Change Management and AI

OK, so there's a lot of talk at the moment about AI tools and how they are going to erase creativity and people-centred work.

I've been curious about what potential they have for improving my day to day work and helping me save precious time (I own my own company and run a team of professionals working for lots of different clients, as well as having a busy home life so any time saving and efficiency is appreciated!) - plus I want to know what the impact on knowledge work like mine is likely to be.

So here's my current top AI tools for change:

Chat GPT (that one everyone is talking about!)

This is the big one taking up all oxygen and for good reason. This tool can generate half decent copy on most topics in a short amount of time. Feed it your requirements and it will come out with some fairly basic content you can use for most basic communications.

Where it gets really useful though is in how it learns. The more you use this tool the better it gets to know what you do and who you are. So it can start to weave messages together in more meaningful ways.

But my favourite ways to use this tool for change are not necessarily in content generation at all.

Try these for the best outcomes for your change work:

Ask Chat GPT to trouble shoot or provide advice about your existing artefacts or help to enhance documents that your created with the tool:

• e.g. I created an FAQ for a group moving into a building and got Chat GPT to review it and asked if there was anything else this group might need to know. It came up with a dozen other points based on similar documents it located. Four of them were relevant and helped improve the quality of points I'd already included.

Ask Chat GPT to create stories to engage your audience. We know storytelling is one of the most compelling ways to engage an audience and to ensure they retain the information you've conveyed. Chat GPT can suggest and refine stories about aspects of your change:

• e.g. I used the same FAQs from the previous point to ask Chat GPT to take up the role of storyteller. My prompt asked the tool to act as a storyteller and create a compelling story to communicate this information and engage the audience.

Ask Chat GPT to play devil's advocate/researcher for your change.

• e.g I briefly outlined the details of the change I was managing and asked the tool to outline all the reasons why this may fail / responses we might expect / relevant research that could help our planning. The tool came up with lots of helpful (and some unhelpful) information which verified what I already knew from conversations, and highlighted a research doc which I hadn't read in a while about wayfinding (interesting!). Is AI ever going to be a Change Management expert? Hmm I don't think so!

WordTune (Spices!!!)

I am using this to help me create communications quickly and efficiently for my own delivery work.

With the new Spices feature I can add analogies, statistics, facts, definitions, quotes, even jokes - all at the push of a button.

How to use this for change?

Want to add a relevant quote to a Leader message to staff? Click Add Spice "Quote" and a quote related to your content will be suggested. Don't like it? You can click through to another, or another.

How about adding an analogy to make a complex message more accessible? Again, done with just a click. Here's a sample from my current project:

The building will be ready to move into by April or May, depending on the weather. Your leadership throughout this period will be crucial and we will be meeting regularly to share information and plan how we will lead our teams through the change.

Our move will be staged over a period of days/weeks to allow operations to continue and services to be uninterrupted.

Then ask Word Tune Spices to give me an analogy to illustrate this point. It adds the following text:

The move is akin to a sophisticated chess game, with each move carefully planned to ensure we stay one step ahead of any problems that may arise along the way. Each stage will be calculated to ensure our teams are well-prepared and that services are uninterrupted.

I can accept that text or ask it to generate a variety of other analogies.

A suggested inspiration quote here from WordTune is: As Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Good leaders inspire people to have confidence in their leader. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.”

Whether I choose to use this content or not, it's a quick and easy way for me to access some colour and life when I'm writing a lot of materials for multiple change programs /clients.

So far we are talking FREE solutions that you can use to help you generate content, review materials and get other help and support.

Some other tools I'm testing at the moment include:

Beautiful.ai - presentations on brand for $12 USD a month

Jasper.ai - you can claim 10,000 words for free to test this content generation tool out

useMotion.io - $19USD a month get your calendar managed for you (I'm not sure I have this level of trust!)

So what do you think so far?

My biggest takeaways so far:

• Stuff written by AI is pretty ok. It's not amazing but it would pass most corporate environments without a second glance. It would certainly need some training and learning to gain a specific tone. I feel like writing in general isn't endangered just yet. This stuff still needs review, nuance, heart, love. The human stuff.

• You need to know what to plug in to get something decent out. Chuck in the basics and you'll get the basics out. And that's fine. Want something better - do better with what you provide (oh wait - I feel like that's just a motto for life!!)

• Use this stuff for where you:

  • want to grab a quote but don't want to lose an hour on a site searching for the right one

  • you want another set of eyes to read you FAQs but no one is available

  • you want to check if there's something you might have missed and you don't have an hour to review it.

Save yourself time and use a decent resource. Is it perfect? No. Will it do the job? Heck kind of!

My next thoughts?

The people work we do is so incredibly tailored to the individuals within any given team, across any given organisation, that I'm not worried a computer will learn to do that stuff better than we can. But I fully intend to save every minute I can on the other bits and bobs so I can spend those minutes of the people of the organisation and the work that's needed there.

Let me know how you are using this stuff in your day to day and I'll keep you up to date on my learning. As for Change Management and AI - I think there's a time saving factor we can take advantage of today and lots to learn for tomorrow.