welcome to the 30th edition of Skills for the Future of Work! Every week we offer a video tip, insight and recommendation. We are really excited about the recommendation this week, so please do read through to the end - it should only take you about 5 minutes.

The Tip - Reflection to improve productivity

We are almost all impossibly busy these days, and that busyness makes it really difficult to take time to reflect. After all, what would you rather do - spend extra time thinking about the work you did, or get off work a little earlier?

But it turns out that reflection truly is time well spent, and typically results in you getting more done more efficiently going forward. Here's animated Paul explaining the details in just a couple of minutes.

The Insight - AI Aptitude

A couple of years ago, we were working with a manager that was hugely frustrated with the people that worked for him. He complained that his staff never seemed to deliver the results he wanted. Sometimes, in frustration, he would outsource the work to supposed independent experts, but the results were, if anything, worse. Finally, exasperated, he would typically redo the entire job himself, convincing himself further that almost everyone around him was incompetent, and "if you want a job done properly, do it yourself".

After some time, we found the root cause. It came down to three things.

• He was very poor at communicating his requirements (and he was unaware of this)
• He envisioned in great detail the final product that HE would produce and was not open to the idea that a different approach might be just as good
• When work from others got him 80% of the way there, he would obsess over what was wrong, rather than building on what was right.

While this manager was an extreme case, many of us struggle to optimize how we work with others, and it makes us, and our teams less effective every day.

This is very important today, but it will become even more so as AI becomes a critical part of many teams. If we are to use it effectively, we need to communicate requirements well, be open to different approaches, and build on what we get from our AI assistants.

Let's just drill in on the first one - communicating requirements. If you've spent any time using ChatGPT, you've probably noticed how the quality of responses depends highly on the questions you've asked. Sure, ChatGPT can be superficially helpful with general questions, but if you want something better, you need to give it context. What type of context? Well, here are just a few things that your AI partner can only know if you tell it:

• The level of detail you want in your answer
• The level of formality you want in your answer
• Who the answer is targeted at (for example job role)
• Underlying aims for you, your team or your organization that you want the answer to support
• Assumptions you have made when asking the question

Of course, some context will underlay almost every question you ask, which is why ChatGPT has recently added "Custom Instructions" to its paid product, which you can use to tell it more about your overall goals. Going forward, expect to see more of this kind of stuff, as the AI doesn't just know more about the world's information, but as it also gets to know more about you and your underlying motives.

Our Favourite New Thing

The podcast is finally back, and under a new name! Yes, we know - ANOTHER new name, but we are really proud of this one - Humanity Working. Hopefully, our renaming is now done!

Episode 1 has already dropped - we have a great discussion about the human skills organizations will need in the age of AI. And we have a great roster of guests coming up.

As ever, you can find us on your favorite podcasting platform, or watch video episodes at https://www.billionminds.com/podcast. Here's episode 1!

About Us

BillionMinds?brings you?this newsletter?each and every week. But that’s not all we do. We also help organizations become future-proof by build a workforce of adaptable, resilient employees.

Every BillionMinds Learn/Do experiences is less than 10 minutes, and employees see meaningful changes within two weeks.

We work with both companies and individual employees. Certification programs start at $200 and we provide discounts for those seeking work, alongside the option for current users to nominate low/no-income people to access the program for FREE. For more information, visit us?here.