00:01

Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review Podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training in your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I am your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. Today, I have Dr. Jack Phillips joining me to discuss the webinar, Proving the Value of AI: How to Ensure that AI Delivers. Jack, thanks so much for joining me today. My pleasure, Sarah.

00:31

Well, welcome back. You’ve been on the podcast a few times before. You have presented many webinars here with us at HRDQ-U. You’re a partner over at HRDQ Store as well. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what have you been up to since we last spoke? Well, we keep growing the business and moving into new areas. A lot of focus on what you just talked about, soft scales. We particularly like to work with the hard to value and hard to measure stuff like culture, art.

01:01

change management, transformation, you know, those kind of things. So we see a lot of interest in that because a lot of people want to know if it’s working well.

01:12

Great. And so with L&D, you know, the L&D space is changing at a rapid pace currently with, you know, the addition of AI. What major shifts have you seen in the L&D space? Yes, I think we can all see some things occurring that really touches what we do. DNI is probably a big one. It’s just being defunded, de-emphasized, discontinued in so many places. And it’s a shame because

01:42

We know DEI delivers when you measure it, but so many people just didn’t step up to that. They had so much good support for it. Funding was there. They said, we don’t need this kind of accountability. And I kept saying, but someday you may. Now’s the time to do it. And we see it now. Those who have funding for it, for the most part, are able to keep it going.

02:11

We could show you some examples of that, but that’s one area. Second, I think, is what’s happening with remote work. People are coming back to work, shifting from hybrid to full work, or from full remote to hybrid. That’s affected learning because people, basically, if they’re working at home, do all of their learning virtually in some way so they didn’t have to travel.

02:41

But now, since they’re going to work, they’re more okay with in-person learning. And the reason is that still in the virtual learning format, we are not delivering the kind of value that we should. It’s just not working that well. People are burned out on virtual programs for the most part, particularly a program that’s lasting several days. And so,

03:09

We keep looking at ways not just to keep them engaged and active, which is very important, but making sure that it delivers on the post format. So we see a little uptick in person. That’s the summary of this, I think. And a lot of focus on showing the value of the virtual still.

03:32

And this week you presented the webinar, Proving the Value of AI, How to Ensure that AI Delivers. And we had a really engaged audience with us. What was something that stood out to you most from this event? Well, as we expected, we saw confirmation that people are not seeing much ROI come through. No studies, no measurement necessarily. But they also were appreciative of the fact that there’s a process here and a system here to do it, and you can do it.

04:03

Also, I think some were surprised that they have to drive it. The vendors, the suppliers, the people who offer subscriptions and so forth, they’re just not providing an ROI study to show this is how it helps you. That’s typical when people roll out all kinds of new things. There’s a reluctance to even show you the value because there’s a fear that it may not be a positive ROI. So a good engaged audience confirming for me,

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what we typically see, opening their eyes a little bit at the same time. And Jack, what’s something about measuring AI’s ROI that more organizations should be talking about but aren’t? And it’s really, think, the ROI perspective. For one, if you’re investing a lot in this, you really need to see the ROI.

05:00

and you could do it yourself, but first go to your provider, your vendor, your supplier, and say, what do you have? Can you help? Can you show the ROI? We’re going to have to drive this as consumers of AI. we see there’s a bubble that some people are predicting is going to burst on the investment. Investors are already saying, you know, we’re not seeing much out of this. This is from an investor perspective.

05:28

We just thrown so much money into this. And we’re afraid, they’re afraid that it’s not going to deliver. Now, AI, it’s got so many great things about it and it’s needed. It’s this constant evolution of innovation that we’ve been witnesses for centuries. We need it. It’s just at a rapid pace and we just got to bring accountability.

05:57

Pro or against, are we concerned about it? Are we are wild with it? We’ve got to push the accountability. It helps both sides. The critics, it helps them support it maybe. And for those who are just enamored with it, it validates that this is going to deliver the value that we have.

06:21

What about a misconception? What’s a misconception about AI in business that you find yourself correcting? generative AI is what really brought people’s attention because they started with the CHAT GPT in November 2022.

06:44

So when it would write memos for me and do reports for me, people were just wild with it. And they know that maybe there’s some incorrect information or maybe it’s inaccurate, maybe not complete. But just using it without questioning it. We can see when someone sent us a document that’s been created by Generative AI, our own staff, can see that.

07:13

And what that makes us do is look at it a little closer now for the accuracies. Just this morning, I’m speaking to a group in Saudi Arabia about leadership development. So I went to my favorite chat GPT plus. so I said, tell me about leadership development in Saudi Arabia. And it gave me what’s going on. What are the issues? What kind of programs being developed? Now I can’t trust it.

07:44

I’ve got to look at other sources and I’ve got to go to my partners there. I’ve to make sure that this is the right thing. And I think the misconception is not questioning it. It’s still not where it needs to be. I know we’re supposed to teach it, but some people don’t know how to teach it. They don’t know that it’s incorrect or has some misinformation there.

08:15

And kind of in the same lane here, what’s a common mistake that companies make when it comes to AI adoption in their organization? I’d say not thinking about the accountability. You know, people do it because it’s going to save me time. Well, if it saves you time, but if you’ve got to spend time correcting it, you know, we’ve seen people say, I’m spending more time making this a better document than probably I could have myself.

08:43

It’s so good when there’s a blank page, you know nothing about a topic. It does give you something to fill up that page and several pages. But then you got to work it from there. So I think we are failing to realize that you can’t get just instantaneously a finished product that’s going to be okay for my client or my customer or my boss. We got to really work on it. And I remember the recruiters talking about

09:13

problem they have is with AI writing most people’s resumes now, they all look alike and says, we seem to like resumes that don’t use AI. We’re going to kind of give them a preference in the selection process. That’s not good because it’s supposed to help us not get be a barrier to us.

09:37

And what AI trends should we be keeping an eye on? Well, I think the providers are going to have to step up to this. Let me show you more specifically how this is going to help you. And let me show you how it’s happening. Let me do the analysis for you. Just take Jim and I from Google.

10:04

If I own Google, I’d have a major study of how people are using Gemini now, what value it brought to them, what are we learning from this? And so putting that data out, you know, what works and doesn’t work for this. And they’ve been reluctant to do that because they’re afraid it might not be delivered by you and they’re trying to keep selling it. So I think you’re going to see a shift in accountability from the providers being forced on, mostly by the users.

10:35

And Jack, what’s next for the ROI Institute? Well, we’re actually using a digital coach to support our process. So we’re developing that now with a provider. And that’s someone who’s doing an ROI study. It’s like a coach is out there with them, helping them plan it, helping them design, helping them collect, helping them work through this.

11:04

So we’re gonna see how that works for us. So we’ll go into this with the same accountability scrutiny. Does it really add value? We’re gonna sell it to our clients. We’ll provide it free for a year, but then sell it. But it’s gotta be a good ROI for our clients. So we’re gonna put the ROI framework all around this. So we’re going down that path just like everyone else is, but we’ve got probably a little keen eye on the accountability.

11:34

more so than most. great. And Jack, lastly, where can listeners follow your latest work? You can go to our website. That’s the ROIinstitute.net. You can reach out to me at LinkedIn and then just contact me for discussion if you’d like. I’d be happy to discuss any of these issues with anyone. That’s jack at ROIinstitute.net.

12:04

So we’re all about showing the value of what you do and that’s the title of one of our books. And maybe we could just give that book to someone who wants it from us and reach out to us and maybe we can talk. Thank you. Well, thank you, Jack, for your time today. Thank you, as always.

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