Unlocking Excellence
It is a profound and sad waste when people are playing below their level. But most of us have activities and tasks in our to-do lists and schedules that not only do not use our skills and talents, but actually keep us from our potential.
Many are reports and meetings, although much of our wasted time is from the way we do things.
And working in this space deflates our energy. So, we are not doing valuable things with our time, and it drains us – how do we change this?
There is a saying called shifting to the right. If we assume we work on a continuum of time and value, the objective is how do we spend more of our time to the right of the matrix, in high-value activities with meaning. Enter the AI agent. You may envision red eyes and the terminator, but that is not what an AI agent is. They are quite straightforward and in simple terms, capture our way of doing things and automate those activities. Agents can retrieve information for us (taking away all that search time and figuring out where that file was saved), perform tasks (automate those repetitive and mind-numbing activities we all face no matter our role), and then they can autonomously operate systems of actions for us (just getting to this place).
Right Now - We are building an AI agent for my work in data analysis.
Part of my identity is the experience and eye I feel I have for assessing the connections in data – my investigative skills, like I am finding the answer to a wicked problem. I love it. But I must admit that part of the work I do with data is quite repetitive.
I do not mind doing it, but it does chew up time and drags on my energy a bit. The searching can also test my patience. To build the agent, we tracked exactly how I perform all the steps in my approach to data analysis (think about the advantages of capturing corporate memory if everyone did this), and what has happened is the separation of the standardized parts of getting the data to the point where I start being innovative.
This point is where I put my true skills to work from the parts that are based on my judgment and intuition. It has been an amazing experience, and very energizing. The AI agent opens my time to be innovative in my investigation. I can query deeper connections and correlations. I can start to dig further to mine the gold that is in the data.
And rather than feeling tired, I want to keep on going. I love it! AI helps me apply my skills and talents further to the right, where I can create more value and innovate. One of the sad problems of almost all organizations is that we miss so much innovation. People in all roles think of new and better ways to do things, but bureaucracy limits where it goes.
With AI agents, people in all roles and levels of the business can innovate and agents can test and move them forward.
So, with AI agents the human oversight is there and, in fact, amplified. The stress of dealing with so much repetition and being stifled from innovating is relieved. And it makes work a bit more fun again.
I see AI agents as a way to not only improve efficiency and create cost savings – both much appreciated – but most importantly, being able to free people up to shift to the right of working in a space of more value, increased use of skills, and motivating innovation.
It is a profound and sad waste when people are playing below their level. Are you ready to shift to the right and unlock your full potential with AI, or will you let another day of untapped innovation pass you by?
Find out how to ask the question by touching base with me at michael@workinsights.io and check out our SME AI Adoption Fund for grants on getting a grip on AI.