Director vs Doer: Staying Relevant and Thriving in the A.I. Era | Episode 098

AI isn't here to take your jobs. AI is here to take your tasks. The question really then becomes will you stay stuck as a doer versus a director? That is the topic that we're getting into today on the Digital CX Podcast.

Once again, welcome to the Digital Customer Experience Podcast with me, Alex Turkovich. So glad you could join us here today and every week as we explore how digital can help enhance the customer and employee experience. My goal is to share what my guests and I have learned over the years so that you can get the insights that you need to evolve your own digital programs. If you'd like more info, need to get in touch, or sign up for the weekly companion newsletter that has additional articles and resources in it, go to digitalcustomer success.

com for now. Let's get started. This week and every week, as we talk about all kinds of cool stuff that's happening in the world of digital CX and artificial intelligence. And today's topic is one that I have really taken to heart over the last few months, which is this notion of durable skills in an age of artificial intelligence.

Because I know that a lot of people, especially over the last two years, really since ChatGPT launched, I don't know, when did it launch? Two years ago, something like that, have been on this like AI is gonna take my job kind of kick. And the truth of the matter is that AI is making a lot of things efficient. You know, it's making a lot of tasks more efficient.

I first heard about it, and I think it was brought about by this guy, Dan Martell, who is this. If you don't know Dan Martell, go look him up on YouTube. He's all over the place. But he's basically um an online kind of business guru speaker kind of guy.

Says some incredible things. He's he's uh he's a longtime entrepreneur, longtime uh software engineer, has had several exits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This isn't the Dan Martell show, but one of his concepts talks about being a director versus a doer when it comes to artificial intelligence. And so I felt that was incredibly important for us to talk about today.

Because when you think about the things that artificial intelligence can do for us, a lot of them are task-based things. But we still need to kind of tell artificial intelligence to do those kinds of things. Um, but especially us in CX, I think a lot of mistakes that we as CS, CX pros make is that we love to cling to tasks. There are things that happen through the course of a business, whether it's a renewal cycle or whether it's, you know, some billing things or whatnot, that we love to cling to because I think we have it ingrained in us a little bit that that's where the value is.

That's the value that we provide to an organization. When the reality of it all is that a lot of those things can be automated by AI. Um, I read a BCG report that says basically a little over 80% of corporate communications tasks can be automated by AI. And a lot of the stuff we do with customers, I would buck bundle into those corporate communications tasks.

And so that's where the durable skill of working with artificial intelligence becomes becomes very, very important. And that's where understanding the difference between a doer versus a director, I think, comes in very handy, is kind of important. And so when you think about the skills of a director versus a doer, a director is somebody who um looks at strategy, looks at uh at judgment calls, looks at cross-functional leadership and how organizations are working together versus a doer who is sending this email or um, you know, making sure these billing light items are taken care of.

There's all that busy, busy work um that happens in our day-to-day life, um, that if it was magically moved off of our plate, we could then all of a sudden start really focusing in and honing in on the things that are important. In fact, uh there was a recent Harvard Business Review um article that talked about how AI is really helping to refine managerial roles. And it's helping management shift the focus uh away from those task-based things onto culture and systems design, which is so cool when you think about it.

The fact that, you know, we can actually maybe take a step back, take a breath of fresh air, focus on the culture of our teams, the togetherness of our teams, the health of our teams and the team members, um, and focus on systems design in such a way that supports those team members, I think is where the distinction between a director versus a doer comes in. A director is going to take a strategic lens, is going to look at the org overall, it's going to look at the vision overall, is going to look at all these things that AI, you know, really honestly shouldn't be doing, but is going to, you know, going to give everybody the bandwidth to look at the human side of things a lot more than we have been in the past, where we've been so focused on, you know, getting these little tasks done, get this PowerPoint written, get this spreadsheet together.

All that stuff is like, you know, things that if they're not your reality just yet, um maybe partially because of technology, but partially because of skill set, they they will become your reality in short order. I think if you look at spreadsheet and PowerPoint design, I mean that's something that ChatGPT still really can't do today, but Claude can. Recent update to Claude actually is quite powerful in terms of how it handles spreadsheets and makes spreadsheets and makes PowerPoint decks.

I know we have Gamma and a couple other platforms that do PowerPoints for us, but for an AI native tool to do that kind of stuff, I mean, you know, it's just a matter of time with all of these kinds of things. And so I really think, I mean, the I'm rambling a little bit, right? Um, but I think the goal of this is to um hopefully give you a little bit of pause and a little bit of reflection time to think about, you know, your day-to-day and how much you're really stuck in the tasks.

And of those tasks, how much of that can you automate so that you can actually focus on your gig? And I'm look, guys, I'm not I'm not just talking about management and leadership here. I'm I'm talking to the individual contributor as well. Director doesn't mean leader, director means how you interface with these things and these tools, right?

If you're a if you're a customer success manager, you're in the weeds, you're trying to claw your way out of a hole that you're in because you've got all these QBRs coming up and you have uh, you know, three or four escalations on your plate, and you have all this stuff that you're dealing with and you're trying to get over the line. There are things you can do today to ease the load. Whether that's building yourself an account review chat, custom GPT, or having your ops team do that for you, you know, whether it's really looking into the things that you do that are manual that can be automated for your own workflow.

You don't have to wait for an ops team to go do that. That is being a director versus a doer. You are actively delegating those mundane tasks to a tool that can do it just as well, if not better, no offense. Right.

Now the other thing that Dan Martell talks about in the context of this doer versus director mentality is the durable goods that we as humans have over artificial intelligence that are going to help us, I guess, enhance that director level side of things. Those three things are what he calls vision, taste, and care. Right? So vision is we kind of already talked about it.

Vision is the overall picture for what it is you are doing in your role to help your customers succeed or to help your team members succeed or to help cross-functional partners succeed. How are you putting all that vision together? What is the vision for your role? What is the vision for your team?

What is the vision for your interaction with this customer? That that vision is a is a very human thing. You're not gonna prompt AI for vision around XYZ. That's just not like a thing.

I mean, you can try, but I don't know what you're gonna get out of it. The second thing is taste. So you know, his the example that he uses is is like taste in music. That is a very individual thing.

People have all kinds of different individual tastes in music. My son hates my taste in music, and his is interesting as well, right? Um people have different tastes in music, and that and those are things that you know artificial intelligence can't necessarily um grasp. And so taste becomes an important thing when you're talking to an individual customer, you're getting to know them, you're getting to know what tick what makes them tick.

And being able to really hone in on that by being a director versus a doer is super, super important and gives you the edge as a customer-facing professional. And the last bit is care and emotional intelligence. I know, you know, care is an interesting word in the context of where we are today, you know, socially, politically, all that kind of fun stuff. I'm not really gonna go there.

Um, but care is an innately human thing. And again, this director versus doer mentality, but the more you can have artificial intelligence take that doer stuff off of your plate, the more you can spend time on emotional intelligence and really paying attention and listening to your customers and listening to your team members and listening, you know, to your stakeholders so that you can then in turn feed the vision and the taste. So look, this this stuff isn't like tactic, super tactical digital CX stuff, but I think it's incredibly important because what we are doing on a daily basis is working with this technology in ways that maybe a lot of us haven't totally mastered yet, totally figured out yet.

But this concept of director versus doer was a huge unlock for me and really got me thinking about it it started this flow state with me about what are all the things that I can have Chat GPT or Claude or Gemini do on my behalf that I don't really need to do or I don't want to do. And that made a massive difference in how I just worked with artificial intelligence and also how efficient I got at work. So I hope that helps you out. This particular concept is something that I am going to be talking a lot more about.

And specifically, one of the things that I wanted to bring up with you all is a project that I've been working on that I'm very, very excited about, which is essentially a digital CX masterclass. Um I'm working on this six-part 40-ish module master class that is going to essentially take you through the building blocks to the implementation of a digital CX program, all the way from inception and ideation and executive buy-in, all the way through design, tooling, org design, RFPs, um, you know, long-term sustainability of a program, those kinds of things.

Um, and I'll be talking a little bit more about that. I hope to have a first version up, maybe by the end of the year, something like that, because it's gonna be a little bit of org to get it together. Um, but I'll definitely let you guys know um what that's all about. If you want to check out um and get on the wait list for it, you're more than welcome to at digital customer success forward slash masterclass.

You can read through what the plans are for it, what it's gonna entail, what it's gonna have in it, um, and would love your feedback on it as well. I've given a lot of you, the uh regular listeners, a little bit of a preview. Um so reach out to me if you have any questions on it, happy to answer those for you. But um super excited about this.

It's been a pet project of mine for a long time. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I'm just I'm now at a place where I can actually take thought and turn it into action, partially because of this director versus doer thing. I'm just saying. Um but I've hope you enjoyed spending this 15-ish minutes with me.

Um, I look forward to chatting with you again next week on the Digital CX Podcast. For now, I hope you have a great week ahead. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital CX Podcast.

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I'm Alex Dergovich. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week.