Building an AI-First Organization To Boost Productivity
In this episode, host Zeshan Randhawa is joined by TJ Walia, the founder of ZenTek Solutions, to explore the concept of building an AI-first organization and its potential to drastically enhance productivity. Together, they delve into what it means to have an AI-first mindset, debunk common misconceptions about AI and productivity, and highlight essential tools and strategies for implementing AI successfully. Listen in to gain valuable insights on harnessing AI to drive efficiency and innovation in your business!
Transcript
You’re listening to the Cloud Lounge podcast, a show about business technology and all that jazz brought to you by Softlanding a leading it service provider in Canada. Let’s get started. Here’s your host, Zeshan Randhawa. Welcome to the Cloud Lounge podcast. I’m your host, Zeshan. Now we’re in the perpetual age of do more with less. And in today’s fast paced world productivity is the cornerstone of success, whether it’s by streamlining processes of how we work, leveraging technology or also fostering a culture of efficiency. Now, productivity is no new concept but exploring how AI can help us with our productivity really is. According to the 2024 work trend index annual report from Microsoft, 75% of knowledge workers use AI at work today. And 90% of these users say that AI helps them save time. 85% of folks said that they can focus on their most important work and get this. 83% said that they enjoy their work more. Now, generally leaders are moving slowly due to the increased pressure, show immediate return on investment with the usage of AI which we all know can be tricky despite 79% of these leaders agreeing that their company needs to adopt AI to remain competitive. 59% of them worry about quantifying the productivity gains of AI. And today’s guest is all about using AI to directly drive productivity. I’d like to introduce our guest for today TJ Walia, who is the founder of ZenTek Solutions. Welcome to the Cloud Lounge podcast, TJ. Hey Zeshan, Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. So TJ, let’s just get started here and, and have you kind of introduce yourself to the audience, your IT journey a bit about yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Hi, everyone. I’m TJ Walia. I spent 20 years in the corporate world including 15 years at Microsoft and, and I’ve had the ability to leverage the power of technology through out. Ever since I was 13, I started really engaging in technology over my corporate years and professional years. I’ve ended up training over about 10,000 professionals and I’ve recently left Microsoft and I’ve run a company called ZenTek Solutions where we’re on a mission to really supercharge productivity, help organizations and individuals sharpen their focus and boost well being for their teams and individuals. Excellent. And obviously a big part of that boosting productivity is AI which we’re talking about today. You know, in your words, kind of what does it mean for an organization to have an AI mindset? Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. And it’s interesting when you put it this way because it reminds me of when the cloud was born. And if we remember that for those of our listeners, it was really about organizations shifting to become a cloud first organization. It took a while to get there, but there were also organizations that were born in the Cloud. And I think having an AI mindset really means that they’re embracing innovation, starting with AI, keeping that front and center through all the conversations and it incorporates continuous learning and challenging themselves to see where AI can really enhance their capabilities beyond what it is today for decision making and efficiencies. So it really comes down to having AI front and center with all the decisions we’re making for the organization. I really like that. So AI isn’t just a tool at the side of your desk. It’s something of an actual mindset of kind of using AI to tackle any issue or opportunity as it presents itself. Exactly. And the example I was sharing with the Cloud, it was the same thing. Initially, there were a lot of people on the sidelines saying what is this cloud thing? What’s it going to end up being? And then now I don’t see any organization who is starting any initiatives or projects and they need hardware resources that doesn’t go to the cloud. AI I think is going to be in a similar state as well where it’s going to become the default way of doing things. Absolutely. TJ for yourself, what do you see as some common misconceptions people have about AI and productivity in general. I think that one of the biggest ones is that AI is going to replace jobs and it’s going to put me out of a role or position. It’s really more about augmenting the human capabilities. And this is what I love about what Microsoft did with their launch of Copilot is the naming itself and calling it Copilot really sends the message right back to the users that you’re still in charge. You’re still the one that’s operating this vehicle, but how you use it, how you leverage it is entirely up to you. And I think that’s one of the biggest ones where when I’m talking to organizations or individuals or I’m doing my keynote sessions, it’s a topic that comes up quite often in terms of jobs. Yes, jobs are going to change. The same thing happened when Cloud happened. As I spoke earlier, people thought they were going to lose their jobs because they were no longer going to be the Windows server admin. Well, that doesn’t really necessarily happen. It changed what their job function was, it changed what their day to day activities were. So one thing I usually tell individuals and people is that look at three things that you want to really understand about what’s happening. And there’s three questions I’ll share with your audience, which is one: is my industry going to survive? This new wave of AI, what is that going to do to the industry I’m in? And if your answer is, yeah, it will survive. We’re still going to need the services and the resources that we provide. Then go to the next question which is, will my job survive? And if the answer is yes again or maybe then the third one is, will my job look the same? And if we can start answering these questions, then it gives people a runway to look at and say, you know what, I’ve got a future down the road I can work towards or reskill myself in terms of leveraging this technology of AI and being current, especially as it comes to using it day to day. Excellent. That’s definitely some great insight. TJ. I know you don’t tie yourself to any specific AI ecosystem, but I’d love to hear from you specific examples of AI tools that individuals or businesses can use to improve their actual productivity. What have you seen out there? There’s a ton, right? And one of the things that I do tell people is this world of AI is changing so fast that you don’t want to just go on and grab on and you know, lock into any random AI platform that’s just been launched. The reason for that is because you don’t know who’s backing these resources and these tools up and you don’t know what their data sets look like. So there’s a lot of questions that we’re not asking the results we get out of using these technologies can be all over the place. And I’ll share an example in a moment with you guys. But the tools I gravitate towards is really ChatGPT as my main one and then Copilot, right, that I find covers a lot of my individual requirements or my business requirements. For the most part, whether it’s drafting content, whether it’s analyzing data, I even get it to read websites for summaries, I get it to do competitive analysis. So there’s a lot that we can leverage through these technologies themselves and it really comes down to what are the use cases we’re trying to solve for? There’s going to be millions and millions of different technologies and platforms that are going to keep popping up. But we have to remain clear on what our objectives are. And once you can align on what those objectives are, you can figure out which are the tools you want to use. The other one I actually leverage quite often is image creator or even mid journey. That’s another popular one as well. So when I’m doing my PowerPoint presentations, I’ll take a lot of this stuff together and put it together from there. And the feedback I’ve received has been phenomenal. And they’re like, I love the unique images that are on your PowerPoint slides because they’re not the conventional stock images that we would get from any site that everyone gets access to. Now, it’s really a representation of what is my mindset. What’s the message I’m trying to portray to the audience? And how do I showcase that? A recent keynote that I was doing? There was an image, it’s on my LinkedIn as well. And what I had done was I wanted to talk about how AI is here to stay and I kind of framed it as the genie out of the bottle. So what I did was I actually used Bing image creator and ChatGPT and combined all of the information together to really create a unique image. And it was a genie, an AI robot genie rather coming out of a lab. It’s not something I would ever find anywhere on the internet. I was able to create that unique experience to send that message. So that’s some of the power that we have of the tools that we have access to. And the example I wanted to share with not just jumping on to any particular platform is that I was trying to create a digital avatar of myself. And if you guys remember the app that used to be around with Snapchat, which was called Bitmoji, I think they bought them out or, and they merged together, I used to spend hours customizing my little Bitmoji if you will. And after an update that happened on Bitmoji, they destroyed what my avatar looked like and I never really got to doing that again. So when I saw this app and this organization and I said, let me go give this a shot, I’ll have to do is upload my image. I took my linkedin profile image, uploaded it and I was expecting it to be a digital avatar just as they promised. However, what happened was they had actually replaced my turban with a baseball cap and for Sikhs, that’s very offensive when you look at it because it’s a religious article of faith that we have as a turban. It really got me thinking that this organization wasn’t using the right data sets for the project they’re working on for one or they never considered me as a potential user of their data sets. So these are a lot of consideration that we have to look at. So when organizations are using the tools they really have to see, especially when it comes to A I. How does that tool connect and resonate with their business practices and the purposes that they’re working towards? Excellent. So some really good uh A I tool examples there for sure. So moving from tools to actual scenarios, are, are there any examples where A I driven insights have led to significant productivity gains in a company organization that you’ve worked with. Oh, absolutely. There’s tons and it’s all the time. I’ll give you one example that we did recently. It was a CEO of not for profit organization. And he was sitting there and thinking, you know, how do I use this A I platform or technology? So we were having a one on one session through that session, Zan, what we ended up doing was I taught him how to use the platform. But two, I said, what’s the next project or big initiative that you have in front of you that you have to really get accomplished? And they had a fundraiser that they were looking to do. And uh there were a lot of components that they needed to really iron out and figure out, you know, who’s going to be doing. What, what are the packages for sponsorship for a lot of their large enterprise size clients? And what does that need to look like within about 90 minutes to two hours of us working through this? We were able to create a four month plan for him in great detail. And this consisted of their social media strategy, who on their team is going to be posting on what day and what times what are the sponsorship packages look like? Whether it’s the gold, platinum, silver or whatever have you, what are their costs? What are they going to get with them? All of that, all the stuff that was going to take weeks upon weeks to do. We were able to put together the emails, the campaigns, everything, send it out to the team members within a span of about two hours. Like that was the power of using AI to really iron out all the details. Yeah, really condensing weeks of work into a 90 minute session. That’s amazing. Yeah, absolutely. And it becomes very powerful and I think the key again is having clarity. He knew exactly what he needed to accomplish and achieve. And we were able to just take that information and run with it versus someone who is using AI today like Google. And that’s where I think a lot of us mess up is they’re trying to throw in a query into ChatGPT or Copilot in a way that’s similar to what they would do on Google. And that’s not really the way you should be using it. It’s really about taking it a few levels deeper and averaging the power of this technology, do the research for you, do the brainstorming for you, take all of that in control and provide you the results. And then again, you’re in the driver’s seat. If you like it, great, accept it, modify it, tweak it. If you don’t, you reject it and it doesn’t get offended. That’s the beautiful part about it. Absolutely. I, I’m sure in that 90 minute session you really did present a cultural mindset shift for that CEO into how a I actually can be used. Absolutely. And, and I think one of the other use cases scenarios that is really powerful with the use of AI is that when we’re working on things, especially for data analysis or gathering insights, we get into what we call selective attention mode. And that basically puts us in a mode where we’re honed in on what we’re looking at and we don’t see anything else around it. There was a test or a study that was done several years ago by a gentleman by the name of Daniel Simons. His video is on youtube and I would encourage the listeners to check it out. But essentially what it was, there were six individuals and they were put on two different teams and a small little group. So there were three on each side, one set wearing white shirts, the other ones wearing black and they were passing a bunch of basketballs around, bouncing them around to one another and your goal was count just the number of passes from the white team and that’s it. And they were walking around in a circle in terms of uh doing this. So it gets very confusing. But when you focus in on it, you’re able to count how many passes were conducted just with the white team. However, through that video and you can see it on youtube, your focus is so high that you actually ignore what else is happening around and for those of you that haven’t seen it. I would highly encourage you to check it out. And something very drastic happens during that video, which I won’t give away, but we miss it entirely. We don’t see it. And the same thing happens when we’re working day to day with our analysis or other work that we’re doing. We’re so honed in on it that we forget whatever else is happening. And on this past weekend, I did a quick test with one of my cousins. We were at their house for a barbecue and they were asking me because they see a lot of my videos on A I and they’re like, how does this stuff really work? So I pulled up my phone took a picture of a plate of food. I asked ChatGPT how many calories are in this meal? And it actually started calculating and giving you all the numbers and stuff like that. But interestingly enough, it did something that was something we weren’t expecting. I was looking just at the plate as was my cousin of food. And what the AI was able to do in the framing of the picture. There was a bowl of chili flakes right next to it or not chili flake but chili peppers and say, how many of these are you going to be using? Because each one of them has X amounts of calories. So I didn’t even see that in the framing. But it was able to pick that up. So the lesson there was that when AI looks at it, it looks at everything in great detail, whereas we look at things in a very selective attention focused way that we start ignoring lots of other data. So when we’re analyzing data or reports, we’re usually driven by, I’m looking for this outcome. So we start manipulating the data in our ways. Whereas A I doesn’t do that. It gives you what sees and it analyzes everything equally. That’s amazing. And I’ll definitely have to check out that video, you recommended on youtube as well. TJ. I, I know a lot of organizations and a lot of leadership folks as well know that they have to get into the AI game. It’s going to be imperative for their organization, for their industry, so on and so forth. A lot of them are at the stage where they’re starting to develop their AI strategy. I’d love to hear from you. Kind of what you believe are some of the critical elements that an organization should cover within their AI strategy. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s a great question. There’s a lot of misunderstandings of misconceptions of what I should start with. And a lot of people think, well, AI needs a lot of data to make decisions. So they’re focusing on the quantity of data and I would actually encourage them not to do that. Really should be about the quality of data because as the saying goes garbage in garbage out. So if you’re not having the right quality of data going into your algorithms or your learning modules or models, then the quality of the output is going to be based on what you’re putting in. So focus on the quality over the quantity, take ethical AI practices into great consideration. This is so critical because the example I gave earlier in terms of organizations targeting certain individuals or target audiences have to really understand that there’s going to be components of individuals or sample individuals that are not going to fit those models. So we have to take that into consideration as well. Uh especially from ethical considerations, there’s a lot of factors that need to take place as this goes in. So we, we talked about the quality of data, we talked about ethical practices, but now it really comes down to having clear goals of what they’re trying to accomplish. Organizations feel that AI comes in and it’s going to solve everything for them. I usually say you need to use AI to solve one particular use case. And if you can start understanding what that use case is, then you can start building on top of that. Don’t try to start too broad focus with your AI strategy. Absolutely. You don’t want to be boiling the ocean with this, right? It’s let’s figure out a particular use case. What’s the biggest pain that an organization is dealing with? And then try to see if we can solve with that and then you’ll build on top of those individually, but start with one TJ. I know you’re a busy person. You wear multiple hats, you help your clients, you do tons of presentations and keynotes. I want to know how you personally are using AI to kind of enhance your productivity and help your customers and deliver. Yeah, it’s a great question, Zeshan. I think for me, the short answer is I live with AI, I have AI in all aspects around me when I go into my studio, when I’m doing recording, I use AI and automation to put my studio all on. So I’m not turning my camera on my lights on. I’m not having to set up the backgrounds like none of that. It’s all automated one command when I’m doing research. When I’m doing ideation, I’ll actually have conversations with AI. So I’m not going in and out and saying, you know, how do I brainstorm around this or I need to have a team meeting to do this. I don’t need to do any of that. I have those conversations with AI to the extent where I’ve actually, I have an iPhone 15 and they’ve actually redone some of their hardware components on it. So if any of their iPhone users out there, the little switch on the hardware device is to set your phone to vibrate mode or silent mode. They’ve replaced with an actual button and you have the ability now to customize that button. And I’ve actually done customization on it so that it launches ChatGPT in voice mode so I can have a conversation with it. So when I’m on the road, I’m driving and I have some ideas that I need to work on. I can actually have a conversation with it and it will talk to me, respond to me. It will give me its suggestions. I will tell her to change things, whether it’s writing an email, whether it’s crafting a proposal to recline any of that stuff, I’ve actually handed off to the AI platforms so that it frees my time up to do whatever I need to. I, I mentioned this earlier as well and I don’t use AI, the way we use Google. I let it do the work for me rather than me trying to do all of that for myself. Absolutely. But yeah, I think we can all take away from that as well where really AI seems to be embedded in all aspects of your life as well. I get a lot of people asking me, it’s like, how do I use A,I, how do I learn how to use this thing? And the simple answer is just start using it when I started, I had initially started using it like it was Google because that’s what we know, that’s what we’ve been programmed to do. So give it a search query. Yeah. But take it a few levels deeper right now when you get the information from the AI then query it, push it more challenge it, which is something we can’t do on Google. So using it like Google is only the first layer. We push it even further and you start challenging the responses that you’re getting back from AI. Again, we can’t do that to Google. When we get a response, we have to seek through the results and then find the answer. Chat GPT can actually go and do that for you and you could tell it to say, you know, give me other sources or find something else that contradicts this or find something that complements this. It can do all of that for you rather than you having to do that yourself manually. Excellent. I’d like to end off our discussion today just talking about the future. You know what excites you, what excites you the most about the future of AI in terms of productivity and what you’re seeing, the direction you’re seeing the AI ecosystem grow into. Yeah, it’s, I mean, there’s a lot of components that I’m excited about when it comes to AI, I’d love to have a personal chef in my kitchen, cooking all my meals and food for me. Oh, yeah. Those are things that really do excite me. Some people are actually against that. They’re like, I don’t know if I can live with that. I absolutely love that. I have a self driving car. I’ve gone from Toronto to New York. It’s about a 10 hour drive. I drove for about an hour. Right. The rest of the time the car is driving on its own. So there’s a lot of things that are getting introduced and coming to market that really excite me. And I think the best part about all of this is that if AI can free up a lot of the general things that we do, we as humans have now the ability to focus our brainpower on the things that really matter. A lot of these little things consume us quite a bit in terms of our time and our energy. So it really comes down to freeing us up from all of that and then really applying ourselves to the things that are going to be impactful. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and his CEO friends, they’ve got an open bet going on that there’s going to be an organization that’s going to be run by one person with a billion dollar valuation. I mean, imagine that this was never possible before. This was never a concept. So the ability to do all of this today with the power of AI, that’s what excites me. That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us TJ and, and providing some amazing insight examples and really your kind of in depth knowledge on this topic itself. So, thank you for joining us at the Cloud Lounge podcast. It was an absolute pleasure, Zeshan. Thank you very much for having me and to all the listeners out there, I mean, adapt and start leveraging AI is what I would tell everyone to do. So it’s definitely clear that the future of work is being reshaped by intelligent emerging technologies AI is just not a tool. It’s a partner that replicates human capabilities, which hopefully enables us to achieve more in less time. We’re all on this journey of seeing how AI transforms the world around us. And I’m hoping we can look forward to a world where productivity and creativity flourish hand in hand. I would like to thank TJ Walia for joining us today in our conversation. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time this has been the Cloud Lounge podcast. Take care.
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softlanding
Softlanding is a long-established IT services provider of transformation, professional services and managed IT services that helps organizations boost innovation and drive business value. We are a multi-award-winning Microsoft Gold Partner with 13 Gold Competencies and we use our experience and expertise to be a trusted advisor to our clients. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, we have staff and offices in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary to serve clients across Canada.
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