Is AI your next hire? | Fixable

This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. With WISE, you can send, spend and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps, plus WISE won't add hidden fees. Whether you're spending pounds in London or sending corona to Prague, you know you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Join the 15 million customers who choose WISE. Download the WISE app or visit WISE.com, tease and seize supply. A random influencer, a friend who read something somewhere, your doctor, it can be hard to know where to get trusted health information. TED Health is a podcast that will help you focus on the stuff that you actually need to know to live your healthiest life. I'm Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, a practicing internist, and I share weekly TED Talks from certified health experts that break down the questions you're always getting different answers to. Get the science-backed ideas for a healthier you with TED Health, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, TED Tech listeners! What problem are you dealing with at work right now? And, might it be AI related? As we talk about on this show, AI is rapidly improving and encroaching into all aspects of our lives. Some of us might welcome AI as a tool to reduce complexity at work, but others might be wary of its role in the office. This week, we're sharing an episode of Fixable, another TED podcast. Fixable offers indispensable advice for people up and down the leadership ladder, from entry-level employees to top CEOs and everyone in between. You can find Fixable wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to send in your own workplace problem for personalized advice, you can email the show at [email protected]. Now on to the episode. 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. Alright, 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 Francis, talk to us. Tell us where your mind is on this AI revolution right now. So 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 chat GPT and I can ask it questions. So if I can't get to you, I can ask it questions and it will simulate your voice. And I'm going to be honest, you're better than it most hours of the day. But if I could go to the chat GPT or you after 4pm, I'm going to the chat GPT. Yeah, this whole morning brain is strange. In the morning goes away. You dominate AI in the morning, but I'm not sure you dominate AI after 4pm. I think you're generous with 4. Wow, I think this is going to improve our marriage. I'm Ann Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach. And I'm Francis Fry. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School and I'm Ann's wife. 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. Let's listen to today's caller. Hey Ann, hey Francis. Thank you for listening. My name is 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're 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. This reminds me of the curse of winning. We usually think of the blessing of winning, but when you get really good and you get into that flywheel of really good, more and more and more things, and you're poor employees. Yeah, to absorb the pain. 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. A random influencer, a friend who read something somewhere, your doctor, it can be hard to know where to get trusted health information. TED Health is a podcast that will help you focus on the stuff that you actually need to know to live your healthiest life. I'm Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter, a practicing internist, and I share weekly TED Talks from certified health experts that break down the questions you're always getting different answers to. Get the science-backed ideas for a healthier you with TED Health, wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, welcome to Fixable. Thank you. Excited to be here. So 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? 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. Got it. With our sales counterpart, but we are responsible for the technical aspects of the sale. Got it. And so how is this tension showing up in practical terms? Yeah, so I'll give you an example. So 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 U.S. is divided into 20 regions, and we have one person in each region, but that one person is responsible for all the product skews that we sell. So there are around 50 product skews that this one person is responsible for, and it could be across different industries. 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 there's so much width, it's impossible to play that role efficiently. And then the regional logic is that these meetings are live, so you want someone local who can show up for the meeting. 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. 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? Yeah, so we tried sort of saying, instead of this one person knowing everything which is impossible, let's have specialists 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 our skews, 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 you have a specialist in each of those products, and suddenly that call has 20 people from our company showing up, which again, you know, is not efficient. 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? Because 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 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. We 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. Great. From your perspective, what happens if you don't solve this problem? 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 going to explode because there's just too much knowledge to fit in there, and they feel 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. And how is this problem impacting you? So because I manage the team, I want my team to be successful. I feel there'll be a lot of burnout and a lot of attrition. And it will lead to, because we are in a sales org, we have our target numbers, it's getting tougher and tougher to hit those quotas as well. Yeah. What's your own job satisfaction today on a zero to 10 scale? I love it. I love it. I think pre-sales is my calling, right? I never knew such a job existed until I got the job, and now I don't want to do anything else. We get to show up as experts, right? So if everything else was great, the only problem is we're almost a victim of our own success. We've been so successful that we want to 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 which may. Awesome. What are you hoping to get out of this conversation today? I don't think we're in a unique situation. 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 the somewhere else. And if someone else has sort of found a better answer than what we're doing, I'm willing to try anything at this point. Awesome. I like it. Frances, any other questions before we dive in? Oh, well, I'll just, I'll, if I can, I'll put some structure around the problem. 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. And what do you do then? And I would say that that is true in every industry today. The gap is wider today. So what do you do? I love it. It's a cliffhanger. So 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 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 hundred units of complexity. So I'm going to 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 because I'm seeing you nod, Mark? No, yes, that makes complete sense. And I think that we've been exactly to your point that difference in the slopes is getting wider and wider and wider, right? Yes. So I totally, I totally agree with that. Yeah. And successful companies, it gets wider and wider and wider. 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 division A takes it and division B takes it because I get the interaction effect between A and B. So you're actually, the more complicated it is, the more helpful it is to the customer. 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 going to call it, there is a magical thing come around the corner that can help enhance employee sophistication. Okay. Is this the magic bullet you were referring to? This is the magic bullet. We didn't have it six months ago, but we've had it for the last three months and we'll have it more tomorrow than we do today. And this is the magic of AI. 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 going to become that much less complex. But I am very excited about how much more sophisticated your employees are going to be with this amazing companion that didn't exist four months ago of AI. And Francis, if we think about this in a very practical way, and 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 army of humans. And that was the partitioning the complexity. So you have an army, if I'm going to partition the complexity, so no human can handle more than 10 units of complexity and there's 100 units of complexity, I got to bring 10 people. So imagine that Mark is persuaded theoretically that generative AI can solve the problem. Can you think of an application in that moment in this room where AI solves the problem? Oh, I can. So 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. Because one of us is going to 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 whatever level of specificity. I have that real time with the client. I can be as sophisticated as the hundred units of complexity. In fact, it will make it independent of the sophistication. So AI to me is an employee sophistication accelerant. Mark, what's your reaction? I love it. And we are starting to see AI tools that we use to, for example, curate real time demos that need 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 live scenarios, right? But as AI grows, as our comfort with AI grows, I think that's a possible answer. My question, Francis, is what stops the customer from doing that? Like do they even need to interact with us? Well, 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. You know, at minimum not knowing the full power of what this machine that they've bought can do. And then where you were going, Francis, I got excited about the power, eventually, of bringing AI into the customer experience. In fact, the answer to the question is, I sure hope I become obsolete. 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 going to pull forward to Ann'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 second person on the team is doing with the queries. Delighted. It's like when you go into a bank and the teller 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. Like, well, let's find out what is like, oh my gosh, the open kitchen restaurant. 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. So Mark, where's your head going? And I'm curious where your heart is going to for lack of a better word. I'm kidding. Like emotionally, how are you receiving this conversation and this brainstorm? So 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 human thing, right? And I don't know if at some point maybe the machine can replace, I don't know, 90%. 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? Yes. And I don't think it takes away the human. What it does is it takes away the humans for the rudimentary questions 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 going to get to ask you deeper questions which, by the way, is going to make you be able to sell more breadth. 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 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. I love it. I love it. And so our company is investing a lot around building AI into the products that we sell. Yes. 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, right? Yes. Yes. And you're sparking another thought for me that I just want to 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, which we see far less frequently in the sales function. So there are parts of the business that have full cultural and job description license to experiment, to try things on, 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 going to be a beautiful, iterative journey that, as Francis 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 usually being given a quota and a script, 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 tools. 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 going to get smarter tomorrow than you are today by being really thoughtful about the learning. I love it. I love it. 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 there's the person who's coming in is able to, you know, embrace this chaos. If I recall it that and find the joy in this chaos and, you know, joy. That's I love that you just use that word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, you know, if before you would hire people that could remember a lot of things. Now you're going to hire people that like to solve puzzles. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any, are there any red flags? Like, are there any things that I should be sort of watching out for? Yes. As I'm doing this? Yes. Yes. So one thing is that the way AI works is that you have a knowledge base. And so you put into it your knowledge base, you know, this is how the product works or whatever it is. When people are going to query it, you want to make sure it doesn't hallucinate. You want to say, I know the answer. I don't know the answer because salespeople need that 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 answers providing, I upload an answer and then automatically every single time anybody ever asks that question again, they get that answer to it. And I have a totally different answer. What's my poet-white answer to this question? I'm very curious. It's very operational. I really want you to be the emotional leader of this team right now, Mark. This is a moment when there's frustration. There's probably a fair amount of anxiety. I think sales is the lifeblood 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. 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. 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. There's so much anxiety sometimes around, I'm going to lose my job, right? Am I training my replacement? Am I going to be no longer required? And that would be the core sort of reaction to some of these changes. How do I navigate that? Yeah, I think you weighed in very directly, and you narrate, you say out loud the assumptions you're making, which is that this is not about replacing anyone on this team. This is about creating the conditions where you can hit it out of the park, build an incredible career, get rewarded for it. That is the entire objective of this exercise. And we are going to inflate your brain with this. And we're going to make you better. You were so articulate about that frustration, that frustration, the fact that they're standing in front of their customers and they don't know the answer. And you're talking about creating conditions where they have a beautiful answer to every single question that 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 woman in that room and crush it. And the parts of their job that were most painful, they no longer have to worry about. Now their job is to go in that room and connect with the customer and solve that customer's problem. I'm pretty excited about this, actually, to be honest with you. I was going to ask you, how are you feeling now compared to when we started this conversation? I see light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, that's what we want. But it will be a journey, right? It's not going to be a straight line, it's going to have twists and turns. And I think the two pieces, like Francis, the operational piece and the emotional piece, I think the magic will be weaving these two things together, right? And not sort of losing sight of one when you're sort of doing the other. Mark, you just described our marriage. But only Francis can be replaced by IAI. I can be augmented, not replaced. This is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. With WISE, you can send, spend and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Plus, WISE won't add hidden fees. Whether you're spending pounds in London or sending corona to Prague, you know you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Join the 15 million customers who choose WISE. Download the WISE app or visit WISE.com. Tease and see supply. Elon Musk, Doge and Donald Trump are weaving a web of technological corruption. Suddenly, the eyes of the industry are open to things that had been obvious to lots of other people for months. Isn't it a conflict of interest that the president of the United States who regulates crypto has his own coin? I'm Lizzie O'Leary, the host of What Next TBD, Slate's podcast about tech, power and the future. What Next TBD covers the latest on how Silicon Valley is changing our government and our lives. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Francis, let me ask just a super direct question on this. For those of us who aren't running a technical sales team, 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 you think listeners can take away? Yeah, so I think that when you're in an environment where things are getting more complicated and I can't keep up with it, 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. Right. And I don't like that. The training and development has a new really dear friend. And that's AI and that will help me keep the people and make them more sophisticated. And of course, the lesson I will underline is the importance of being an emotional leader of your team. I loved that in organizations, in moments of dynamism and fast-moving change. 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 technological advancement, what do we need most? Emotional leaders. It's so true and so counterintuitive. Yeah, Daniel Gorman of Emotional Intelligence fame calls it primal leadership. And 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's what I think I'm proudest about of this conversation is you could see his emotional arc. And by the time we were at the end of it, I wanted to follow that guy down the path. Because he had the confidence and curiosity and empathy to get the job done. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you want to 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 want to communicate, we're delighted to do it. We're so grateful to everyone who has written, called, texted. We couldn't make the show without you. Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Ann Morris. And me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Ban Ban Chang, Michelle Quint, Corey Hagem, Alejandra Salazar, and Roxanne High-Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at StoryYard. If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And tell a friend to check us out. And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review, it really helps us make a great show. What do you do? Proteins are the workhorse of cells. They are like a toolbox for cells to do whatever they have to do. They have been perfected by nature to do what they do now. But when it comes to problems that are important for humankind, like plastic contamination, carbon dioxide problems in health, we want to make them better. That was Ted Fellow and protein engineer Cesar Ramirez Sarmiento. And he's on a mission to take these fundamental biological building blocks and redesign them to tackle some of humanity's biggest challenges, like climate change and disease. We just don't have a thousand years to wait for it. We have to do it now. And that's where the use of artificial intelligence comes in. Find out more from Ted Fellow's Cesar Ramirez Sarmiento on our Fellow Fridays series only on TED Talks Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. [BLANK_AUDIO]