How to Give Your New AI Tool or Process the Best Chance of Being Adopted

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Galen Low: You open your new tool. You've got your new process up on your second monitor. You've got your eight pages of handwritten notes from that one training session you had last week. You are ready. You take a deep breath and you log in. But instead of the dashboard you were expecting, you're presented with an exam that you haven't studied for.

Also, everyone in the room is pointing and laughing at you. Also, you are naked. For a lot of folks, big changes to tools and workflows is their worst nightmare. It's one of the biggest barriers to adoption. And as a result, it's one of the biggest barriers to positive productive impact. So what's to be done? In an age of tool overwhelm, change fatigue, and AI related anxiety, how can you give your new tool or process the best chance of being embraced by the very folks whose lives it was meant to improve? That's exactly what we're going to dive into today.

Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with The Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you wanna hear more about that, head on over to thedpm.com/membership . And if you're into future-looking conversations and practical insights around digital project leadership, consider subscribing to the show for weekly episodes.

Okay, today we are talking about the challenges of rolling out new tools and new processes in an age of tool fatigue, change fatigue, AI fatigue, and quite possibly just general physical fatigue. Like how can you get your teams onsite with tools and processes that will ultimately help them when they're already mistrustful of technology, already doubtful of their job security, already feeling pressured to do more, and already fed up with the accelerating pace of disruptions to their professional life. That was a lot.

With me today is Frances Odera Matthews — certified Notion consultant, process designer, culture builder, speaker, storyteller, founder of The Notion Bar, and host of Coffee & Oysters, the podcast for and by London's Business Babes. Poof, those creds! Those creds are a lot!

Frances, thank you for being here with me today. Thanks for coming back on the show.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah, super, super excited to be here. I have a lot of thoughts on today. I have a lot of goals.

Galen Low: I sense that. I know that we had a great conversation in the green room. This is something that, you were on the show, gosh, it's probably a couple years ago now.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah.

Galen Low: Time has been flying by. But you have been keeping busy and in terms of what you do, tool implementation, process implementation, like it's just such a hot button right now because everyone's in the midst of some kind of change, some kind of transformation, some kind of optimization. They're looking at tools.

They're looking at processes for ways to scale, to grow, to streamline all those things. But maybe let me just zoom out. So for folks listening, depending on when you're listening at time recording, it's 2025. And not only are there hundreds of tools on the market to help you lead your projects and run your business, but there's also reams of new AI tools to help you work faster, smarter, and frankly beyond your natural capabilities.

And not only that, but that also means that our processes are changing more frequently and more drastically than ever before. Yet so many initiatives to implement new tools and new processes still fail at the adoption stage, which ultimately stunts organizational transformation. It removes businesses competitive edge, like it does the exact opposite of what these initiatives were actually, or what these tools and processes were initially meant to do.

So I thought maybe I'd just start with the hot question, which is, do tools and processes fail because humans suck at change management. Or is it that we just expect too much from our tools and processes? Or maybe is it just that we're all tired?

Frances Odera Matthews: So it's a combination of all of it really.

So ultimately humans don't change evolutionary. We like things that we know, we like things that keep us safe. And so that's an issue. And so if you want to do any kind of change, you need to make it as easy. Seen as beneficial as humanly possible, which a lot of the time just isn't what ends up happening.

And then the other side of it is that a tool is not a magic wand. A tool isn't gonna change the culture. A tool isn't gonna change how chaotic you are as an organization that comes from real. In depth culture change and a look at your values and a look of what, even just getting a grasp of what your processes are like, is this new thing that you are adding, moving the needle for you legitimately?

Or is it actually causing more work than. You need and you are just doing it so you can sound cool in front of your other agency owners and be like, oh, we're using this tool now. And I'm like, okay, that's nice. Cool. Like we're tracking this KPI. And I'm like, okay, nice. Who cares?

Galen Low: Which are real conversations that happen between agency folks by the way.

Frances Odera Matthews: Literally. And then, so there's that just wanting to jump on the hype train so you can seem cool and then people were trying to do things too quickly and they want everything now, but that's, again, that's not how our brains work because we're too tired. We can't do everything now so my whole tagline with my Notion consultancy is creating cultures of intention.

And I really recognize that Notion is such an incredible to what's so powerful. It's so flexible. But just because you can't do everything with Notion doesn't mean that you should. And so I'm only gonna build. Things that like move the needle for you specifically. And a lot of the time clients come to me because they've downloaded this crazy template, which is super over complicated and they're just overwhelmed by it.

And so I have to be like a psychologist and be like what do you actually need? What matters to you? And let's start there. Which is pretty much what you should do with not just Notion, but like any tool, really.

Galen Low: I really like that it starts with that silver bullet that they picked up along the way.

And they're like, I'm confused, Frances. Can you help? And you're like, actually there's no silver bullet. But the other thing I really like about it is just like hurriedness, right? This rush, right? This sort of like wanting it to be instant or fast. And a colleague of mine just posted today about eating a whole bag of chips.

You open a bag of chips, you're like, may as well finish it. It's open, but it's probably not a good idea. And sometimes what you're saying in terms of when people think. Tool, a new process. We think, okay, yeah, we'll just buy a new tool. We'll just set it up. We'll just create some new processes and then seven days later, everything's gonna be perfect.

But what you just described to me is yeah, maybe don't assume that you're going to eat this whole bag of chips in one go. Maybe let's like take our time with it. And I guess how do you deal with that? Like impatience. Hype and pressure to find this magic bullet and then you're like, actually it's gonna take a long time.

And I'm imagining that a lot of folks are like, whoa, I haven't got that much time.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah. So I've actually forced my clients into this now by how I've shaped my packages. So I. Instead of just like offering like massive build outs, I now offer a five day workspace program, which is a condensed amount of time, of 25 hours, five hours per day, where I'm like, we are going to prioritize.

So you've got a list of a hundred things. Sure. Tell them to me, but like we are gonna prioritize from that list what we can reasonably fit into this chunk of build out of five days. And more often than not. The amount that we can fit into that amount of time is the things that actually matter to them.

And I'm like, okay, let you go off digest this bit. Once you're comfortable with, then we'll do another five days. And so I deal with people not eating the whole bag of chips by literally putting it into bowls.

Galen Low: Yeah. You get one chip, which of these, you get one chip, one chips do you want to do in the five days?

Exactly. Arguably humans are better at small change. We're not good at any change. You're absolutely right. But like they're better at small bite-size change than like broad sort of destabilizing change. I like that it becomes I don't know, iterative, incremental, right?

Like it's like sprints, Notion sprints.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And that's not just Notion. Again, that should be how you should approach any tool as yourself into it and start with them.

Galen Low: Isn't that just a thing too, right? You mentioned yeah, Notion is a very versatile tool. Loads of tools are very versatile tools in terms of they do a lot of things.

It's easy to get that overwhelm to be like, oh, I meant to like. Imprint this over top of just overlay it over top of my entire business or my, all my projects and it's overwhelming of what to decide to use it for even. So even that Notion of prioritizing where there's pain and need and like also just like we're just gonna focus on this like one bit of the capability.

To solve a problem, not try and overhaul everything at once, because yeah, a lot of these tools do everything practically, short of mowing your lawn, like there's a lot of productivity tools, collaboration tools, project management tools. They just, they do everything under the sun because they're trying to stay competitive and useful, but you don't have to use all of the, all the features.

Frances Odera Matthews: Exactly that.

Galen Low: I wondered if I could zoom out a little bit even further because at the Notion Bar as we've been talking about. You're helping organizations implement the right tools, design the right processes. I'm imagining now that a lot of companies are seeking out that AI advantage or at least trying not to get left in the dust.

So I imagine you're talking to a lot of people right now, I think we've been talking about a little bit. But I'm just wondering what some of the biggest obstacles or maybe that one big obstacle or challenge that you see organizations running into these days. That keeps them from getting their people on board with new tools and processes and also what are some of the consequences that you're seeing from that from the front lines?

Frances Odera Matthews: I would say, again, a tool isn't a magic wand and they don't actually know what their processes are. They're just like, we're just gonna get this new thing. There's no like thought or. Time being put into like why they need this tool, how they're gonna roll out this tool. They try to do everything at once, and most importantly, there's not any training.

There's not actually any time aside to train people on how to use the thing and not just the one-off training. You need consistent training. You need consistent sessions where people can drop in and essentially ask questions. Whether it's from a designated champion on your team, maybe you have a champion per department or in like monthly team wide sessions.

And that's what I offer as well. And my, I know them, but people don't value training. They just expect people to know how to use things. But that's just not how, that's just not realistic.

Galen Low: Yeah, and especially I think folks listening as well can probably relate. You get that one time training, it's like part of a scope of some kind of engagement.

They're like, cool. You get your like one day of training and you drink from the fire hose, like for eight hours straight, and then the next day you forget it all and then the rest of it's like help center, right? It's then just search it in the knowledge base. And I'm not that kind of person.

I'm like the please show me that thing that I have a question about now or like this week. Versus oh yeah, I retained everything from that one training session. Or, oh, that's fine. I'll just search until my face goes blue. Trying to find the answer for myself. That's the friction for me. It is like that's the quickest way to lose me on like a tool or a new process.

It's like the RTFM and go read the manual. I'm like, yeah, okay. I get it. That's fine. And that works for some people, but. I dunno, I'm I am someone who would appreciate that sort of like ongoing availability of training from ideally a human to because it's like, it's the change as well, right?

It's not like knowledge transfer. I. It's my discomfort with change that I want help with. And reading a manual doesn't help me get there. My aha moments are usually when somebody's oh, have you seen this thing? I'll be like, oh yes. Oh, that's perfect. Okay, great. Like I didn't see that big blue button there that says do the thing that I want.

Because it's not because I'm not smart, I hope, but because I'm uncomfortable with the change that's been made in my life. To have to figure this out because in the old tool I would've been done already.

Frances Odera Matthews: Exactly. Yeah. Or maybe not because the old tool wasn't good enough and that's why we need a new tool. But that's true to mind, the discomfort is all you can focus on.

Galen Low: One thing that I love your thoughts on actually is just like this Notion that sometimes like process design and tool selection, the gestation period. It's kinda like it happens over a period of time to decide, yes, we need a new tool or we need to redevelop this process.

We gotta bring on some people. We're gonna do these things with plan and execute and iterate and that happens in this like smaller circle. I. And then it's like cool. All those decisions that we made, they're done. Now you can just take the thing that we made and start using it, but actually they've shortchanged the actual time it took them to get on board with the change.

'cause they've got several months of thinking about it and like planning it and like getting accustomed to the change. And then, on the other end, they think they're doing their people a favor by just being like, you don't even have to think about it. Just take this glass of water and drink it, as fast as you can.

And they're like, wait a minute, why do I have a new glass of water? Yeah. Do you find that in some cases organizations and leaders are actually like, well-meaning, but still stuck at change management because of that?

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah. I. They haven't invested enough time in wooing the rest of the team about, or being seeming really excited about this new thing that's coming.

They just, it's just surprise, we're doing this now. I think you've gotta keep, you've gotta breadcrumb, keep in, get their thoughts and feedback on what they want in the new thing as well. So yeah.

Galen Low: I love that word wooing. Because there is sometimes we use the word transparency, but there is such thing as too much information and also creating anxiety and fear by sharing your anxiety and fear along the way.

But I do like that word wooing. And I guess it comes back to that culture thing too, which is, I mean is that something that I guess people are thinking, okay, yes, I wanna implement a new tool and a new process. And you're like, but culture, like what is the first step to identify where there might be just a few like shortcomings in the culture that might be barriers and like what are some ways that you've seen some of those rough patches paved over in the culture?

I. To kind of start making change in these iterations in five day chunks.

Frances Odera Matthews: One thing that I would say is like the concept of being siloed. Do people feel siloed generally? Like how often does your team touch base with each other? Async is great, but I think. It's really important to have like even touch points where you feel like you can have real conversations with people and share information openly.

So if you don't have a culture of openness, it's really hard to get everyone to start using a new tool, which is supposed to make you be more open. 'cause they're like, oh, I don't need to share this thing. I don't need to share this thing. You need to like have that offline first.

Galen Low: It's really interesting because yeah, a lot of the tools are about sort of collaboration. In some ways we're using these tools together, but if the culture is siloed, then the adoption is also siloed.

Frances Odera Matthews: Exactly. And then there's also this thing of constant change and moving goalposts, and you are changing direction all the time. So if that is your state of being, there is no point in trying to adopt at all. Because everyone's mindset is frantic and changing. There's no stability.

Galen Low: That's really interesting.

Frances Odera Matthews: There's no point. There's literally no point because you will fall off with this new thing that you are trying to adopt as well.

Galen Low: That blows my mind a bit because I know a lot of organizations these days in response to the pace of change have built a culture of continuous change.

But what you said at the top, I think rings true, is that we've as humans, right? We've evolved to want a bit of both, but like we want to arrive at stability and security. We know we need to change to get there. You might be, I'm taking this metaphor way too far, but you're like whatever, surviving out in the woods and you're like, this spot isn't safe anymore.

I gotta go somewhere else where there's food, less predators, I'm gonna have to change, but I'm gonna land somewhere stable. And I think sometimes. The cultures that I've been seeing in some organizations that are admirably rapid in terms of getting stuff done, but they never land.

They've just been like circling the the airstrip the whole time and everyone's okay, I guess we're not gonna land. And therefore to your point, we don't really adopt anything fully 'cause it's gonna change. That's actually, it's a really interesting reason to be resistant to change that I hadn't really thought about.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah, because if you've never landed, how do you know what the ground feels like?

Galen Low: Yeah, exactly. What does good look like there? We're thinking about adoption, thinking about change, thinking about someone you've worked with, you don't have to name names, but someone you've worked with where yeah, they did have some things to fix with their culture.

Then once they did, they were able to land a plane and that change stuck and it felt stable and adoption felt good.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah. Oh, I would say it's a client I'm currently working with right now, so they are a fast scaling drink supplement brand in the Middle East and a few things, like all of my favorite things, they've started at a point where there's not a crazy amount of people on the team, so there aren't too many cooks in the kitchen.

There's not a lot to UN's angle there really. They've also identified a champion, so this is a person who works very closely with me, who they've also signed up to my monthly group training. So this is someone who's gonna get continuous training on ocean, always know what's going on. And they've got a phase rollout, so they're very much aware of we're rolling out this bit first or this team first before we get the full team fully onboarded, essentially.

And they're very clear on what they want. And they don't wanna fill Notion with things that aren't ES useful to them. They're not tracking like random KPIs for the sake of tracking KPIs or trying to integrate this random AI tool that they saw some other agency owner like because shiny objects stuff.

Yeah. There's no shiny objects. Like they're very clear on what they want and how things should work, and I'm like, this is great.

Galen Low: How is that feeling on the ground for the team? I don't know if you're like as close to that, but in terms of folks who are receiving on the receiving end of this change, what are some of the sentiments been?

Frances Odera Matthews: I wouldn't know that actually if we're working our way up to the bit where we're rolling it out to the rest of the team. But it would be interesting to hear when that happens.

Galen Low: I really like that approach. I really like the sort of like. Definitely the like sort of discipline to avoid shiny object syndrome.

I love any kind of localized sort of pilot before rolling out a big change. It just gets everyone comfortable, including ourselves as, change agents and I really like that. I know it's not gonna work for everybody, but that like moment of scale, 'cause like change has this sort of I don't know, multiplicity.

In terms of complexity, when you're like seven people change is not easy, but it's a lot easier than when you're 700 people.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yes.

Galen Low: I like that sort of moment of recognition of when to make a change before doing a big sort of growth sprint and then, hoping for the best.

Frances Odera Matthews: Exactly. Exactly. And then it becomes frustrating because in these big companies, there's not as much of a retention rate and then people leave halfway through the project and then it just gets lost in the ether and Yeah.

Galen Low: Absolutely. Yeah. And then, and I think we'll get there eventually too, but and the larger the organization, the more you have like rogue tools and rogue processes that have come about because it took a while to get around to improving some of the processes.

So they're like. Oh yeah, I'm using this other tool. I just expense it. And you're like, oh yeah, where does that data go? What is the process? Could you train someone on that? It's is this, in some cases it's well intentioned again, right? They're like, I want to be better at doing my job and stay organized.

So I, I downloaded this thing and that's how my team works. And then it's yeah. Again, this sort of not boneyard, I was gonna say boneyard, but Yes. It's these little fiefdoms of like tools and processes. Whereas the biggest impact would be to have, some cohesion.

Frances Odera Matthews: And ironically, I. Maybe if someone took some time to map things out in the beginning, they wouldn't have needed to hire so many people because things would just be straightforward. I see that happen a lot as well.

Galen Low: Fair. And like from my perspective, AI functionality is something I think like Notion jumped on it very early. I'm remembering like it was like before this, I'm talking like pre at least my knowledge of ChatGPT, and it was like, okay, yeah, we're gonna leverage generative AI.

And of course like some of it is like exactly what you're saying, right? It's your operating model might actually be different, right? The way you lead projects might be different if you've got an AI tool in your corner and maybe you need fewer people or different people or people doing different things.

And that's something to plan out ahead. I'm gonna use this to pivot a little bit because I think you raised a really good point about almost like being organizations setting up the frameworks early enough so that people aren't going rogue, so that we're not, scaling unnecessarily.

But one thing I wanted to connect it to was like this Notion of AI tools and like freestanding all sorts. I'm not, I'm I'm not gonna I don't think this is isolated to just a few, I find that a lot of individuals on their own, they're doing their own adopting of new tools because their friend told them, or because they feel pressured to stay up to speed.

Maybe their organization hasn't. Set up any governance or any policies around what tools can and cannot be used. So then that's becoming it's almost like accelerating towards this sort of free for all tool and process land. What are just some of the risks, but also maybe what are some of the opportunities posed by having folks bring in their own unofficial tools with no sort of formal or formality, like formal structures around it.

Frances Odera Matthews: I think this again goes back to what is your culture as an organization? Do you have a culture where people are openly sharing information with each other and feel like they're comfortable with bringing in new ideas? Do you have that in the first place? And I don't. Sometimes shiny new objects are good if they're helpful.

Do you have a culture where people feel like they can share and you are willing to listen to them and investigate their idea as a team at least? And that's the bit that's important because when people start just doing things on their own. What ends up happening is that a lot of the time they might be duplicating a process that they don't need to duplicate.

Then all of a sudden they've doubled their work and waste their time, and that's time that they could be using from a business perspective to earn money. And then suddenly you're like, ah, we've got too much work. We need to hire someone else. No, you've just got an efficient place in your process, essentially.

So from a business sense, you are losing money. From a personal level, you are probably someone who feels like you've got too much work and so you've constantly got to play catch up, and so you burn out a leap from a business sense that costs you money 'cause then you now have to go and recruit someone else.

Galen Low: Really interesting as like a symptom, right? It is like people going out and proactively getting their own set of, I'll say rogue, but not in a bad way, their own set of rogue tools. Might actually be a symptom of them feeling like they're, under pressure or feeling, unstable in their sort of role and yeah, maybe overworked.

I think that's really interesting. I also really like that Notion of the culture. It's like such a, like I know we like, it's, I arguably a word that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But the thing that you said there about the culture of sharing. To make sure we're not reduplicating stuff or that there isn't a better way, which originally should have been the reason for sharing anyways.

But sometimes, a sharing culture, sometimes you see like culture of not knocking it, but some organizations they're like, I. No dms, if you're gonna have a chat, have it in a public channel so that everyone can share, and then suddenly everyone's just overwhelmed or flooded with information.

Whereas the sort of risk management standpoint is like, cool. If you're like, we encourage you. Maybe it's not even a like policy quote unquote, but it's like a Yeah. Our culture is yeah, we want you to experiment with stuff. Share what you're learning. Our job is gonna be to like identify where there's need and where we need to go further and pursue it and make it a bit more formal.

Where we're like duplicating effort because we don't really want everyone to find their own tool and solve the same problem when we actually had 700 other problems to fix. And that's it's pragmatic. Do you know what I mean? It's not like gatekeeping, it's not policing, it's just pragmatic business.

Frances Odera Matthews: And I've worked at a lot of agencies and worked with a lot of agencies, and what I've always seen is that the best. Environments that I've been privy to of those environments that in the same way that you have capacity for client work, you have structured capacity for internal improvement and discussions about processes and giving people time to do things like cardiac files or discuss new tools or 'cause that's just as important as your billable hours.

Galen Low: I love that. How do you frame the ROI to folks who might be a bit resistant to that idea? Because I've been there as well. Like I know that there's value in being organized and doing internal improvements, when there's money on the table from client work, I've found, multiple organizations, it's really hard thing to kind of balance or say no to.

Frances Odera Matthews: If you need a metric to put it up against, work out what that time is and what that would cost you against your recruitment costs. Because people don't like change, but they definitely do not like chaos. They will leave. They will leave.

Galen Low: I like that Notion of yeah, the cost of not doing it actually Yeah.

Is something that's pretty easy to at least ballpark. I know I've been talking a little bit like like at a sort of change agent, decision maker sort of leadership kind of level. A lot of the time this change like is delivered or managed by middle management. And I'm just thinking in your opinion, what's the best way for folks who are like stuck in between like project managers.

How can folks in the middle deal with teams that are like resistant to change and won't adopt a tool? Maybe because they just have like tool or change fatigue?

Frances Odera Matthews: I think. You need to be receptive to just everyone's feedback, first of all, and it will be specific to every team, but based on the resistance, you can judge how much you need to phase your rollout bike.

If there's a ton of resistance by everybody, then you need to like really like baby step people in. But if you have, I don't know, maybe 70% of people who are like, yeah, relatively okay with it, then maybe have a relatively, okay, like slower rollout, but then you identify champions from those 70 people, maybe the top 10% who hold the hands of the lower 30% essentially.

And so you don't leave them behind. Basically, but if everyone's going home, then yeah, go for it.

Galen Low: I like that Notion of champions at every level. I think a lot of the conversations around change are like, yeah, find your champions. And usually the example is yeah, someone from your C-suite, I.

Should be an advocate of this change or someone influential who's like head of department should be, doing X or Y. But I love what you just said about like within your team and like for my audience, like within your project team folks that you might not even be the direct manager over top of, if you can find those champions, that also is a strategy that will work for you at this sort of middle layer.

And also that, yeah, the value of the feedback. I know it's like. I framed the question as a sort of, yeah. Stuck in that don't shoot the messenger sort of role. We are like, sorry, leadership says we need to use this new tool and use this new process, and my job is to deliver the message, but actually it's bi-directional and that's actually one of the most useful things in change management.

Especially if there's the right culture to be like, listen. Also, can you tell us how it's going, like down there on the ground? We're not there, we're not seeing people won't even tell us the truth because, X or Y that's there's hierarchy and there's like pressure and they're worried about their job security.

But can you be that person who relays feedback to us, in a meaningful way and or can we empower you to make some changes or recommendations on how we do this? And the pacing thing is like something that like, I think doesn't get talked about enough, right? Which is oh yeah, 90% of the team is like really upset about this.

And instead of trying to force it faster or like just stick to a plan, which, project managers are great at, it's listen, there's a risk that this could all fall apart and all this investment and no one's gonna adopt this change. Everyone's gonna be unhappy. We're gonna see churn.

Can we just stretch it out a bit? Can we like change the pacing of this so that we give people more time? To ask questions and give feedback and we can refine these things and just all together just get on board and get comfortable with this change. I think it's a lever that doesn't get pulled enough, frankly, where it's not binary.

It's okay, people are upset. Throw out this tool we bought and like just burn all the documentation for the process. That never happens, but also just like slowing the pace. I find not a lot of folks do that. Think of it. I think it's a really nice way to, to go about it.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah. That is the most ideal world.

Although I do recognize that we are unfortunately under the pillars of capitalism and if the change does need to happen quickly, something quite radical but does work is you literally have to get rid of the old tools. You have to not give people a choice but to using the new tool and in that case, they will be pissed, quite frankly.

But what you do to counteract that anger is that you identify your champions and along every step of the way, you have people hold each other's like hands along the way, but you have to get rid of it.

Galen Low: That's really interesting actually. I didn't think you were gonna say that, but you're right. There is sometimes the reality is change needs to happen fast.

Adoption needs to happen fast for reasons, external to like your team culture. There is a right way to do it and do it empathetically. I sometimes find myself involved in conversations that are like, it's not exactly what I call change management more than what I would consider to be a plan to cram this change down people's throats, which is like the far, the other side of the extreme, but I like the sort of middle ground where it's listen, we need to change fast.

We are gonna cut off the old tool. We're giving a brief window, but we can't have people slip back into the old tool. Maybe there's like licensing costs, like we did a CRM transition and like CRMs, like if you can afford to have two at the same time, you're doing great. Most people can't. So there's this transition period and then we need to stop using it and we're all in this together.

And we have built a culture of sharing and safety and empathy to know that. Yeah. We do need to just push ahead and fast and it's not gonna be comfortable, but that's recognize that at least and be all in it together.

Frances Odera Matthews: Exactly. Like high school musical.

Galen Low: There you go. When in doubt, revisit the high school musical set of films.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah, exactly.

Galen Low: I would be remiss not to ask. The Notion expert, in my opinion, what is the most popular project related use case for Notions AI features? That your clients are asking you about?

Frances Odera Matthews: I can tell you what it is right now and what it's about to be actually with a new lease.

So what it is right now is you say you've got all of these SOPs everywhere across Notion, but maybe across other apps like Google Drive, et cetera. You can just ask Notion like AI Hey, tell me about our vacation. I. Policies and then it will scan everything and it'll give you a summary. So that is what Notion people are using Notion AI a lot for is just to get high level information across information that is scattered across different places.

But I think the most exciting use of Notion AI is basically I have access to it 'cause I'm a Notion ambassador slash consultant, but a lot. They're starting to phase it out to people is AI meeting notes. So there, there will be AI meeting note blocks that you can just put into any page. It's actually really good.

Like the summaries are very good. And so I think teams will use that a lot.

Galen Low: That is one of my favorite use cases for AI in general right now. Partly because it's the most mature. Partly it's 'cause it's AI right now, the generative stuff is good at natural language processing. Guess what?

Note taking and summarizing is it's natural language processing. And then I like that it plugs into Notion 'cause like context is king.

And yes, there's like lots of note takers out there. AI note takers, but having a sort of separate tool that's gonna send you an email that then you need to copy and paste back into Notion is I don't know, it's clunky.

And I like this idea that there's probably, section you've got like your page in Notion where you've got all these details and then the context of the meetings that we've had around it. And there's summarized and then coming back to the original thing about just the power of aI powered search.

I'm calling it search. I don't know if that's the right word. Functionally, we see it as search. It's gonna look at all the information that it's been training on. Bring you back answers from within Notion, but also if I'm understanding you correctly, from outside of Notion as well. I think that's so cool.

Honestly, we spend so much time, I was gonna say alt tabbing between tools and then I realized I've been a Mac user for 20 years, but, we like switch between all of these apps and all these tabs in our browser and coming back to that ROI of efficiency or like having good internal process or good tools like.

Some of it is just like time wasted context switching or like finding that tab amongst your 43 tabs and then remembering what it is that you were going to do and not getting distracted by something else. There's an ROI to that kind of efficiency as well, but also there's a comfort to that kind of efficiency.

Yeah, like it's more, it's less destabilizing to be like, cool, I know where to go and I can just ask a thing and then will bring it back to me and I can carry on with My day is almost like. The opposite of what I normally think of for like tool adoption. Normally it's I'm gonna be slower.

I'm gonna have to figure out how to use it. I'm going to have to teach it all this stuff and connect all these apps and all these things. It's gonna make me slower. Whereas I like that some of this is like almost, it's pretty quickly gonna make you faster. I love that. For folks who are liking what they're hearing, where can they learn more about you?

Frances Odera Matthews: So you can find me, if you go to my website, theNotionbar.com. You can find links out to all of the things that I do across social. So I'm most active on LinkedIn at the moment, and then I also have a weekly newsletter, The Notion Zeitgeist, where I drop weekly tips about Notion and new releases, and is also the home of my monthly group coaching.

Galen Low: Love that. That sounds like a great way to keep your finger on the pulse. Things are changing so fast. Yes. It's overwhelming. Yes. Change is continuous. It's always happening. But I think, we need people like you to help us make sense of it all.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah, thanks. Just doing what I can, doing what I can. And of course if you are a London Business Babe, go listen to Coffee & Oysters.

Galen Low: Yes. Coffee & Oysters. I'm a big fan. I love what you're doing there. It's really important and yeah, I think you're nailing it there. Just a fanboy a little bit.

Frances Odera Matthews: Appreciates it. You're a London Business Babe.

Galen Low: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Honorary. Awesome.

Frances, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. It's been a lot of fun. It's always loads of fun chatting with you.

Frances Odera Matthews: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Galen Low: All right folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective. Head on over to thedpm.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.