Fixable
Is AI your next hire?
April 29, 2024
[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Hey everyone. Before we get started, I have a request for you. We are looking for people to share stories of when they've quit their jobs, what happened, how did you do it, and where did life take you from there. Please send a voicemail to 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253.
All right, so where we're starting off today is in this really interesting supercharged exploration of AI that I'm sure so many of you are encountering right now. So Frances, uh, uh, talk to us, tell us where your mind is on this AI revolution right now.
[00:00:36] Frances Frei:
So I am, I’m just totally intrigued and down for the count for AI. Like, I see the upside, and it's so palpable. So, for example, one thing I've created for private use, I'm not yet ready to share it with public is I've put all of our writings together into our own custom ChatGPT, and I can ask it questions.
So if I can't get to you, I can ask it questions, and I will, it will simulate your voice. And I'm gonna be honest, you are better than it most hours of the day. But if I could go to the ChatGPT or you after 4:00 PM, I’m going to the ChatGPT.
[00:01:20] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. This whole morning brain, it’s strange. The morning brain goes away.
[00:01:23] Frances Frei:
Oh, in the morning you, you in the morning, you win. You dominate AI in the morning. But I'm not sure you dominate AI after 4:00 PM.
[00:01:27] Anne Morriss:
No, oh. Yeah, I think you're generous with four. Wow. I think this is gonna improve our marriage.
I'm Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.
[00:01:44] Frances Frei:
And I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School, and I'm Anne's wife.
[00:01:47] Anne Morriss:
And this is Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and good solutions are usually just a single brave conversation away.
[00:01:58] Frances Frei:
Let’s listen to today's caller.
[00:02:01] Mark:
Hey Anne. Hey Frances. Thank you for listening. My name's Mark, and I work for a software company leading a team of technical sellers. We are a SaaS company, software as a service, and we are creating new products, pretty much two or three products every year. Also, our existing products are getting deeper and deeper.
My team needs to be experts in all of these products, and the problem we are finding is because the portfolio is becoming so wide and so deep, it's impossible to be an expert in every single thing. The way we've tried solving it is making specialists, but the problem with that is as we go on to meet customers, we have to show up with a bus. We have to show up with 10, 11, 12 people, and that's an extremely costly sale. I'm hoping you can help me with that. Thank you. Bye-Bye.
[00:02:47] Frances Frei:
This reminds me of the curse of winning. We, we usually think of the blessing of winning.
[00:02:53] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:02:53] Frances Frei:
Um, but when you get really good, and you get into that flywheel of really good, more and more and more things… and your poor employees.
[00:03:03] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Have to absorb the pain.
[00:03:05] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So it's great for the organization, but it's so often on the backs of employees. And so, how do we set employees up for success when the organization's success is just doing more and more and more?
[00:03:32] Anne Morriss:
Mark, welcome to Fixable.
[00:03:33] Mark:
Thank you. Excited to be here.
[00:03:35] Anne Morriss:
So let, let's jump right into it. You lead a sales team at a software company, and your team is having trouble managing the complexity and the breadth of your growing product portfolio. Is that a fair summary of the situation?
[00:03:53] Mark:
Correct. The only thing I would change is it's a pre-sales team, so it's a technical sales team. So we work very closely with our sales counterpart, but we are responsible for the technical aspects of the sale.
[00:04:03] Anne Morriss:
Got it. And so how is this tension showing up in practical terms?
[00:04:11] Mark:
Yeah. So I'll give you an example. So I'll, I'll talk about how things are today and then maybe we can talk about how they can be tomorrow. So today, we have, the US is divided into 20 regions, and we have one person in each region, but that one person is responsible for all the product SKUs that we sell. So there are around 50 product SKUs that this one person is responsible for, and it could be across different industries.
[00:04:39] Anne Morriss:
Wow.
[00:04:39] Mark:
So Monday, they could be speaking to a bank. Tuesday, they could be speaking to a manufacturer. Wednesday, they could be speaking to a retailer. And we are expected to show up as experts in all of these meetings, which is impossible. So that's really where the tension grows because the sales team sort of pulls us in as experts, but because it, there's so much width, it's impossible to play that role efficiently.
[00:05:02] Anne Morriss:
And then the regional logic is that these meetings are live. So you want someone local who can show up for the meeting?
[00:05:10] Mark:
Correct. Because costs are also a big factor. So we don't want people traveling all over the country, so we want it to be as local as possible.
[00:05:17] Anne Morriss:
And you described in your voicemail some painful sales meetings where because of this, you had an army of people in the room. Will you walk us through an example?
[00:05:30] Mark:
Yeah, so we tried sort of saying instead of this one person knowing everything, which is impossible, let's have specialist who specialize in a few of those sub-products. But the minute we start doing that, especially given the customers because we do sell to larger enterprises, so customers don't care about other SKUs. They care about the problem that they're trying to solve, and we may be solving that problem using multiple products on our side. So now we have a specialist in each of those products, and suddenly that call has 20 people from our company showing up.
[00:06:05] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:06:05] Mark:
Which again, you know, is, is not efficient.
[00:06:09] Anne Morriss:
Got it. And when people are buying, when you close business, what's your theory of the case? Why are people excited about what you all are doing?
[00:06:19] Mark:
Oh, because our, our product is astounding. Like, as a technical salesperson, nothing's more awesome than being able to stand in front of a customer and say, “Our product will do that,” and the product actually does that.
So when they use the product, right, it's, it's a great product. And also because our company has different products which work with different pieces of the company, but it's all on the same platform, so it helps break the silos in our customers as well. The finance department, for example, will know exactly what the sales department is doing, who will know what the service department is doing. So when customers use our products smartly, they can really break down the information silos that exist in their own organizations.
[00:07:00] Anne Morriss:
Great. From your perspective, what happens if you don't solve this problem?
[00:07:03] Mark:
So. Two things. One is the business impact, and, then secondly, the employee impact. So the employee impact, I'll talk about it first, is their heads are gonna explode because there's just too much knowledge to fit in there and they feel they—
[00:07:18] Anne Morriss:
That’s not good.
[00:07:18] Mark:
They don't do a good job because when they show up in front of a customer and they ask the question, which they really have no way of knowing the answer, but they don't like that feeling in front of customers, right? So it's tough for the employees. From the business side of the house, because we don't even know the right ways to ask the questions, I feel we leave a lot of money on the table, which if I was someone who really knew banking and I was speaking to a bank, I would be able to expand my deal a lot more and close the deal a lot faster as well.
[00:07:50] Anne Morriss:
And how is this problem impacting you?
[00:07:53] Mark:
So because I manage the team, I want my team to be successful.
[00:07:57] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:07:57] Mark:
I feel, you know, there'll be a lot of burnout and a lot of attrition, and it'll lead to, because we are in a sales org, we all sort of, we have our target numbers. Uh, you know, it'll be, it's getting tougher and tougher to hit those quotas as well.
[00:08:11] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Uh, what's your own job satisfaction today on a zero to 10 scale?
[00:08:16] Mark:
I love it. I love it. Like, I think pre-sales is my calling, right? Like, I, I never knew such a job existed till I got the job, and now I don't wanna do anything else. We get to sort of show up as experts, right? So if everything else was great. The only problem is we are almost a victim of our own success.
[00:08:34] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:08:34] Mark:
Like we've been so successful that we wanna do more and more and more, and the current model that we have won't scale. So I'm sort of exploring if there are other models out there with me.
[00:08:43] Anne Morriss:
Awesome. What are you hoping to get out of this conversation today?
[00:08:48] Mark:
Um, I, I, I don't think we are in a unique situation, like I think other software companies may have gone through these kind of questions or issues before. So I'm interested to see if you've sort of seen this somewhere else and if someone else has sort of found a better answer than what we are doing, uh, I'm, I'm willing to try anything at this point.
[00:09:08] Anne Morriss:
Awesome. I like it. Frances. Any other questions before we dive in?
[00:09:12] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Oh, oh, well, I, I'll just. I'll, um, if I can, I'll put some structure around the problem.
[00:09:17] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, please do.
[00:09:17] Frances Frei:
It’s, Mark. It's not just generalizable to software. It's actually, you're describing a very generalizable context, and how I would characterize it is when the rate of operational complexities increases at a faster pace than our employee sophistication can keep up. There is a widening gap between operational complexity and employee sophistication.
[00:09:42] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:09:43] Frances Frei:
And what do you do then? And I would say that that is true in every industry today, the gap is wider today.
[00:09:51] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:09:52] Frances Frei:
So, um, and what we—
[00:09:53] Anne Morriss:
What, what do you do, professor?
[00:09:54] Frances Frei:
I love it. It’s a, it’s a cliffhanger. So I, I'll say something that won't be surprising, but you have two levers. You can either reduce the operational complexity or enhance the employee sophistication. Right? So we'll just begin there.
I will say that the, if we recommend a sequence: enhance the employee sophistication as much as possible. And then you have only one choice, which is to reduce the operational complexity. And I think that's what you've been doing, right? You've been enhancing the, uh, employee sophistication. I'm sure people are getting trained, but you get trained on all of the regions and all of the industries and all of the verticals, and there's a limit to it.
So that's a very noble effort. So you've done that, and now we have to reduce the operational complexity. Now there's two ways to reduce the operational complexity. We could simplify it or we could partition it.
Simplify it is like, let's say that it's just a very complicated knot, and we figure out how to just do it in a magically simpler way. Or, I can't change the a hundred units of complexity, so I'm gonna give you only 10 access—you only have to deal with 10, and you only have to deal with another 10, and you have to deal with another 10. And that's what you've been talking about with the specialist and generalist part of it.
But there is no silver bullet, although there is a silver bullet coming, but that is, it's the divergence of complexity and sophistication and you have to close that. So let me just start there. Does that resonate? 'Cause I'm seeing you nod, Mark.
[00:11:30] Mark:
No. Yes, that makes complete sense. And I think that we've been exactly to your point, the difference in the slopes is getting wider and wider and wider, right?
[00:11:40] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:11:41] Mark:
So I totally, I totally agree with that.
[00:11:43] Frances Frei:
Yeah. And, and successful companies, it gets wider and wider and wider.
[00:11:48] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:11:48] Frances Frei:
So this is actually a sign of success, and you have, like, lovely aspects of the complexity that are all good signs. Like, if I only sold into one part of the business, it's not, but by very nature business is better if, if Division A takes it and Division B takes it because I get the interaction effect between A and B.
[00:12:08] Mark:
Right.
[00:12:08] Frances Frei:
So you're actually, the more complicated it is, the more helpful it is to the customer.
[00:12:12] Mark:
Yes.
[00:12:12] Frances Frei:
So this isn't a sign of badness. This is a sign of goodness. So, what do we do? And I would say that we have in the last three months, I'm gonna call it, there is a magical thing come around the corner that can help enhance employee sophistication.
[00:12:32] Mark:
Okay? Hahaha.
[00:12:34] Anne Morriss:
Is, is this the magic bullet you were referring to, Frances?
[00:12:36] Frances Frei:
This is the magic bullet, and we didn't have it six months ago, but we've had it for the last three months and we'll have it to more tomorrow than we do today. And this is the magic of AI.
[00:12:46] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:12:47] Frances Frei:
And so when people hear about artificial intelligence and you're like, “Oh my gosh, what is it?” This is it at its most practical way, which is artificial intelligence is actually my personal companion that will help improve my sophistication and we can go into it more. But the reason I get optimistic now is because I don't think your world is gonna become that much less complex. But I am very excited about how much more your sophisticated, your employees are going to be with this amazing companion that didn't exist four months ago of AI.
[00:13:26] Anne Morriss:
And, and Frances, if, if we think about this in a very practical way and we, we go back to Mark's sales moment where there's three people in the room and there's 10 people on Zoom, and it's this awkward—
[00:13:40] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:13:41] Anne Morriss:
Army of humans.
[00:13:42] Frances Frei:
And that was the partitioning the complexity.
[00:13:44] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:13:44] Frances Frei:
So you have an army, if I'm gonna partition the complexity, so no human can handle more than 10 units of complexity and there's a hundred units of complexity. I gotta bring 10 people.
[00:13:52] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:52] Anne Morriss:
Yep. So, uh, imagine that Mark is persuaded theoretically.
[00:13:57] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:13:57] Anne Morriss:
That generative AI can solve the problem. Can you think of an application in that moment, in this room where AI solves the problem?
[00:14:06] Frances Frei:
Oh, I can. So, um, let me first just say what AI does, but essentially what AI allows me to do is any question I have, I can type it in and get an amazing answer. And so real time, if I'm in the room, I probably won't go into the room alone, but two of us will be all we need.
[00:14:27] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:14:27] Frances Frei:
Because one of us is gonna be querying the generative AI. So I could either be talking to the client or I could be doing, asking it, but you will get real time answers that will be better than the 10 people.
And that's the part that's incredible. I ask a question in my language and it gives me an answer that is tuned for my context. Like, I can say, “What's the answer in one sentence?” Like I can ask it for it—
[00:14:55] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:14:55] Frances Frei:
Whatever level of specificity. I have that real time with the client. I can be as sophisticated as the a hundred units of complexity. In fact, it will make it independent of the sophistication. So AI, to me, is an employee sophistication accelerant.
[00:15:16] Anne Morriss:
Mark, what's your reaction?
[00:15:16] Mark:
I love it. And we are starting to see AI tools that we use to, for example, curate real time demos that meet customer needs or to your point, you know, a knowledge base to find answers from that knowledge base.
So we are using it. I think we are a little bit away from doing it, sort of live in front of a customer. Like, we use it right now for prep versus in life scenarios, right?
[00:15:40] Anne Morriss/Frances Frei:
Yeah. Yes.
[00:15:40] Mark:
But as AI grows, as our comfort with AI grows, I, I think that's, that's a possible answer. My question, Frances, is what stops the customer from doing that? Like, do we, do they even need to interact with us any—?
[00:15:53] Anne Morriss:
Well, well, well, sc—I’ll just tell you where my head was going in this conversation too, is if your salespeople are losing control of the complexity of this product, I'm sure that the customers are having a customer version of that experience of, you know, at minimum not knowing the full power of what this m-machine that they've bought can do.
[00:16:16] Mark:
Yeah.
[00:16:16] Anne Morriss:
And then where you were going, Frances, I got excited about the power eventually of bringing AI into the customer experience.
[00:16:25] Frances Frei:
In fact, the answer to the question is, I sure hope I become obsolete.
[00:16:29] Mark:
Mm-hmm.
[00:16:29] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:16:29] Frances Frei:
Imagine how good that would be that you didn't even need me as the middleman for that level, and then you'll just have me for the more sophisticated. So AI at its best is gonna pull forward to Anne's point, and we should be equipping our clients with really educational, like really curated uses of this.
So I would be delighted for the client to see what I'm doing, what the, you know, what the second person on the team is doing with the queries. Delighted. Um, it's like when you go into a bank and the teller, er, is just doing stuff and you don't get to see it, but when they turn it around and you both get to see it, how much more trust inducing and how much more awesome it is.
[00:17:15] Mark:
Right.
[00:17:15] Frances Frei:
Like, well, let's find out what is, oh my gosh.
[00:17:17] Anne Morriss:
Like, and it’s like the open kitchen restaurant.
[00:17:18] Mark:
Yeah.
[00:17:19] Frances Frei:
And then you get to take that openness home. Holy cow. And then the latest knowledge will always be at your fingertips. I mean it's such an empowering thing to do.
[00:17:31] Anne Morriss:
So Mark, where, where's your head going? And I'm curious where your heart is going too, for, for lack of a better word. I’m curious, like emotionally, how, how are you receiving this conversation and this brainstorm?
[00:17:43] Mark:
So there’s, there’s the intellectual part of me which sort of says, “This makes complete sense,” right? And then there's the emotional part of me, which sort of says, “Sales is also a, a human thing,” right? And I, I don't know if at some point, maybe the machine can replace, I don't know, 90%. I don't, I don't know what that magic number is, but there would be some human element, some trust building element to it as well, right? So…
[00:18:06] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yes. So I, and I don't think it takes away the human, what it does is it takes away the humans for the rudimentary questions.
[00:18:14] Mark:
Right? Right.
[00:18:14] Frances Frei:
So that the humans are only doing the value added, and the value added, there's a hygiene factor of value added that gets raised higher and higher and higher. So I'm gonna get to ask you deeper questions, which by the way, is gonna make you be able to sell more breadth.
[00:18:32] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, I mean, we think about the brain simply as just bandwidth. All of that bandwidth that was going towards trying to retain information is now freed up to focus on what does my customer need? How? How does my customer's business work? How might this tool accelerate the performance of this other person's organization? And that's where you have the kind of, like, rocket ship growth that takes this company to the next level when you can really invest that bandwidth into solving problems, not retaining information.
[00:19:04] Mark:
I love it. I love it. And so our company is investing a lot around building AI into the products that we sell.
[00:19:11] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:19:11] Mark:
Uh, I, I, I think going forward, there'll be a lot of investment in AI on just how we sell those things and how do the employees do stuff as well.
[00:19:21] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:19:21] Mark:
Right? Which.
[00:19:21] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yes.
[00:19:23] Anne Morriss:
Yes. And you're sparking another thought for me that I just wanna say out loud and make discussable: part of my goal for this conversation today, Mark, is that you walk away in a productive, can-do problem solving stance.
[00:19:41] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:19:42] Anne Morriss:
Which we see far less frequently in the sales function. So they're parts of the business that have full cultural and job description license to experiment, to try things on—
[00:19:56] Mark:
Right.
[00:19:56] Anne Morriss:
To fail, to learn from that failure. Where you are right now, and then even contemplating like the integration of these kinds of tools. This is gonna be a beautiful iterative journey that, as Frances said, is a sign the organization is in a really exciting place. Like this is a very high quality problem that you need to solve, one of the opportunities you have as a leader is to emotionally set that tone for your team. Yeah. They're salespeople. They're used to being given a quota and a script.
[00:20:29] Mark:
Right.
[00:20:29] Anne Morriss:
You know, and clear rules for how to get the job done. And where you are right now as a business is in a place where you're figuring out, you're writing those new rules. You’re throwing out the script, you're bringing in new tool—and that's a really different crouch than this function is used to.
I think a really important part of your job right now is to signal that that's okay, and, you know, this is a problem that you are going to figure out together as a team, and you're gonna get smarter tomorrow than you are today by being really thoughtful about the learning.
[00:21:03] Mark:
I love it. I love it. And I think, and exactly to your point, doing that with our team. But as we are hiring, because we are hiring a lot, this becomes part of my sort of evaluation criteria to see if this, the person who's coming in is able to, you know, embrace this, this chaos, if I may call it that, and find the joy in this chaos and, you know, right?
[00:21:25] Anne Morriss:
Yes. Joy. That’s, I love that you just used that word.
[00:21:27] Frances Frei:
Mark. Yeah. Yeah. In, in fact, you know, if, if before you would hire people that could remember a lot of things—
[00:21:33] Mark:
Yeah.
[00:21:33] Frances Frei:
Right, now you're gonna hire people that like to solve puzzles.
[00:21:37] Mark:
Yeah. Yeah. Are there any, are there any red flags? Like are there any things that I should be sort of watching out for as I'm doing this? Mm-Hmm.
[00:21:45] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yes. Yes. So, one thing is that the way AI works is that you have a, a knowledge base.
[00:21:54] Mark:
Right.
[00:21:54] Frances Frei:
And so you put into it your knowledge base. You know, this is how the product works or whatever it is. When people are gonna query it, you wanna make sure it doesn't hallucinate. So you wanna say, “I know the answer. I don't know the answer.” 'Cause salespeople need that.
[00:22:08] Mark:
Right.
[00:22:09] Frances Frei:
Like nobody's business. And you can say to it, “Please do not hallucinate.” Like you can have that as one of the things. So that's the first thing. But the second thing is you want someone every single day to be looking at the queries that happened and what the answers were, and assessing are those the answers we want to give to those queries.
And if not, you get to what we call tune the AI so that it will give the answers we want, but you wouldn't know how to tune it in the beginning. You only know how to tune it by looking at it. So you have to maintain this on a daily basis of looking at what are the questions and what are the answers it's providing.
And if I don't like the answer it's providing, I upload an answer, and then automatically, every single time anybody ever asks that question again, they get that answer to it.
[00:22:57] Mark:
Makes, makes complete—
[00:22:58] Anne Morriss:
And I have a totally different answer.
[00:23:00] Frances Frei:
Yes. What’s my poet wife's, uh, answer to this q—to this question. I'm very curious.
[00:23:06] Anne Morriss:
Frances is very operational. Um, um, I really want you to be the emotional leader of this team right now, Mark, as this is a moment when there's frustration, there's probably a fair amount of anxiety. I think sales is the life blood of so many organizations. I have so much respect for it as a function, as a lifestyle choice.
Part of the payoff, and sometimes this is quite literal, is that you have a lot of clarity around how you are performing.
[00:23:36] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:23:37] Anne Morriss:
And this is a moment right now where it's not a clear one-to-one relationship where I try harder, I do my job right, and I get this particular return. So that can be a destabilizing shift.
[00:23:53] Mark:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:23:53] Anne Morriss:
And I want you to own it. See it, make it discussable. So this isn't something that's happening to them. This is a solution that they are co-producing as the organization.
[00:24:05] Mark:
There's so, and there's so much anxiety sometimes around, “I'm gonna lose my job, right? Am I training my replacement?”
[00:24:12] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:24:12] Mark:
Am I gonna be no longer required? And that, that'll be the core sort of reaction to some of these changes.
[00:24:18] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:24:19] Mark:
How do I navigate that?
[00:24:21] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, I think you weighed in very directly and you narrate, you say out loud the assumptions you're making.
[00:24:29] Mark:
Right.
[00:24:30] Anne Morriss:
Which is that this is about, this is not about replacing anyone on this team. This is about creating the conditions where you can hit it out of the park.
[00:24:38] Mark:
Right.
[00:24:38] Anne Morriss:
Build an incredible career, get rewarded for it. That is the entire objective of this exercise.
[00:24:45] Frances Frei:
The entire objective.
[00:24:46] Mark:
Right. Right.
[00:24:46] Frances Frei:
And we are going to inflate your brain with this.
[00:24:52] Mark:
Yeah.
[00:24:52] Anne Morriss:
And we're gonna make you better. Like you were so articulate about that frustration.
[00:24:56] Frances Frei:
That frustration.
[00:24:57] Anne Morriss:
The fact that they're standing in front of their customers and they don't know the answer. And you're, you're talking about creating conditions where they have a beautiful answer to every single question that—
[00:25:07] Frances Frei:
Imagine that.
[00:25:07] Anne Morriss:
—anyone on the planet could be asking them about this product because the company has given them the tool to stand up at the front of the room and be the man and the, the woman in that room and crush it.
[00:25:21] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:25:21] Anne Morriss:
And the parts of their job that were most painful, they no longer have to worry about.
[00:25:26] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:25:26] Anne Morriss:
Now their job is to go in that room and connect with the customer and solve that customer's problem.
[00:25:31] Mark:
I'm pretty excited about this actually, to be honest with you.
[00:25:35] Anne Morriss:
I was gonna ask you, how are you feeling now compared to when we started this conversation?
[00:25:38] Mark:
I, I see light at the end of the—
[00:25:42] Anne Morriss:
Yes!
[00:25:42] Frances Frei:
That's what we want.
[00:25:44] Mark:
Yeah. So it’s, but you know. It, it will be a journey, right? Like it's not gonna be a straight line. It's going to have twists and turns. And I think, uh, um, like the, the two pieces, like, Frances, the operational piece and then, and the emotional piece, I think the magic will be weaving these two things together, right? And—
[00:26:03] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:26:04] Mark:
Sort of losing sight of one in, you know, when you're sort of doing the other, so.
[00:26:08] Frances Frei:
Mark you just described our marriage.
[00:26:14] Anne Morriss:
But only Frances can be replaced by AI.
[00:26:19] Frances Frei:
I can be augmented, not replaced.
[00:26:31] Anne Morriss:
Frances, let me ask just a super direct question on this. For those of us who aren't running a technical sales team—
[00:26:36] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yes.
[00:26:36] Anne Morriss:
Which is a very specific application of these questions, what's the lesson? From this conversation, what's the lesson from Mark's experience that, that you think listeners can take away?
[00:26:47] Frances Frei:
Yeah, so I think the, when you are in an environment where things are getting more complicated and I can't keep up with it.
[00:26:54] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:26:54] Frances Frei:
You have two choices. You either increase the sophistication and that can happen in two ways. I can either training and development, or honestly, the more painful one is I swap out the people.
[00:27:08] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:27:08] Frances Frei:
And I, I don't like that. Um, the training and development has a new really dear friend.
[00:27:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:27:16] Frances Frei:
And that's AI. And that will help me keep the people and make them more sophisticated.
[00:27:22] Anne Morriss:
And of course, the lesson I will underline is the importance of being an emotional leader of your team and—
[00:27:30] Frances Frei:
I loved that part.
[00:27:30] Anne Morriss:
—in organizations of, uh, in, in moments of, of dynamism and, and fast moving change
[00:27:35] Frances Frei:
Because in moments of dynamism and fast moving change, it's scary. And fear is an emotion and we need emotional leaders to do that. And so the irony that in the greatest technological pace of technology advancement, what do we need most? Emotional leaders. It's so true and so counterintuitive.
[00:27:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Daniel Goleman of emotional intelligence fame calls it primal leadership. And you, when you are in that leadership position, you have a broadcast function on everything that you're feeling. So your own emotions are a really powerful lever. And that, and that's what I think I'm proudest about of this conversation is you could see his emotional arc.
[00:28:16] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:28:16] Anne Morriss:
And by the time we were at the end of it, I wanted to follow that guy down the path.
[00:28:20] Frances Frei:
Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:21] Anne Morriss:
Um, because he had the confidence and curiosity and empathy to, to get the job done.
[00:28:30] Frances Frei:
Thanks for listening everyone. If you wanna figure out your workplace problem together, please send us a message. We would love to have you on the show. Email [email protected]. Call 234-FIXABLE. That’s 234-349-2253. You can also text us. You can text us a voice memo. Honestly, any way you wanna communicate. We are delighted to do it. We're so grateful to everyone who has written, called, texted. We couldn't make the show without you.
[00:29:04] Anne Morriss:
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris.
[00:29:09] Frances Frei:
And me Frances Frei.
[00:29:12] Anne Morriss:
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, and Roxanne Hai Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.
[00:29:26] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.
[00:29:34] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review. It really helps us make a great show.