📚 Your company-wide AI playbook, How to fix workplace training, ...
Hello!
Adam Thornhill here.
‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a week.
Ready for the 59th edition of Podup?
Enjoy the best bits from Lenny’s Podcast, Dev Interrupted, and Marketing Against The Grain:
💠Stripe’s customer-centric rituals
🔧 How to fix workplace training
📚 Your company-wide AI playbook
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💠Stripe’s customer-centric rituals
🥉 Lenny’s Podcast (3 min read vs 1 hour 30 mins listening)
How do you get people to adopt your values? The answer: rituals. You need regular practices that support your values to make them feel real. Stripe CTO David Singleton shares 2 rituals you can use to cultivate a customer-centric culture.
What they say
Friction logging
We have a process that's widely used across product teams at Stripe called friction logging.
You put yourself in a particular user's shoes and go through the process of actually using the product.
You make really careful and meticulous notes of what the experience is.
You pay attention to the places the particular user would find difficult.
We invest a tremendous amount in solving these problems.
David Singleton
Walk the store
There's something we do occasionally called walk the store. We look at the product with the whole company.
We go through really interesting critical product flows together and talk about how this is reflecting various priorities.
That turns out to have a tremendous amount of benefit and value.
It helps everyone have a shared language for talking about things and getting on the same page.
David Singleton
What I say
Why it matters
By implementing practices that actively prioritize user experience, you’ll encourage:
Empathy and understanding. Friction logging focuses on identifying pain points and enhances your team’s understanding of customer challenges.
Iterative improvements. Rituals like this help you to identify new areas for improvement and evolve your product to changing customer needs.
Cross-functional collaboration. Company-wide sessions provide an opportunity for departments to discuss improvements and align their goals.
These types of practices are also fun and energizing. They’ll give your teams a renewed sense of enthusiasm for the customer problems they’re solving.
https://twitter.com/stephsmithio/status/1363939262077407234?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Next steps
The great thing about company culture is you can pick and choose what you like. Â
I think of rituals like Christmas traditions. Now hear me out. When you first have Christmas with your partner or spouse, you may enjoy a few new rituals but you inevitably miss what you’ve always done.
When it comes to hosting your first Christmas, you’re in control. You set your own rituals. You pick the best bits from either side and then sprinkle in a few new ideas that you’ve seen elsewhere.
Not everything works, but you perfect it over time. This is the same with your culture. Ask your team about their favorite rituals from previous companies. Take inspiration from Stripe and others. Then create your own set of rituals that make you, you.
🔧 How to fix workplace training
🥈 Dev Interrupted (4 min read vs 41 mins listening)
Your team is never perfect. Now and again you’re faced with a skills gap and it’s up to you to sort it. But how? Hywel Carver shares valuable insights on effective learning methods and why traditional classroom training often falls short. Dive into to learn about effective learning...Â
What they say
The 4 levels of learning
We think 'I've read the book. I should be able to do the thing.'
There's often a gap in between which is trial and error. Effective learning gives you almost instantaneous feedback.
The ICAP learning theory says a there are four levels of learning: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive.
Passive learning. You're given access to some kind of material like reading a book or watching a video.
Active learning. You're interacting with the materials themselves like highlighting passages in a book.
Constructive learning. This gives even better learning outcomes. You're putting things into practice and building something.
Interactive learning. This is the best form of learning. You're building something and you have the opportunity to discuss it with others.
Hywel Carver
Why classroom training sucks
Classroom training doesn’t give the best learning outcomes. That's because by necessity that model requires trainers to be generic.
Classroom training is only great for compliance. It can be a tick box exercise that says everyone is trained on GPDR or HIPAA.
If you're an engineering leader and you want to have a secure web application, leave the course behind. Invest in people's skills or invest in new people who already have those skills.
It's not cost-effective to bring in new people but it's probably the right approach in a world where you don't have great effective learning.
If you chose to train your team, learning should be targeted to individual skill gaps and aligned to company goals.
Ultimately, people want to learn. They just don't want to be trained with the classroom method of learning.
Hywel Carver
What I say
Why it matters
Most training budgets are akin to lighting a bucket full of $100 bills on fire. Rather than letting employees choose how and when they spend their learning and development budget, Kat Ulanczyk says you should put stricter controls in place:
Your goals should shape your training method. For example:
Need to reduce your legal risk? Classroom training is a great way to check the box for compliance.
Need to reduce employee churn? E-learning is a cheap way to show your willingness to invest in staff.
Need to unblock a skills gap? Live coaching helps improve team output and increase revenue.
Assess training needs against company objectives. Use a traffic light model to decide how to allocate budget:
Green = Directly related to achieving company objectives. Prioritize this!
Amber = Indirectly related. Deprioritize.
Red = Not related. Deprioritize.
Next steps
If you needed anymore evidence to prove that passive learning sucks, just look at MOOCs (online courses). The average completion rate is just 12.6%.
Wait a minute… I hear you ask ‘Adam, is reading Podup passive learning?’ The answer is it can be. But it can also be interactive if you apply this advice:
Where are your skills gaps right now? Try enhancing your learning experience with ChatGPT as your live coach:
Individualized coaching. ChatGPT can provide personalized guidance tailored to your needs and goals.
Real-time Q&A. ChatGPT enables instant access to information, encouraging curiosity and exploration.
Scenario-based learning. ChatGPT can create realistic, immersive scenarios so you can apply your new skills.
https://twitter.com/charlierward/status/1642492881737768961?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Need help getting started? You can also email me as your live coach. There you have it - interactive learning from a newsletter!
📚 Your company-wide AI playbook
🥇 Marketing Against The Grain (4 min read vs 34 mins listening)
By reading this, I assume you use ChatGPT daily. But have you thought about rolling this out to your team? Integrating AI company-wide is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. To stay competitive, you need to have a playbook for AI adoption.
What they say
Choose from 2 playbooks
Let me define this for everybody. When we say top down we mean the leadership of a team is the driving force behind a transformation.
Bottom up means change is democratized and left up to individual people to bubble up the best discoveries they've found.
I prefer the top down method because we have a bigger team. When you get to a certain scale bottom up becomes completely unruly.
Kipp Bodnar
HubSpot’s top down approach
You need to have the right foundational technology in place. For example, with ChatGPT your work content goes into the OpenAI model. It’s not private.
The first thing we did was build HubSpot GPT, a clone of ChatGPT built on the OpenAI API. It was built on our business API access so we retained the rights to everything.
Our team has different AI use cases. We give them some technology - so HubSpot GPT, Midjourney, the Canva AI tools - and say 'Hey, you can use any of these tools and AI-ify your job in a way that makes sense for you.'
It's a little bit of top down to enable bottom up. All of our information is now secure and we have much better insight into what's happening.
Kipp Bodnar
You need a DRI
If you're going to transform any team you need somebody to lead that effort. You need a directly responsible individual (DRI).
We made somebody on our team the DRI for AI and gave them a clear charter. This person's job is to answer:
What should our AI technology stack look like?
What do we buy and what do we build?
What are the use cases we want to apply using that technology?
They collated well over 100 use cases. We prioritized these by how much business impact they were going to have and how quickly we could get them done.
I'm going meet with every team once a month and have a 'How are you transforming with AI' meeting to learn:
How are you using AI?
What are your blockers in using it?
Do you have some technology that isn't approved to use yet because it has a legal hurdle?
How can how can we fix that and get that done for you?
Kipp Bodnar
What I say
Why it matters
Change is hard. If you want people to embrace ChatGPT, you need to have a plan in place. It doesn’t just happen. Follow Kipp’s playbook to accelerate AI adoption, discover use cases for your teams, and celebrate the wins to embed AI adoption in your company culture.
Next steps
Listen to Kipp but with one caveat. OpenAI will be launching a business version soon where you can opt out of data sharing.
https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1650917498945142784?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Avoid following HubSpot’s approach of building your own GPT and instead teach your team the rules of the road but for AI:
Do not include personal identifiable information in messages or uploads
Do not include company sensitive materials in messages or uploads
Always fact check responses so you can detect AI hallucinations
Always edit content before publishing online to avoid SEO penalties
Am I missing anything? Comment below.
Note, these quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Some sentences were left out to make the narrative more concise. I am not associated or affiliated with any podcast (unless otherwise stated). All roundups are independently written and do not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the podcast.