AI is changing the world (“Wow, what an astute observation, Dave.”). The capabilities of the tools are evolving very quickly, our capabilities in using these tools are evolving much less quickly. One of the biggest mistakes I see sellers and marketers making is depending on AI for answers.
“AI does not answer questions…..”*
Some of you are saying, “Dave, you are crazy, I go to ChatGPT, Gemini, Bard everyday and pose questions. And it provides tremendous insight.”
Let me dive into this. AI shares information and knowledge in ways that have been unimaginable. It reduces what may have taken hours or even days to seconds. It has a monstrous reach for information and capability for summarizing it. But it doesn’t answer questions.
To explain this, let me go back in history.
There were a few times in my selling career, I’d have to do deep research to begin to understand trends, challenges and issues facing my customers. I’d seek information I could use in talking to them about change. A few times, I’d go to the New York Public Library on 5th and 42nd. I’d go to the reference section, looking for all sorts of economic data, analyses, and other information. I’d go to the periodicals room to look at microfiche for back issues of trade magazines, research magazines, and newspapers–searching for specific data about my customers or about specific issues. It would take hours, I’d get a few important points that I could leverage with my customers.
Another time, I drove an hour outside NYC to spend an afternoon with one of our research scientists. I wanted to learn about the impact of declining response time on productivity (I was trying to sell a massive computer system to the credit card processing operations of my customer). We talked for hours about how a 0.1 second change in response time impacted productivity. I left with 100’s of pages from research journals going into all aspects of the problem. It took hours of reading and research to develop premises to discuss with the customer. But, hopefully, it would be worth it, it would mean a $60M order.
Fast forward to the 90’s and the rise of Google and other search engines. It far extended my reach–I could get information and insights from all over the world. For example, I just queried, “What are the most critical issues driving business in 2024?” In 0.41 seconds, I got 2,450,000,000 results. I started doom scrolling, clicking on a few articles that seem to present some interesting insights and research. While it provided me much more information, I could take hours searching for the information most useful to me.
And today we have tools like ChatGPT. Posing the same question, I get a quick high level summary of the key issues in Technological Advancements and Digital Transformation; Environmental Sustainability and Social Responsibility; Evolving Workspaces and Workforce Dynamics. I was surprised it didn’t present Economic Disruption and Global Turbulence, so I did a few more prompts to understand that. But it took me about 5 minutes to get a 100,000 foot view of the issues. I could have spent more time drilling down into specifics and testing premises, but it profoundly reduced my time in understanding issues. (And I crossed my fingers that it wasn’t inventing things.)
And these tools have become my primary resource for information and knowledge on a variety of subjects and issues. I still rely on search for a deep dive into specific data or to test the ChatGPT responses, but it has dramatically simplified the process of doing research and learning about key issues.
But ChatGPT and the related tools don’t answer my questions. It can help me think about the questions I may want to ask, it can provide information and learning, but it doesn’t answer my questions.
That’s because my questions are specific to an individual, in a certain company, in a certain function, at a moment in time. I’m looking to understand what they face, how they feel about it, what it means to them. I want to explore what they might want to do about it, or help them learn about opportunities.
The answers to these questions are unique to that individual or group. And they may change over time. If I talk to another person in the organization about the very same issues, their answers will be very different.
Or if I’m a leader, working with my team, the questions and answers will vary by person, circumstance, and time. People have differing goals, aspirations, capabilities, motivations. The questions we ask have to focus on understanding these and how they impact performance.
The mistake I see too many making is they think ChatGPT and related tools provide answers. And they can’t–and ChatGPT is honest enough to warn us about that. These tools can help us understand things, giving us huge amounts of information. They can even help us develop the questions.
But when we are looking for answers, we have to engage our people, peers, customers and communities. We have to probe, examine, and understand them.
*Thank you Marshall Goldsmith.
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