Speeding up your team’s learning process is great. It’s like they have a fast forward button.

“Today we’re on chapter one, and… oh you finished the book!”

Accelerate How Fast Your Team Learns

• Why Read: 

  • The Double Demonstration technique can help startup founders accelerate their team's learning and growth by comparing work products and exposing high-performance strategies.

• Featuring:

  • Admired Leadership (@AdmiredLeaders), Professional Training and Coaching

• Link: 

  • “The Teaching Power of a Double Demonstration”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Understanding the Benefits of Allowing Team Members to Figure Things Out:

  • Point: Giving team members too much direction or process can hinder their development.

  • "Leaders intuitively know that giving team members too much direction or process can stunt their development. People learn best and make more strides when they must figure out on their own how to succeed with a given task or deliverable."

• Providing a Safe Environment for Learning and Growth:

  • Point: Create a safety net of support where learning is the primary objective and mistakes are not viewed negatively.

  • "On occasion, good leaders give team members nothing more than a desired outcome, goal, or strategy and ask them to perform or execute within a safety net of support. When learning is the primary objective and mistakes aren't viewed negatively, team members take risks, experiment, and gain the confidence to learn and grow."

• Employing the Double Demonstration Technique:

  • Point: Use the Double Demonstration approach to turbo-charge learning by comparing independent work products.

  • "Another approach to take to advance learning is sometimes called a Double Demonstration. This is when leaders ask a team member to execute on a task or assignment without much direction and to keep their end product or solution to themselves for a time. Then the leader tackles the same task or assignment and produces an independent deliverable or outcome. The two parties then compare the work products and discuss why and how they produced what they did."

• Gaining Insight Through Contrast and Articulation:

  • Point: Explore the contrast of strategy, tactics, and approach to gain valuable insights.

  • "This Double Demonstration often turbo-charges learning in a way nothing else can. Exploring the contrast of strategy, tactics, and approach opens eyes and minds. Both parties usually gain incredible insight by articulating the assumptions relied upon and the choices made."

• Overcoming Barriers to High Performance:

  • Point: Help team members understand what has been holding them back in creating better outcomes.

  • "It is not uncommon for a team member to finally understand what has been holding them back in creating better outcomes. They learn quickly from examining the differences and similarities apparent in the Double Demonstration."

• Demonstrating High Performance Through Skill:

  • Point: Leaders with talent, skill, and self-confidence should consider using the Double Demonstration approach.

  • "By definition, high performance is a demonstration of skill. When a more experienced leader is willing to humbly compare and contrast their skill to those of others, they show them a path forward that otherwise remains hidden from view. Exposing the assumptions, choices, and strategies of high performance is a lens into learning like none other."

AI First Customer Service

Why Read: ( 8-10 minutes )

• AI is revolutionizing customer service, and startup founders must understand its potential to deliver exceptional experiences, boost satisfaction, and gain a competitive edge.

Featuring:

• Paul Adams (@Padday), Chief Product Officer at Intercom

Link: 

• Paul Adams on AI-first Customer Service”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• The Transformative Impact of AI on Society

  • Point: AI is set to reshape society in significant ways, particularly in the field of customer service.

  • "AI is finally, really, actually here, and it's going to reshape society in ways I doubt we can imagine. It's clear that some areas of the economy are already primed for epic levels of disruption, and customer service is one of these. AI will deliver the holy grail of customer service. Instant, consistent, excellent support for every single customer, 24/7."

• The Capabilities of AI in Customer Service

  • Point: AI excels at tasks typically performed by customer service agents, such as retrieving information, analyzing data, generating insights, answering questions, and troubleshooting.

  • "AI can already do things that many knowledge workers can do. It's really good at doing things like retrieving information, analyzing information, generating insights, answering customer questions, pulling data from the customer record, conversing back and forth, troubleshooting, disambiguating questions… It can do this conversationally, and it can do it incredibly accurately already."

• The Three Components of AI-First Customer Service

  • Point: AI-first customer service consists of three essential components: an AI agent for customers, an AI Copilot for human support teams, and an AI analyst for managers and leaders.

  • "If you want to do AI-first customer service, you must have the three components. You must have the AI agent for customers, you must have the AI Copilot for your human support team, and you must have the AI analyst and AI insights for leaders and managers. You must have all three components to properly do AI-first customer service."

• The Potential for AI to Enhance Emotional Communication

  • Point: While AI excels at transactional communication, it has the potential to move towards emotional communication in the future.

  • "AI is certainly moving along this spectrum very fast, and it's getting pretty close up here. There are lots of companies building in this space of emotionally tuned-in AI, and I think it's possible. A lot of people are looking at the movie Her as being prescient. It's emotional communication."

• The Inevitability of AI-First Customer Service

  • Point: The adoption of AI-first customer service is inevitable, and businesses that embrace it will see significant improvements in customer satisfaction and experience.

  • "I think it's inevitable that all businesses are going to go AI-first, and that all customer service teams will be AI-first. It's just a matter of time. What matters most is that customers of these businesses are getting great experiences. That's what all this boils down to. I would highly encourage customer service leaders everywhere to get into this world of AI-first and start trying it. I think you'll find when you try it that the results are far better than you ever could have expected, and the technology is getting better faster than you ever could have hoped for."

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