In 2022, before AI Front Desk, I had no idea what AI really was. Then I went to MAICON, the Marketing AI Conference, and it blew my mind. All I could think about was how AI was going to change everything about work.
Our leadership brought it all back and made an AI adoption program. It included a weekly book club on the conference hosts' book and talks from the authors. Ten months later, everyone received a ChatGPT subscription and we started an AI Slack channel.
Out of about 30 people, three of us really took off with it. We built things that saved real human time and shared those things with everyone else. Then almost nobody else used them. That feeling sucked because of the hype and time invested.
I figured we ran the program wrong. As I now know, that was not the case.
What our program did was find the people who were obsessed with solving problems using the newest tool available. It was not just using AI to write ad copy or help with emails. Those of us who got hooked on AI were the ones who started taking pictures of their fridge and pantry and asking ChatGPT what we could make for dinner.
The program worked. It found us. It just never gave us room in the workday to actually build anything.
I was encouraged to use AI in that role, but I was spending my days in Zoom meetings, and nothing on my to-do list said, "Go try making things with AI that might not work."
The thing I did build, I built at night. Building things at night works, and it is also why the program only ever surfaced a few of us. It is fine if you are already the person who will do it at 11 PM. Most people are not, and they do not need to be.
At AI Front Desk, work that might have been a nighttime project before is a normal thing to be doing on a Thursday.
So what are you supposed to do? Getting people excited finds you the person, but does not get you the thing. You have to give that person room in their week to go build something.
Who's your person, and what are you willing to take off their plate?
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The stories worth carrying into next week.
Practical signals about what it takes to turn AI interest into useful work.
Our take: You cannot buy your way past this. The biggest training program in the industry still ended up counting logins, which is what you do when the excitement did not take. Skip the mandate and go find the person on your team who is already doing it.
Our take: People hide the time they save because finishing early usually just earns them more work. If you free somebody up to build something, tell them the time is theirs to keep. Say it out loud, or they will spend it looking busy.
Our take: If your AI is not getting you the output you need, give it more context, another file, or start a new chat. Whatever it takes, just keep prompting. Each rep makes the next one a little better. Also, 11 hours is a decent average. How many hours are you saving right now?
Our take: Two hours is the smallest version of this that works, and it is cheap enough that nobody needs to approve a budget for it. Pick the person, put the time on the calendar, and tell their manager it is protected.
We put up a short guide on how to spot the person instead of recruiting one, name the specific thing you are removing rather than telling them to find time, say out loud that the time is theirs, and ask the right question at 30 days.
It ends with a message you can copy and send to the person today.
That's it for today. See you soon.
Brian, Murphy, John, Beth, and Jake, some of the humans behind AI Front Desk.