← Using AI at Work: AI in the Workplace & Generative AI for Business Leaders
Using AI at Work: AI in the Workplace & Generative AI for Business Leaders
68: Using AI at Work Without Being Replaced with Steff Vanhaverbeke
00:53:13
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- [00:00]
Chief AI Officer Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by chiefaiofficer.com Most companies know AI can slash costs and free up teams, but they get stuck on the first step. Chiefaiofficer.com can identify your highest value, use cases, train your people and build the workflows that do the work for you. Book your free private 15 minute executive briefing by going to chiefaiofficer.com and scheduling a call. You'll leave with a clear no jargon roadmap for your goals. Now enjoy the show.
- [00:34]
Podcast Producer/Host Intro
And a quick note before we start this episode. Starting August 29th through October 29th, we're actually taking our AI executive immersion on the road. This is a free half day in person, no fluff workshop for executives of lower middle market and above sized companies. You'll leave with a 90 day plan, a simple AI policy and guardrails, and a personal AI stack that gives you hours back every week. If you'd like to bring your executive team at no cost, go to chiefai officer.comroadshow to see the dates and locations where we'll be. Seats are limited to keep it hands on. Hopefully this is an opportunity for us to meet in person and for you to learn exactly how we're teaching busy executives to take advantage of AI in their role and across their companies. Now let's start the episode. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Staigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started.
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Chris Staigle
Hi everybody and welcome to an episode of Using AI at Work. And today we're going to be talking about AI with Steph von Haverbeke. Steph, she just shared with me that she's about to release a book which we're going to be talking about. But Steph, before we get started, if you don't mind, take a moment and just kind of share with the audience what you're doing in AI today.
- [02:04]
Steph von Haverbeke
Today I give a lot of training courses, do a lot of workshops, but people in businesses who want to adopt AI, so, so that's what I do on the day, on a day to day basis. Yeah.
- [02:19]
Chris Staigle
Well then you're talking to the right people because the people here want to learn how to use AI. Before we talk, I definitely want to go into that and what the experiences are like working with clients and kind of like what that whole paradigm looks like in bringing AI into business. But I want to start with your book that you were Telling me that it's about to come out. I'm fascinated with the subject of the book. So you, you mentioned the title was being replaced.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, being replaced.
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Chris Staigle
Being replaced. And I think that everybody listening probably knows the context of that. Right? Yeah. But the subtitle of the book, the.
- [02:54]
Steph von Haverbeke
Five Human Skills that AI Cannot Automate. That's a subtitle.
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Chris Staigle
You know, I think that's a big question for a lot of people, because listeners to the podcast, I think, probably know a little bit more about AI than the average business person out there. And, and that's a concern. I just got off a podcast now, and that was how we wrapped it up, like, who's safe? Right. So I'm particularly interested in what those skills are. And fingers crossed, I've got all five of them. So do you mind sharing kind of the, the thesis of the book?
- [03:24]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, of course, of course. Well, let me just start with how the book came to be. Maybe it's, it's not, it's not something. Because I said in our pre. Talk, I said, you know, in the past few weeks I've been working on a book, but the book was already a couple of years in the making, of course. And it's in the making because of the conversations that I've had during all that time with people in business and the anxiety that lives among, you know, people who just love to do their job. Yeah, and, and then, yeah, and then there's this thing, AI that, that's going to replace me. So that's, there's, there's a lot of concern there. And, and it's, and it's a valid concern, of course.
- [04:13]
Chris Staigle
Agreed.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Um, and then I started to think, yeah, well, that's, that's all. AI can do a lot of things, and it can be an accelerator. And I have a whole story about that as well. But then I started, you know, what, what, what are the answers that some of the things that we can hold on to as human beings that not only will never properly be replaced by AI, but will actually make the big differences for businesses in the foreseeable future. And that's how I came to this. This framework, which I call the cognitive agility framework.
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Chris Staigle
I like it.
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Steph von Haverbeke
And of course, you have some words there. It's. It's cognition. So it's, how does our brain work? And it's agility. How can you be agile in a changing environment? And a framework, meaning that it's, it's something. It has couple of components, five to be exact. And so it's something that we can use as a person, as a company, as teams, also to leverage our human potential. And if we look at it and that way actually AI sets us free instead of replacing us. So that's the core message of the book.
- [05:42]
Chris Staigle
Yes, I totally see the inspirational elements of that approach to things. Do you mind walking us through kind of the, the areas that you see or the cognitive capabilities that you see that AI is not going to replace and that we should be developing as modern day business people?
- [06:05]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, of course. Well, first of all, right off the bat, the first principle or the first skill that we have as, as humans is flexible thinking. And what do I mean by this? Our brain works in a totally different way than a machine does. Meaning our brain is embodied. So we have this corporal entity that we are. And so our brain has senses, it has a way to flip the switch easily from deep work and then doing, dreaming and, you know, being all over the place somewhere else and going back and forth between those different modes, neural network modes, that our brain is able to handle. And that's something that a computer is not very well equipped to do. Even large language models. And I'm sure that a lot of us have been accustomed to, you know, working with AI and asking AI to do some things and that these large language models basically are very rigid in their cognition. Once they're on a particular path, it's very difficult to move them elsewhere. This is the first thing, flexible thinking. And I break it down into three top components. First of all, it's critical thinking. Critical thinking is a cognitive ability that is, that never has been as important as this today, because everything that AI generates in terms of images, but also in terms of, you know, text and information. Some people really believe that AI is something that comes from aliens or, you know, something divine, which of course is not. And it only shows how, how people are just not seeing AI for what it really is. It's compute, it's. It's just a prediction model.
- [08:23]
Chris Staigle
Yes.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Based on pattern recognition. And that's it, you know, and of course it can emulate the way we think very nicely, but it's not real cognition. It's not really understanding. So critical thinking is first and then second element in that part is creative thinking. And that's the way we can imagine things, that we can come up with totally new things. And, and why do I use these two elements? Because I work before this. I did a lot of work in, no, doing workshops around innovation and change. What I always thought is that critical thinking and creative thinking are two, you know, Two sides of the same coin does not go without the other. And so that's what I, why I put them also in the framework. Like these are the two core elements. And then you have systems thinking. Systems thinking, which has long been the underdog of management theory, but it is becoming of utmost relevance. And I've heard you worked with Shell, so I'm sure that you're familiar with scenario thinking and all these things which are based in systems theory. And so systems thinking is a skill that we need to develop to see the, you know, the relationships between the parts. Not only see the parts from what they are, but see the relationships and the, you know, how the system works and go, go a bit deeper below the surface, so to say. And that's something that an AI cannot do. The AI only sees the service. There's. There's a whole of information that is invisible to, to AI and will probably be always invisible to AI. Let me just clarify with an example. Yeah, so imagine you're sick. You're going to the emergency room in a hospital, and then you expect, you know, the caregiver to do some diagnosis, you know, hearing, seeing, using some instruments. But it's not only what is being diagnosed that is information. It's also, who. How have you come? Are you alone? Are you with somebody? What is your state of mind? What is your physical state? What is your emotional state? And these are all things that are very difficult for an AI to understand or even to detect, you know, the unspoken information. Yeah, which is just there because it's there. And as human, we can, we have our, our senses and our ability to sense the unspoken things, which is very hard for an AI to do. So and that's why, you know, AI is blind for a lot of, a lot of the information that is innately with us as human beings. That, that's the first thing. So critical thinking, creative think, systems thinking, and the flexibility that we have to switch from one to another. So. And then there are four more parts.
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Chris Staigle
If you're comfortable sharing another book.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. So the second part of the, of the cognitive agility framework is emotional intelligence. The ability to have to feel what another person feels. And I don't have to draw a whole lot of pictures to understand that an AI is just incapable of feeling, really feeling. And the thing is that AI, the large language models and the, the system prompts that are written around these large language models are written in such a way that these AI agents or the AI tools, the chatbots, are very accommodating. They are really very positive and very, you know, they, they, they always seem enthusiastic and, you know, helpful. And it seems like that's, that's emotional intelligence, but it's just simulation. It's not real. It's not a real person. You know, they cannot sense what's really going on. They have no empathy. And you can easily trick them, by the way, you know, these, these chatbots. So, so if you have some time left, you know, you, you should go and play with that a little bit. Yeah, this, this one of these ChatGPT, you know, these custom GPTs, and it's called Negative Nancy. And it's, it's really fun because, you know, instead of being accommodate. Accommodating, negativeness is very critical, you know, and, and so, so you can really, you know, have, have this illusion that there's an intelligent being on the other side of your, of your screen, but it's not so, so emotional intelligence, you know, and the, the, the example that, that I often talk about is, you know, well, it's, it's for my personal life and, and my father. Last year, my father passed. So he, he was in the last two years of his life, he was paralyzed from the neck down. Um, so he, he, he had no, no real future. No more. No. Yeah, no vision anymore of, of, you know, what, what to do with his life and everything. And, and here in Belgium we have this, this, this ability to. So he applied for that and at first it was rejected because, you know, this was still some chance for recovery. And. But after two years, it was very apparent that recovery was out of the question. And he had no touch in his hands. He had no, he had no taste anymore at the end. And you know, and no, he. Life for him was nothing more than pain and struggle every day.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
And so at the end, the procedure was approved and he got here, so he passed. And of course that was for us as a family, very tumultuous time, but also kind of a release for, you know, I came to peace with it. You know, I was with. Be in peace now with, with the fact that he, this was his decision, he chose for it and everything like that. And it was for him, it was a release. Now as I am telling the story, you know, for a lot of people, that will evoke emotions.
- [15:06]
Chris Staigle
Yes.
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Steph von Haverbeke
You know, it evokes emotions with me, with my family members, if we reflect on that, but also with other people. And that is something that an AI can never do. They can never have a real sense of what it means to lose a parent. But also what it means to see your own father or parent or mother suffering every day. So. And we can imagine a world where everything is highly optimized by AI. That this ability will truly make a difference.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah. You know, just to be authenticity in that.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah. It comes down to authenticity and deep understanding and having a sense. And let's imagine again, the emergency room where you get to. When you're. When you have something and you want to get help. I would not appreciate having to, you know, explain everything to a chatbot.
- [16:10]
Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
You know, I want the real person there who really can understand me. Yeah, yeah. So when we pull that thread all the way through, we can imagine a world where a lot of the first line assistance will be provided by AI, chatbots, agents, whatever.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
When it really comes down to it, you want a real person to be there to help you.
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Chris Staigle
Customer service, maybe not so much, but a situation like this, 100%.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah. And most of the time, you know, like. Like when you get into a store and there's somebody there already, you know, nagging you, you know, can I help you, madam or sir? You know, at first you say, go, go away. I will. You know, I'm here just to. To, you know, to explore or to browse or whatever. And. And after a while, you won't help.
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Chris Staigle
Good point.
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Steph von Haverbeke
So after a while, you really. And then you want the personal assistance. You want somebody. Somebody, you know, there. Literally somebody.
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Chris Staigle
Yes. Yeah, that makes sense.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah.
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Chris Staigle
Okay, so that's two.
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Steph von Haverbeke
And then there's the third element. And the third element is collaborative intelligence is the intelligence that we have as a group. It's the ability of a group or a team to pull together when all things fail. And the example that I wrote in the book was just something that happened here in Belgium a few weeks ago. We have this festival, it's well known. It's called Tomorrowland. Probably heard of it. It's this big, you know, how to say, music festival. And you have a lot of DJs going from all over, and hundreds of thousands of people gather. And two days before the opening, the main stage just literally burns down to the ground. Nothing more than ashes and cinders. And what happened? So everybody thought, you know, this is disaster. You know, there's no way that this festival. Festival will happen. Two days before grand opening. Well, they opened, but what did they do? They pulled in resources, people from all over the world. Everybody wanted to help. And they got. Got a big, you know, big screens, and they got a whole new, you know, installation. I think it was. It From Metallica or something, you know, somebody gave them, oh, the whole kids and just use that, you know, and there's the whole, the whole world became a community just to make this festival happen.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah, yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
In two days times they shipped over from all over the world the things that they needed to, to, to do to have to hold the festival. And it, and people said it was the best festival in years, you know, even though, you know, the, the glamorous stage wasn't there as it was foreseen. And that's something that we people have and that we always had. We as a species, we were able to hunt the biggest animals out there because we are able to communicate quickly, shift gears from one strategy, shift to another. And that's what we have as a collective. So it's collective and collaborative intelligence and that is innately human. And we can imagine a world where people will work with AI and agents, AI agents. And there will be to some degree parts of this collaborative intelligence there, but not the same way as a group of people can do. And then there's the fourth element, and that's intuition. And how does that work? Well, the story that I tell in the book was something that I heard a couple of years ago. It was about an entrepreneur and an investor, and he heard about this small company which was doing very good, but at the, at the one hand, but also struggling at the other hand like many, many startups do when they, when, you know, become successful. And he, he, he looked at that company and said, no, I'm, I see the potential. So he, he just called the, you know, the, the owner of the, of the, of the company and said, you know, let's get together somewhere and talk about, you know, the future of their company. And right off the bat during that lunch meeting, let's say, you know, he said, I want to buy your company or want to have a big stake in your company. And the other one said, okay, okay, what do you, what do you want to offer? And there. And then during that lunch meeting, they agreed on the price and everything. So everything was, was, was already decided. And then of course the lawyers and the, you know, the accountants came in and they, they just rubber stamped everything. They, they didn't, you know, they weren't even allowed to, to say, oh, this is, this is not a good idea. No, no, the idea was there, the conclusion was there. The deal was there already. They just had to rubber stamp everything. And that's, that's something that we have as humans. We can have this conviction that something will succeed. Against all odds, maybe because we can see sense, have this intuitive feeling that something will succeed or could succeed. We are dreamers. And so that's, that's, that's our power. And that's something that in AI and probably any version of AI that will come in the future will never have. You know, this, this, this gut feeling that something is, is possible, even though nobody believes it.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah, intuition's not a. It can't predict that. Yeah, that makes sense.
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Steph von Haverbeke
And then there's the fifth component, and that's innovation, the ability to innovate. It's a bit different than pure creativity because you can be creative for the creativity, just do some art or something. But innovation is really bringing to the world something that is totally different, probably disruptive, and that changes the world fundamentally or maybe in a small way or in a big way. And we see that happening all the time, of course. And that's something that happens when people not only intuitively imagine things, but they also create it. They bring it into the world. They, they, they prototype it, they test it, they, they, they tweak it. And up until it. You, you have something that works. And very often, and, and you know, what we see in, is that when we try to have agents, AI, because they do these tests, and Tropic is, is very well known to, to run these tests, you know, about, you know, giving some AI some agency and see what happens when they really want to run a business, for instance. And what we see today is that they falter every time because they lack these core elements. They lack the flexible thinking, they lack the emotional intelligence, they lack the collaborative ability. They lack intuition. But they also lack the ability to truly innovate and, and bring into the world something that is totally different than what we ever had before. And it's not just the rehashing of known patterns. And so that's how we close the loop, because then we come again to flexibility and creativity. And so, so it's a wheel. It's, it's something that, that's, it's not, not just, you know, like a menu card. You pick and choose something. No, no. You have to do everything.
- [24:57]
Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah.
- [24:59]
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- [25:59]
Chris Staigle
Does the book give any advice on how these skills can be applied or enhanced in your role? So that it becomes obvious? Or we could have an AI, you know, push the button, move the email, whatever. But we want them on board because they are contributing at a level that we recognize AI can't do. Is there any advice for individuals on how to do that?
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, well, the book is full of examples and also some very useful tools and things that you can do to develop these skills and to put them into practice with your team as well or in your organization or it could be just for yourself. But the whole premise of the book is actually this is not a book about AI. It's a book about people working with AI. And in a world where AI is abundant is everywhere. The world of today and tomorrow where you can imagine that every business to some degree will be using AI.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah, agreed.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Could be for translation purposes or copywriting or maybe it's doing some design stuff or maybe automating some, some, some aspects of your business or whatever. Now, in such a world, how will you make a difference as a business? How will you make a difference as a person? It is not by just, you know, doing what everybody else does. And the reason why I'm saying this is that the way the technology evolves right now is they make it very easy. It's never before in our existence have we had such powerful technology in the hands and the pockets of everybody. And it's free. You know, Gemini is free chatgpt. You can use to a certain degree for free. So that, that is amazing. And the only, the only thing that I can think of is, you know, when, when the emerg emergence of the Internet, you know, you know, the World Wide web and we had suddenly access to all this information. Well now we have access to compute and that's basically pure power.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
And it's very, very easy to fall into the trap believing that we need to move faster in that world. Well, and that's the case that I make in the book, the economy of the future. Will not be for the business who is able to move the fastest, because that will be irrelevant. Everybody will move very fast and have that ability. You can have a teenager tinkering with N8N and you're hiring him to automate big chunks of your business. You'll be the fastest maybe for a minute or two. So what, what will make the difference? Well, the people, the, the companies are more. Most human will make the difference.
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Chris Staigle
Interesting.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah. Because what we forget is that we all have compute. We all have compute power, but it's on a whole other level than what the AI can do. And, and sometimes we forget this. You know, we're dazzled by the new, you know, the new, you know, GPT5, a new agent here, a new ability there, and it's all shiny and great and wonderful. How will you make the difference? Yeah.
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Chris Staigle
So not only, I guess, the businesses that are human will get distinguished in the marketplace, but the businesses that are seen as more human, they can't be fully automated businesses. They have to require people. So, okay, this makes a lot of sense what's going to happen, because that's obviously not going to be every business and not every business is going to. They might be okay with synthetic. Right. Like, oh, it's close enough to human for us to go to market or us to ship or us to take on clients. So it doesn't necessarily mean that there will end up being, oh, everybody's going to keep their job because, you know, because of these five factors, there's going to be some recalibration of what qualifies you as a viable employee or service provider or vendor. So an interesting topic. You know, there's. I didn't think we were going to, we were going to be able to get into that. When I heard the title of the book, I thought it was going to be roles or, you know, like tactical spills. That would be like, oh, if I can learn how to do this, I'll keep my job. But that's not it at all. Something that we all have access to today. There's no new upskilling required. Perhaps learning how to make sure that your personal brand, I guess, is recognized as part of that authentic effort or authentic movement. That's going to be the difference.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, everybody's talking now about AI slop. You know, it's everywhere.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
And I see it everywhere, and everybody sees it. And for people who, you know, you know, I shouldn't say who it is, but let's say some people in my circles, they often, you Know, send me these, you know, little shorts, you know, or whatever reels, you know, that they. They picked up from. From wherever and say, is this real?
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Chris Staigle
Because they can't tell the difference between if a human did it or if it was like a.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but, but you. You can still, you know, point them out, but we can imagine a moment where we will not be able to distinguish. Yeah, but AI SOP is a big problem. One of the things that people are really looking for is authenticity. And I'm Belgium, so. And if there's something that Belgium is very famous for, it's for beer. Let's make an analogy. The beers in Belgium that are most appreciated are not the beers that everybody all over the world is drinking, you know, not even left, you know.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
The beers that we prefer come from what we call microbreweries. And so they are very small enterprises. Some. Some friends or, you know, some family members, some brothers or some sisters even, you know, whatever, you know, they. They brew their own beers and they market them very locally. And they're very different in character and taste and everything. And they're very highly regarded, very much appreciated and very popular. And then you have these, you know, AB InBev interbrew beers, you know.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Like Stella Tuan, all these, you know, and Heineken and all these. Okay. People drink them, but they're not as much appreciated as. As, you know, the artisanal beers. So I can imagine that in a world where everything is AI swap.
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Chris Staigle
Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
People will look for the products and. Or the services that are human, that has this human element in it, that are authentic.
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Chris Staigle
So let me ask you. I believe that you can. But in your opinion, can you leverage AI for the scale and speed to deliver the authenticity, to support the delivery of the authenticity, not replace.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yes, for. Yeah, for sure. And that's also, you know, I'm not against AI. I'm for AI.
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Chris Staigle
Of course. Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah. I enjoy working with AI. Even my book that I wrote, you know, I used AI for. And I explicitly say how I used AI in it. But, you know, AI still is a tool, and that's what some. Some of us, you know, often forget and when we can imagine. And of course, you know, the big tech entrepreneurs, they all dream up this world where, you know, everything is AI and everything is, you know, handled by AI and there's this big, wonderful world where we don't have to do anything anymore. Well, I got news for you. Yeah. The thing with people is people invent work.
- [35:14]
Chris Staigle
Yes, good point. Yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, they always come up with something that we can do and we will leverage AI to do it, but we will do it in a way that is totally unexpected and that's our power and that will never go away.
- [35:32]
Chris Staigle
Yeah, yeah.
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Steph von Haverbeke
We are so creative in inventing work.
- [35:40]
Chris Staigle
You know, this, this is such a. Like you, you and I, we use AI on a daily basis. As you mentioned. You love AI. I love AI, but I don't think much beyond its application and what I'm doing. I use it strategically to help with planning and ideation on bigger picture stuff. We use it tactically throughout the business and it's just become almost natural usage for me. If you're familiar with Ethan Mollick and his concept of the cyborg, it's a seamless activity that I do. I don't. It's not like, oh, I'm going to go do AI later. Like, I don't spend a lot of time trying to forecast what's going to happen on the macro, like the global stage, because A, it's a big question, B, nobody knows. And I think you just brought up a good example of that. Even if AI could do it, well, maybe I like the activity of doing that. So sure, I could use it. Maybe I'll use AI tomorrow. But hey, I'm going to roll up my sleeve and do whatever that thing is. So it's nice to have the conversation, especially the perspectives, because I think it's going to be a topic like AI's efficacy well established at this point, even if the. Some of the listeners are new to it. Talk to somebody who's been using the tool for three months. Right. They're going to say, changed my life. So that's not the question, but the. I think that. So the conversation, the narrative in the marketplace, I fully expect to start to shift to. But what does this mean? What does this mean for people parenting for kids in college or who are, you know, going to like, what should they study? Like, all those things are changing. And I don't, I don't, I'm not big into the guesswork anyway. I'd rather just go and, and do the thing. So this is nice to have this conversation. Now I'd like to shift gears a little bit because not every one of our guests works as closely with clients who aren't AI experts as you do. So I'd kind of like to like, collect some intelligence from the field, essentially. Like, like, I'll share with you an experience that I've had and I want to know if it's Similar for you in 2023 when we launched our business chiefai officer.com I thought we were already late. Right. Like, and we launched it in March of 23 and the big pop didn't happen. And I thought, oh, that's okay, everybody's learning about it. But 2024, it's going to take off. The pop didn't happen now. Like, not even at the beginning of this year. It was, was accelerating. But like, like now we're in the thick of it and at least in our business. And it's not because, oh well, you've got two years in. No, it's because the market is catching up to the messaging. Like, what's happening here has your experience. Are you encountering more sophisticated or savvy or better questions from your clients than you did two years ago?
- [38:31]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yes and no. My sense is that the majority of the people that I, that I work with, that I encounter are using AI, but not on the level that they could be using it.
- [38:48]
Chris Staigle
Okay, yeah, like they're using it for emails or document summaries.
- [38:52]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, yeah. And I refer to this very nice model that George Burson came up with. It's called the super worker model. And I expanded a little bit on it. So I see again, five levels and level zero is. Well, I've tried AI but it didn't do what I want so I won't be using it. Or maybe, you know, just scarcely. Yeah, that's level zero.
- [39:20]
Chris Staigle
They'll use it like Google.
- [39:21]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, yeah. And then you have the level one superworkers, which are the people who are using AI on a day to day basis regularly to maybe write some text, translate some, you know, make some translations, generate some images, whatever, you know, help to study whatever, you know, those, those are the, the level one superworkers. So. And then you have level two. And those are the people who think about the way they are working with AI. So it's already a metacognition here, this. So yeah, what am I doing actually with AI and how can I optimize it? So they start to create, you know, these customized GPTs or the custom GPTs which were already there, you know, for, for two or three years, I think. Yeah. And are called agents in copilot. They are not agentic. And so they start to evaluate the way they work with AI and, and to a certain degree automate some of the stuff that they do. And then these are the things that anybody can do on an individual level. You don't need any approval for that because we all have chatgpt or Gemini or Claude or whatever running on our phones, you know, you can just do it. And then there's level three, which is, you know, ah, but maybe it can give my, not only automate some of the things, but give agency to, to my, to the AI tools that I use. If there's something that becomes popular or all businesses start to chip in. And now you have agents everywhere, it seems, but real agency is still not there yet. Agree, we're getting there. And then we can imagine a world where you will have organizations and teams that work seamlessly with diverse team, with human agents and AI agents. And that's level four. So, and this is an evolution on a scale from working harder or working hard, better to say, to working smart from, you know, working hard. And you paid to work hard. If you're not completely done with the work, you just put a little extra effort, a little extra time, you work a little bit harder and you're getting there. And this is changing to working smarter. And working smarter means that you really think about what you're doing with your work. And so this, this, this trajectory everybody is on at a certain point on this, on, on this trajectory. So you can ask yourself your, the question of which level super worker am I? And maybe you're level level one for some, some things and you're leveling zero for other things.
- [42:14]
Chris Staigle
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:16]
Steph von Haverbeke
So, and this is, this is, this is a question. This is a framework that I often use in my workshops as well. And I ask them, my audience know, on which level are you? Most of them, they position themselves on level zero or level one.
- [42:31]
Chris Staigle
Yeah.
- [42:32]
Steph von Haverbeke
So if that's, that's, that's the, the long answer to your quick question.
- [42:36]
Chris Staigle
No, it's very helpful. I, you know, there's not a lot of people like you and me out there who don't just know the subject, but are actually interacting with people at all skill levels. And I'm always interested and I think it's important for the audience to hear it too, because I think there's a lot of people that two things, either they think, you know, I'm using AI, but boy, I'm way behind because they know enough about it to know how it accelerated the advancement is of the technology or there's people who are using it who think they're way ahead of where they actually are. Are, you know, we talk to executives and they'll say, oh, we're already using AI, that's fantastic. What do you, you know, give me some examples. And like, well, I use it to Write emails and summarize documents.
- [43:18]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, that's level one helpful, certainly.
- [43:21]
Chris Staigle
However, it can do more than that. But if you ask them on a scale of. And because we usually do, we say on a scale of 1 to 5, where are you? We don't define like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And in the fall we would do some, we did a lot of training, a lot of free training for executives. And we would always start our training so that we could kind of calibrate the messaging like, hey, audience, where are you? On a scale of 1 to 5. And we used to get a lot of ones and twos. And then I noticed in the spring of this year we started getting more threes and fours and I was like, what does that mean? And what we found out was it wasn't that they were that sophisticated. They self diagnosed as sophisticated users. So as you're dealing with clients, do you get people who, you know, show up to the training where they're like, I already know this stuff, even even though you and I know that, that they're just scratching the surface, or are you finding that people are erring more towards the side of thinking they don't know as much as they do?
- [44:21]
Steph von Haverbeke
Well, the quick answer is that most people do not use AI to its fullest potential. They do the very basic stuff using a chatbot like ChatGPT or, you know, stuff like that. Never have I encountered a person who is, you know, really proficient in model context protocol implementations. Yeah, never.
- [44:56]
Chris Staigle
You know, I know one guy. Yeah.
- [45:00]
Steph von Haverbeke
And it's, it is, it is a whole other level. Of course, it's not that it's that difficult when you're really getting into it, but it's on a whole other level. And most people, you have to understand, you know, let's say, let me just say with a clear example. And also I think I mentioned it in the book somewhere. There was one at one of the workshops that I, that I ran a few a couple of months ago, there was this, this young woman and she said, I love my job. And I love my job because it gives me the ability to speak and write in other languages. I love languages. And that's why I applied for this job as a triangle. Being somebody who has a lot of translation work and you know, working with foreign clients and everything I said, and now you, you're telling me that I can do this quicker with AI, but I don't want to do it quicker with AI.
- [46:00]
Chris Staigle
Yeah.
- [46:01]
Steph von Haverbeke
You know, because then I lose that thing like going deep into the language and figuring things out something she loves doing. It's something she loves doing. Yeah, same with developers. You have all these things like vibe coding and all these. Yeah. And everywhere it seems like a lot of developers are being laid off. But why do you pick that job? Because you love tinkering, you love figuring things out.
- [46:37]
Chris Staigle
Yeah.
- [46:38]
Steph von Haverbeke
That's what you do as developer.
- [46:40]
Chris Staigle
You know, this such a big topic. I'm glad you, you've put so much thought into it and actually have your book coming out. So can, can you take a second, Steph, and tell us about when the book's going to be released and how the listeners can get access to it?
- [46:55]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, well, imagine that. I uploaded it to Amazon today.
- [47:01]
Chris Staigle
Oh, congratulations. It's a big accomplishment.
- [47:03]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but it's not there yet. It has to know, be reviewed and everything. So I think in a couple of days we'll be there. But you can go to our website and it's called the House of Coaching dot com. So it's not difficult. It will be there.
- [47:19]
Chris Staigle
Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes too.
- [47:21]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, we'll put the link there. So, and then you can just grab the book from Amazon, but the link will be on, on, on, on our website. Yeah.
- [47:29]
Chris Staigle
You know, anybody can put a book together today and, and ChatGPT and this, this plays right into what we've been talking about. Is that authenticity.
- [47:37]
Steph von Haverbeke
This wasn't written with ChatGPT or, you know.
- [47:40]
Chris Staigle
Yeah, I'm, I'm sure. And like it's. You used it as an ideation partner and stuff like that, for sure. But the, the best books that I'm finding on AI are from people that I know. They locked themselves in a hotel room every weekend for two months and just worked on the book. And yes, they had AI there, but they weren't like, here's a mega prompt. Write my book. Oh, I'm publishing tomorrow. These were books that were that level of authenticity that you're talking about, including the intuition, including the critical thinking, including the context switching of how I think about things. Like all of those things come through and that's what makes them of interest and successful audience.
- [48:22]
Steph von Haverbeke
If we still have some couple of minutes, I would just share the story quickly how the, the book got developed. So imagine I'm doing a workshop. I'm confronted with these stories, these real human concerns, and then I drive back home or to another, you know, gig, and I'm reflecting and I'm thinking about, you know, the questions that I, that I got and, you know, the answers that I Gave then most of the time are not perfect answers either. Yeah but I want to give the best, you know and to bring out the best with. With, with my clients. So I'm thinking a lot about, you know, and then I put up ChatGPT or Gemini on my phone and I just chat. Yes, I had this, I had this and it. And it gets back to me with some, you know, and that's the ideation part. It's. Yeah. And the nice things is all these chats are being saved in ChatGPT and then I can just after, after a couple of days, you know, look into it and just pull some things together. And that's how the book came into existence. You know, and it's been a work for. From years and from reflecting on what the things were that I noticed with people and business owners and office workers, you know, and entrepreneurs and you know, and people working in. In care and every. From every, you know, part of the landscape. And then I started to put the.
- [50:02]
Chris Staigle
Model together innovation as you referenced earlier, came up with something that. Yeah. From all of those experiences.
- [50:08]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah yeah.
- [50:09]
Chris Staigle
Started to get shell and something and.
- [50:11]
Steph von Haverbeke
Something I wanted something that was useful, you know, that. Yeah that, that people could really put into practice.
- [50:18]
Chris Staigle
Yeah. I think it's a good idea for, for business owners that are on this too. By the time this episode comes out, you can probably find it on Amazon. But if you're looking to certainly continue on the AI journey with the implementation of the tools in your business and that sort of thing. But at some point your business is going to be quote unquote AI. And the thing that is going to help you remain to differentiate when every other business in your competition is also AI fied is going to be this framework of the five ideas of anti being replaced. As a business owner, I would suggest that you think about what we've talked about today. I would encourage you to get the book and then start thinking about. You can use Chat GPT to help you, of course, but start thinking about how can I introduce these concepts into our product, our customer experience, our user interface on our website. Like what can I do? And I do think that Steph, you're spot on with this stuff. If you pull that off as a business and you're using AI, you are going to be one of those businesses that doesn't. Isn't a casualty of what's happening. And honestly, with what's coming.
- [51:29]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is not a question of if and not even when. It's now. Yeah, it's happening. It's just, you know what? It's, it's a question of what, what can you do right now.
- [51:42]
Chris Staigle
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a fantastic place. So HouseOfCoaching.com is where you can find more information about what Steph and her team are doing with clients, helping them upskill and innovate and transform with AI. That's also where you'll be able to find mind her new release being replaced, which we discussed on the podcast today. So, Steph, thank you so much for taking the time. Honestly, congratulations on getting a book out that wasn't AI generated. That's a big accomplishment. So congratulations.
- [52:15]
Steph von Haverbeke
Yeah, thank you. It was my honor to be on your show.
- [52:19]
Chris Staigle
Thank you so much. All right, everybody, we'll see you on the next episode. In the meantime, keep using AI.
- [52:27]
Podcast Producer/Host Intro
Thanks for tuning in to Using AI at Work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for a free AI Readiness Assessment and AI Strategy Guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefai aiofficer.com. so thanks to our producer Evan Des for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle Using AI at Work and visit www.usingaiatwork.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.