Joe Lally (2:23)

A lot of those now.

Dr. Darren (2:25)

Yeah, exactly. So before we dive, let's listen. Let's just dive in.

Joe Lally (2:33)

Yeah, so. Sounds good.

Dr. Darren (2:34)

We're. We're at. We're at a really interesting spot right. Right now. When it comes to digital transformation, technology, adoption, everyone's talking about one thing because there's only one thing to talk about right now. It's been that way for the last couple years. Right. And that's AI adoption. Before that. What did we do? I don't even remember.

Joe Lally (2:58)

Right. It is hard to remember.

Dr. Darren (3:01)

Yeah. So. And so where do I start with this, Joe? I mean, what. Yeah, right. How and why. Why do you think it's become so important. Why is AI adoption instead of just general digital transformation? Why are we putting so much attention to this?

Joe Lally (3:22)

Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating and you're right. I mean, it is the only thing in my LinkedIn feed, pretty much, you know, every news feed, every, every marketing message I get from every software tool. And it's almost like another kind of industrial revolution. But, you know, AI is, is this thing that theoretically can do everything and people are trying to make it that. I think it's a, it's an interesting time and maybe even a risky time because I think past technology innovations or other kinds of innovations helped us do things faster and maybe do things more efficiently. AI is certainly that, but it also has this ability to almost think for us. And I don't think there's really been a lot of innovations in the past that have offered that. So it's, you know, it's an interesting tool that can be a thought partner, but there's also some risk that, you know, we could outsource our thinking, outsource our curiosity even.

Dr. Darren (4:26)

I imagine people were feeling the same way during the first Industrial revolution, right, where all of a sudden machines were doing what humans used to do, like harvest food. Right. Or make clothes. Oh, a machine made clothes. I mean, these are fundamental things that people needed. Right. Protection and warmth and things like that. So I imagine they were feeling very similar types of things back then.

Joe Lally (4:53)

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, making clothes, I mean, you know, making thread and clothes was a highly skilled job. And the loom, the power loom came out and that kind of, you know, eliminated the need for it. But on the other side, a lot of new jobs did emerge over time. You know, mechanics were needed to maintain the machines, operators were needed, you know, installations were needed. And I think that's, you're starting to see a bit of that with AI. You know, there are new jobs emerging that maybe even aren't directly related to AI. There's a huge need for electricians and H Vac professionals because these huge, you know, multi football field data centers are, are needed to power AI. So, so it's an interesting time and definitely some similarities.

Dr. Darren (5:38)

Well, and then I'm, I'm even thinking, look at Amazon. There's Amazon drivers, there's, you know, we've had postal service, but this is, this is very different, right, where hey, I order something and two hours later it's at my house. That's. Yeah, so, so do you feel like AI is even a bigger shift than what we've seen in the past 40, 50 years.

Joe Lally (6:03)

I mean, I, I do. And you know, at least in my lifetime, this is the biggest change, you know, partly because of that, you know, that potential to outsource our thinking or creativity or emotions even, which I think can be dangerous. But if we combine human emotion, human curiosity, critical thinking, with the power of this tool that can find anything in seconds, process things in seconds, it's a great opportunity. Um, and something I, you know, I haven't seen and you know, no surprise that it's, it's all everybody's talking about.

Dr. Darren (6:44)

No, that, that totally makes sense. So let's talk about the, the danger side of this because we always talk about the. But we always talk about the benefits. But the danger side, you've already kind of alluded to that we're just gonna delegate our thoughts, our thinking or critical thinking to how do I prevent that from happening? Because humans in general are lazy. Yeah, right. My best engineers are my laziest engineers. Right. Because they're going to find the absolute best engineering solution so they don't have to do something repetitive over and over again. Right. So how, I mean, it's almost in conflict with each other. How do I prevent that from happening? Especially if I'm a parent.

Joe Lally (7:31)

Right.

Dr. Darren (7:32)

Because that's one of my biggest concerns with my kids. Right?

Joe Lally (7:35)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, just, you know, to speak on that, you know, for a moment, you know, education, being a parent. So most schools that I've seen, and certainly in my kids schools, the approach to AI is, you know, slap on the wrist or, you know, don't use it to write your papers. It's, it's more of, it almost reminds me of, you know, when Napster and, you know, all of those music, you know, download services came out. And originally, you know, the, the music industry mostly was around. Yeah, yeah, this is wrong, don't do it. But people did it. And then there were some people who, you know, were, were caught and fined or punished in some way. But it was this thing that, you know, the music industry hadn't adapted to yet and people already were. And I see that with AI, where I don't think a lot of education systems have adapted yet, adapted the way they're teaching. Because I think there's a huge opportunity to tap into critical thinking and do more assignments that are more question based. So instead of summarize what happened in this text or summarize what happened in this event, which AI can do without breaking a sweat, what questions do you have about this event? What questions do you have about this text and exploring that and encouraging people to tap into their curiosity. Doing that live in class, throwing a topic out and having somebody speak about it. I think that sort of way of teaching presents great opportunities to help people be better at public speaking, be better at being curious.

Dr. Darren (9:22)

But that's a fundamental shift, right? I mean, in the way that we assess people. Because that's what school is all about. Right? Is. It's about assessment of. Of individuals.

Joe Lally (9:35)

Right.

Dr. Darren (9:36)

Which I think is. Is for. I mean, that's, that's just not gonna. How. It's. How it's gonna work in the future. Yeah, but. But that's what we do today. And we even do that at work. We have annual reviews. We're at the end of the year. We have annual reviews coming up. You're being assessed, and I probably assessed on how much output you have. I don't know. This. It sounds like this is all going to have to change.

Joe Lally (10:03)

Yeah, yeah. And in the workplace. So I kind of compare it to when, let's say a team is in a meeting, they're throwing around ideas, there's energy in the room, and then the boss walks in and then everything comes. Yep. Everyone defers to the boss. Okay. The boss has it. You know, my ideas are secondary. I, I've seen that. I, I facilitate lots of workshops for, you know, big companies, big organizations, and I've experimented with injecting AI at certain points and for research. Fantastic. You can find out how have others approached this problem, maybe that we're experiencing? And you can learn that quickly, summarizing lots of that information really, really good and quick. But when I've kept it in play at times where teams need to start to generate ideas or even develop empathy for whoever's experiencing what they're trying to affect. If AI stays in the picture, there's just sort of this disconnect. There's this feeling of, well, AI has it. I don't need to inject my own ideas. And there's also this, this sort of lack of caring about the problem that I've seen where, you know, when, when you speak to somebody who's struggling with something and you're looking to improve it, you start to feel a bit of their pain. And if you eliminate that, you kind of don't care about the problem anymore. And that's, that's, you know, that's hard.

Dr. Darren (11:26)

I never, I never thought of that. Right. Because I, I do this myself. Right. If. If I'm trying to solve a problem, it now becomes part of me. Right. That, hey, when I finally solve it. I'm, I'm really happy. Right. Hey, you know, we, we succeed or I succeeded or. And then all of a sudden, AI dropped in at the wrong moments, takes over the ownership. Right?

Joe Lally (11:49)

Yeah, yeah. And it's a tough thing because, you know, projects and problem solving, you run into roadblocks. They're not always easy, but the caring part is something that can keep you going through those difficult moments. If you really want to solve something for somebody, you'll work through those. But if you don't have that feeling of really wanting to solve it for somebody, maybe you don't. Maybe you outsource that work.

Dr. Darren (12:18)

Interesting. So it sounds like it could be a spiral very easily.

Joe Lally (12:24)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, it's a great opportunity. I think, you know, one of the things I see also is this, this big gap between people who aren't really sure where to begin with AI and people who know exactly what they're doing and how valuable it can be, and the people who, who are really well versed and experienced. Using AI for lots of things, help helping them make themselves and multiply themselves. It's hard for them to imagine what it was like when they didn't know those things. They have this curse of knowledge where they can't imagine not using it for all the things they're using it for. So it's hard for them to relate to that. And I see a lot of companies that are deploying AI tools to staff and just saying, be more efficient. Eliminate tasks. Remove the mundane. But forgetting what it might have been like for them when maybe they were at the beginning of that journey. And then I see people on the other end who are kind of in the beginning, and they're, they're apprehensive, they're sort of not sure, well, where do I begin? You know, what does it mean to eliminate a task? I heard a study on, on another podcast. So there was a law firm that gave AI tools to a set of paralegals in their, in their firm. And same tools, they, the instructions to one half of the group was use these to find tasks that you can make more efficient. Eliminate tasks. The other group, they said, use this to eliminate doing the stuff you hate doing. And the group who was told to eliminate the stuff you hate had far more usage than the other group because there was a clear directive. It was problem first versus solution first.

Dr. Darren (14:09)

Right.

Joe Lally (14:09)

Which I thought was really interesting and a great lesson, I think, for many companies to take.

Dr. Darren (14:15)

No, I, I, I like that too. And that's where I've seen the most success too. Right. Where people are like, hey, I can actually use this to eliminate things I don't like to do to actually solve problems. No, I've, I've. I've seen the same thing when organizations now. Well, this is an interesting. Right now it appears that organizations are using chat bots or, you know, large language models kind of in an ad hoc way. It's. There's nothing's been actually institutionalized. It's like, I don't know, go figure it out kind of kind of thing. It's this utility that people are, like, you know, gone hog wild with. But it's limiting. Right. Because it's only an individual instead of institutionalized or organized, it seems like chaos with no organization to it.

Joe Lally (15:14)

Yeah.

Dr. Darren (15:14)

Are you seeing the same thing, Joe?

Joe Lally (15:16)

Yeah. And, you know, chatbot example is a really good one, I think. So many companies are investing in AI to do customer service, customer support, which is a natural place for it. It makes total sense, but it's not quite there yet in terms of being able to solve all the problems. It's really good at kind of solving the most common. And in my personal experience, I'm using AI for all customer service, but not in the way I expected. So I'm not going to a software company's site to get support or looking even at their FAQs, or trying to find an email or any of that. Instead, I'm going to my own AI tool and I'm saying, here's my problem. Go out and scour the Internet, you know, blog support, chat rooms, that company's site, and. And find me the answer. And it's so much easier and faster. And I wonder, will customer service just change and companies will just have inflammat?

Dr. Darren (16:30)

Well, that's kind of dangerous for a company, though, right? Because a company has now lost control of their customer service. Not only control, but visibility. Because, you know, when they were coming to my website and asking my chatbot. Right. At least I knew what the common problems were that people were having. So that feedback loop is going to disappear here.

Joe Lally (16:52)

Yeah.

Dr. Darren (16:53)

And also, what if the chatbots are, like, going, well, why would you use that product? This product over here is better. Right? At a lower price, then, yeah, that could be. That could be dangerous. Right. That's something we got to be careful of.

Joe Lally (17:07)

It's tricky. And from a customer perspective, I love it because it's objective, you know, it's one of the places where AI really is objective, you know, and it doesn't care if I Drop to the lower tier of the subscription. It just tells me how I can, you know.

Dr. Darren (17:22)

Well, that also depends on whose chat, whose LLM you're using. Right. I've already seen bias, like if I've used ChatGPT to help me do Christmas shopping this year, right. And surprise, surprise, everything shows up on Walmart. Hey, you can buy this at Walmart. Did you know that?

Joe Lally (17:41)

Yeah, right.

Dr. Darren (17:43)

Oh, I wonder how that got injected in, into the large language model. Right, so there's already some bias and consumer direction that's happening in these large language models already started.

Joe Lally (17:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's finding the information that's out there. I mean similar to how Google search was and is, you know, whatever's out there, it's finding and you can optimize for search the way I'm, I'm, you know, seeing companies optimize for AI.

Dr. Darren (18:13)

Yeah, no, absolutely. All right, so let's get into, I mean you help organizations with their adoption of AI. Let's drop into what a normal session with you would look like. We'll play that. Darren's got a mid sized company, maybe about three or 400 people. I'm doing light manufacturing but I'm really more on distribution and customer service. Right. Let's say that that's my business and I come to you and say, Joe, I've heard about this AI stuff, all my people are using it, but I have, I feel like I'm out of control. I'm the CEO, I'm out of control. I don't know what people are doing. Where do I get started? What do I do? Joe?

Joe Lally (19:05)

Yeah, yeah, eat a lot. So a really good starting point is to unpack that. So if it's a group of leaders, have them assess where they are in their understanding of usage of AI tools. And I like to do these in anonymous ways wherever possible. Pretty easy when you're virtual. I can have people use a virtual whiteboard and drag a virtual sticky to a, you know, somewhere in a, in a, you know, pyramid of usage, which is great. They can be more honest, a little bit tougher when you're in person. But if you can kind of set.

Dr. Darren (19:38)

The stage, isn't that hilarious that that's the case? Yeah, because virtually people can see what you're doing too. But in person everyone withdraws a little bit.

Joe Lally (19:50)

Yeah, there's that social pressure. You know, maybe you look at what the boss did and you want to kind of mimic that. So you know, I would start with assess your own personal understanding. Where are you? And then I would Do a second assessment. Okay. Where do you feel your team is? Where do you feel the staff is? And you know, how far apart are those? You know, how. You know, how different are those are those things. And a lot of times what you'll see is maybe a little bit of a realization that leaders are not as far up that pyramid as maybe they thought. They're probably a little bit closer to the staff. At least this is what I've seen. Then start to unpack. What are the tasks that right now you're doing with AI? So what are all those things? And then I try to rank them in a different way than I think they tend to be ranked. So instead of, you know, how capable is AI at doing this task? I try to rank them in terms of how much of a problem was that thing before. So instead of looking for things that could be done, think of things that have been problems. And I think of it almost like if you were moving from one house to another, you'd have one option of just packing up everything in the house and bringing it to the new house. But you also have this opportunity to look through your stuff and decide, you know, maybe I haven't used that thing in two years, or maybe I don't even like this, you know, this slow cooker, you know, so it's an opportunity to kind of, you know, put things through that filter. And I think AI presents that opportunity where if you can look at problems first, there are probably things that aren't even worth doing anymore. So having AI start to do those things is kind of a waste of this really powerful tool. So I ask leaders to start to look at things through that lens instead of what many times has been the lens of what can it do? And that's helpful. I think that's a bit eye opening.

Dr. Darren (21:59)

You know, I use that same approach we start throwing out. This is a great opportunity to do re engineering. Process. Re engineering. Right. And saying, do I need this process? Do I need that thing that we've been doing? Well, we've been doing it for 30 years. Why shouldn't we keep doing it? Right.

Joe Lally (22:16)

Right.

Dr. Darren (22:16)

Well, why did you do it? No one remembers.

Joe Lally (22:19)

Yeah, right.

Dr. Darren (22:21)

Then why are you doing it? Because we're afraid if we stop doing it, something bad might happen. Right. Seen that happen before. So I love how you're using this as a opportunity for true transformation, this external catalyst. So I think that's pretty brilliant.

Joe Lally (22:40)

Yeah, yeah. There's this concept. Lydie Klotz, I think, is the author of a book. I think the Book is titled Subtraction Neglect. But he talks about this concept of subtraction neglect. And it's, you know, it's exactly what you said. It's this fear of removing things because, well, we're doing it because it's what we've always done. And there's always this tendency to just add more, you know, more priorities. The word priority doesn't even mean what it used to mean. Now, even as 10 priorities, you know, it used to mean the thing.

Dr. Darren (23:14)

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. All right, so you started. I loved pull apart things, look at problems where AI can solve things. What's my next step? All right, I've identified some, some areas. Now where do I go from there? Joe?

Joe Lally (23:30)

Yeah, so you take the things that are worth doing and you start to sort of prototype a solution. So how is it being done right now? So what's the current, current path and the current flow? What are the steps? And really, really getting into those. And those might be manual. Maybe there's a spreadsheet that's emailed to a person, that person reviews it, maybe they make an update, they email it to another person. So what are all the steps right now maybe that are for an important task that are be doing, that are being done and then doing sort of a, you know, a low fidelity prototype. Even just a flow on a wall of, well, what could it look like? How, where are the pain points in that flow and what might we be able to do with AI to remove that pain point? So again, you're kind of looking at things through a little bit of a different lens where there might be things that are working fine, maybe don't spend time on that. The things where it's truly a pain point. Let's really focus on that. Use this tool for what it can do well. So I'll have teams prototype that and then if it's a situation where teams do have access to their own tools, internal tools or anything like that, then actually have them build that prototype out and they can kind of test the idea with each other. So maybe there'll be a team. You know, one table is a team and they're trying to update a problem with a new approach that uses AI for pain points. And then another team maybe is focused on another problem or process. Those teams can kind of switch and have each other experience what they've gone through. And you get this really immediate feedback, immediate reactions from each other and you start to see, well, here's where that's working. This new idea is working really well. Or we didn't think of this one step. Maybe we should redo that one. So you start to just really quickly problem solve where, you know, that kind of thing can be months worth of meetings where you're just kind of nudging the problem along, you know, where, you know, you get some real learning in a few hours.

Dr. Darren (25:28)

No, I love this approach. How. How do I then take it from that? My staff. Right, all right. I've got my staff on board. Right. How do I then take that through the whole company? Because if I could do that in a small way and change some fundamental things to be more effective, how do I then take this? Because I want to scale this through my whole company and empower my employees, instead of my employees walk around scared I'm going to lose my job. Yeah, right. Because that's what's happening right now. Right.

Joe Lally (26:02)

That's a huge part of it. You know, I think you have to meet people where they are, and you have to start with some education. There's some baseline things that if you just work through those, people start to feel a bit more comfortable. Just simple vocabulary, you know, what's a hallucination? What is a prompt? You know, what is an LLM? Just getting people, at least to the point where you're using a common language. I think that's a great starting point. And then involving them in the process. So this part of your job. Is this a problem? Tell me how. And offering them a solution to that and involving and making them part of it. Because you're right. I mean, when people look at this tool as a threat to their job, there's a temptation to sabotage it. I mean, of course.

Dr. Darren (26:48)

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Lally (26:49)

I mean, the loom example we talked about earlier. So when the power loom came out, people started breaking into mills and factories and smashing them and destroying them because, you know, it was their threat to their livelihood. You know, so there's that temptation. If it's a threat to your job, you know, why. Why support it? You know, so you have to just meet people where they are and make them part of the process. The other thing I've seen just to tack onto that is many times there's. There's a message that we will remove the mundane, repeatable tasks so that you can focus on other things. You have to be specific about what those other things are, because it can't be something people, you know, fill in the blank on their own.

Dr. Darren (27:29)

Esoteric. Yeah, you can focus on your resume.

Joe Lally (27:33)

Right. You can focus on finding a new job, but people don't want to Hear that? Yeah.

Dr. Darren (27:48)

No, and that's a true fear, especially right now, because I think CEOs are making a huge mistake right now. They're laying people off in droves, right? So there's fear and trepidation. In fact, I think right now, the CEOs feel like finally I'm in control again. During COVID I had to kowtow to the whims of my employees to keep them around. But now I got AI. AI is going to replace them. So I can, you know, mandate things that I didn't mandate. I felt. I didn't feel like I could mandate before, you know, five days in the office. Now, you know, I don't have to give them free fruit or drinks at work anymore. Believe it or not, I'm seeing these things happening, and I'm like, going, what is going on? Right? These small, little, tiny things. But it's a major shift, you know, in. In the power structure in. In corporate America today. So there's a lot of fear out there going on, and I think rightfully so, because we are seeing a large number of layoffs, and the job market's very tight right now. So if I'm a CEO and I want to keep my. My people, I mean, and I want to. I want to bring in AI because I want to stay competitive, how do I do that without destroying my company? This is. This is a tough decision.

Joe Lally (29:13)

It's a really tough one right now because the appeal is, you know, I can save so much, you know, with this investment. You know, theoretically, the ROI is there, but I think if you can start problem first, people can get behind solving problems, clear problems that, you know, certainly there will be some jobs that are not necessary anymore, or at least not necessary for a human to be involved in. But if you can start problem first, people are invited into the solution. The other thing I was talking with somebody the other day about this is, you know, you think about the new jobs that are being created. You know, there are people who are writing prompts, people who are building. Building models, people who are, you know, installing H Vac at data centers. I mean, imagine a company who was looking to maybe lay off some people who they've deemed are doing repeatable tasks. Imagine they offered, you know, training in H Vac technician. You know, they're sort of contributing back into what is becoming this new world. And maybe there'd be some people who take the company up on that, you know, and say, well, you know what? I'm. I'm open to a career change, you know, into this totally other thing, I didn't have heard of that.

Dr. Darren (30:25)

I kind of like where you're headed with that show. I mean, maybe the old will become the new, right? I mean, you know, dealing in the physical world instead of just sitting in front of a desk all day because AI could do a lot of that stuff. So maybe, you know, figuring out a new path is, is where we need to start looking.

Joe Lally (30:47)

Yeah. It could be scary though.

Dr. Darren (30:49)

That's so scary.

Joe Lally (30:51)

It is, it is. It's a big change. It's a big, big change. And you know, just start looking at. I think people are starting to look at how they make a living a bit differently. You know, I think people who've maybe spent their life in corporate jobs. I heard of a story the other day where this is a, you know, high level person at a corporation, really successful career, concerned that their job might go away and they, they decided to buy a business. They bought a, a business that focused on cleaning up after people had had floods in their house. I mean.

Dr. Darren (31:22)

Oh yeah, totally different.

Joe Lally (31:25)

You know, and now they're running that business and it's successful and I don't think people had ever looked at their career that way before. At least not that much. So it's, it's definitely.

Dr. Darren (31:34)

Yeah. Because I mean we're, you know, hey, my career, I'm a software developer. That's what I'm going to do the whole, the rest of my life or I work at, for Microsoft, I've got a job for Life or Google or whatever that those days are, are probably not for the same for everyone. Like it used to be, I guess is the right word.

Joe Lally (31:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, I mean, you know, as scary as it is, it's such a huge opportunity. I mean we have this tool that's got immense power to, you know, you know, diagnose medical, you know, issues and you know, process data so quickly, you know. But I think we have to make sure we're using it for most important jobs.

Dr. Darren (32:18)

Yeah, no, I. Hey Joe, if people want to find out more about you, you've got, you've got a book out, right?

Joe Lally (32:26)

Yeah.

Dr. Darren (32:27)

Question to learn, right? I can see, I can see it on your wall back there.

Joe Lally (32:31)

That's a good advertisement. Marketing team said I have to have it behind me on video.

Dr. Darren (32:36)

So yeah, it's a good marketing team. So if people want to learn more about, you know, your approach to, to this, where do they go to find out more?

Joe Lally (32:45)

Yep. Easiest way is my website. So joelally.com you can find out about my book you can find out about speaking engagements that I might be available for how to facilitate workshops. So all of those can be found at my website and if you're interested in the book question to learn you can find it anywhere that you buy books.

Dr. Darren (33:05)

That's awesome. Joe, thanks for coming on the show today. This has been great. I've loved the conversation as I always learn something new when I talk to brilliant people. So thank you for adding to my knowledge today.

Joe Lally (33:18)

Yeah thanks so much Darren. It's been great.

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