PITA 059
Topic 1: What topics do you want to learn more about next year?
AI - using AI to improve my craft, to be more productive - make better decisions and have more impact
Understanding my industry (energy) better
Getting better at leadership.
Agentic AI, Design Agent talks to engineering AI, etc.
How PM shifts as AI enables change in the role
Security
How Boards can be so full of people that don’t understand digital
Topic 2: OKRs. Are there too much of them these days?
The intent of OKRs is great… and when done well can be clarifying and aligning
But good OKRs/processes to generate them often aren’t as strong.
What’s better?
Which are they - starting point or finishing point?
They’re great as a forcing function to focus on Outcomes, when used well
They can be a starting point for change
But if the culture is shit, your OKRs will also be shit
It’s just goal setting/strategic planning/management by objectives by any other name
It works well in firms that are already good at setting goals. It fails in places where the management is incapable of creating SMART goals
All tools suck. Some are useful. They’re useful when we use them to have better conversations so we can make better decisions, faster.
Topic 3: Meeting people where they are in a transformation
Explore the pain - understand the problem, for both teams and leadership. Try to address them with minimal baggage - both internal issues and customer problems.
How do you get under the skin of whether people CAN or WANT to change? Be clear about whether a change brief is achievable.
Inertia is a real thing
You can facilitate/enable change, but not force it. People have to have a reason to change.
Language is key
Drive the change from within after exposing the system - make the system see itself. Start with mapping things
Topic 4: What are you most satisfied using AI at work with recently?
ChatGPT - developing good metrics and the data to drive that
Developing leads from a LinkedIn post, ordered by revenue and current customer status
Working at a consultancy with an FMCG client: Claude got us 70% there in research for the research brief and a marketing brief
Google suite can now run Javascript. I use Claude/ChatGPT to write scripts to automate tasks from Sheets. Great for Productivity
Case workers write impenetrable, complex notes. We used it to lower the reading age to 7 and clarify - not 100% success, but a great first step.