Getting Your Team Out Of Process Documentation Hell

[00:00:00] Galen Low: Hey folks, welcome to our panel discussion on getting your team out of process documentation hell using automation and AI and other technology. We do events like this once every month as a way for our members and our VIP guests to engage directly with the experts who contribute and collaborate with us here at the Digital Project Manager.

Um, For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Galen Lowe. I am the co founder of the Digital Project Manager and your host for today. And I’ve also got with me an amazing trio of agency operations experts, Alison Caffrey, Gray McKenzie, and Brian Kessman. Woo! Let’s dive in. Today, we are exploring the practical realities of whether AI, automation, and other bits of tech can help take away that pain of documenting and reinforcing your processes so that your teams can finally function consistently, predictably, effectively, all those good adverbs.

But first, Let’s [00:01:00] meet our panelists. Um, first up, I’m going to start with Ms. Alison Caffrey, founder of Operations Agency. Um, and Ali, last year you wrote a book called The Sabbatical Method, which helps, uh, business owners and founders and others, um, get set up to be able to step away from their business, not be entrenched in it, and then this year you ran into a bit of real estate hell, uh, and had a, A bit of a debacle, uh, trying to get, trying to get into a new house, which I imagine took you a bit away from your business.

How did it feel using your own sabbatical method and your own tips from your book and your practice on yourself?

[00:01:37] Alyson Caffrey: That’s an excellent question. And you know, we plan a month off every summer. And so in a perfect world, when we were trying to sell our house, We took the whole month of July to sell the place and get over to Colorado, which is where we are now.

And what ended up happening was the timeline kept getting pushed back. So we really ended up with two additional months of me being very out of the business, which actually ended up being a huge gift. [00:02:00] Because I think that when all the plans go really well, it’s easy to execute something. But then when stuff ends up unexpected, it’s all about the way that you respond to it.

Um, and so I love this opportunity to be able to really stress test my own, uh, frameworks. It actually also helped me develop some new ones that I’ve been teaching in our community, which honestly, again, huge gift.

[00:02:33] Galen Low: I mean, like what a great case study, right? Yeah. Yeah. Rode it. Used it. Refined it and it’s ready, ready for action.

[00:02:39] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. 2. 0 version coming soon, you guys.

[00:02:42] Galen Low: Awesome. Awesome. Great to have you here. Uh, next up, uh, I’ll introduce Gray McKenzie, uh, founder and CEO of ZenPilot. Uh, and Gray, your team, you focus a lot on ClickUp, but other platforms as well, like helping agencies and other organizations sort of, you know, get their workflows and get their processes really tight, [00:03:00] um, which also means you stay really close to some of these product roadmaps and you had posted, you know, the other week about.

Getting excited about looking at some of the product roadmaps, especially in ClickUp. What’s something that you see, you know, coming up that’s really exciting for you.

[00:03:14] Gray MacKenzie: Yeah, I think, I don’t know if anyone’s played with motion at all. And there’s a couple of different AI scheduling or reclaim. ai. Like there’s a bunch of different AI scheduling tools.

ClickUp’s getting, they acquired a kind of quietly acquired a calendar company. It might have even been last year. And so there’s a whole calendar revamp and, um, AI as part of that moving into what’s coming. So Rodrigo, who’s leading that out, um, has some really ambitious plans about where. The calendar piece goes and the early betas are pretty exciting.

So that, that was one of the things that prompted my, uh, late night, LinkedIn posts is it felt a lot like one of the core reasons we chose ClickUp was just their product velocity and, um, Anyway, so it’s just exciting to see that that has not slowed down. Like so [00:04:00] many other companies slow down over time.

[00:04:01] Galen Low: I love that.

And that’s so up my alley too. It’s close to my heart. Like, uh, like calendaring, it’s an underrepresented, uh, like time suck that I think needs some solutions. So that’s really exciting. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Uh, and last but not least, um, Mr. Brian Kessman, Brian Kessman, uh, founder, principal consultant at lodestar agency, uh, Uh, Brian, you, I loved your post on LinkedIn the other a few weeks back.

I mean, you’re like, Hmm, what if I use AI to kind of productize my own service as a consultant to help other organizations productize value? Should I do it? Should I not do it? Am I, am I basically shooting myself in the foot? Um, you’ve now launched that. Uh, it’s in practice. How are you feeling about your decision to like digitize yourself?

[00:04:50] Brian Kessman: Yeah, great question. It’s a, you know, I did wrestle with it for a while because I thought, am I going to put myself out of business? If I have AI that can basically do the same. Um, but I, I [00:05:00] tested it. I wanted to put that to, to really the true test to see if the same quality and the output would, would result.

But, um, what I realize is that, you know, there’s the strategic and people side of what I do, which is, you know, positioning productization, operating model design. When I work with agencies, they want to be in the room. They, they, they want the guidance. They want to tap into the experiences that, you know, we all have as consultants.

And so the AI is not going to do that. Right. So I figured the place for AI is really about the, the implementation piece, right, the, the piece that is predictable, the piece that can be replicated with clear, you know, inputs and expectations and clear outputs. And so that’s what I did. That’s productizationpartners.

com and it’s, it’s been going well. And it’s essentially. Automating documentation, go to market documentation for my clients, uh, as soon as we productize their offering. So it’s, it’s working out well.

[00:05:52] Galen Low: I love that. I think it’s like, so, um, relevant to today’s conversation, uh, about process. I kind of made it, [00:06:00] you know, I was being cheeky.

Process documentation, Hal. I think we all kind of feel it, but it’s not just, let’s not only cover, you know, documenting process. Um, you know, I see some things in the chat about how can we make it take less time, how can we, um, get people to adopt these processes? How can we make it easy? Um, how can we either extend the shelf life of our processes or have a good way to update them?

Um, but I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me, let me tee this up. Um, I would say. I would say that most teams at agencies and also within other organizations are actually quite terrible at standardizing project and operational processes and also writing them down. Uh, maybe it’s because they see every project or person doing the job as being different, sort of unique snowflakes.

Maybe it’s because they want to foster this culture of like building the plane while they fly it, or maybe they just have this internal allergy to standardization. Um, but a lot of the time, like intentions are good. Uh, and the blocker is often, and someone said it in the chat. The blogger is often time, um, you know, for agencies, it’s non billable time.

That’s leaving money on the [00:07:00] table for small businesses. It’s an opportunity cost for any team. It’s tedious. It’s boring. It’s repetitive. Um, Yeah, usually there’s something, right? Usually there’s like a wiki, but maybe it’s not up to date, or there’s a pile of screen recordings waiting to be transcribed, or polished, or turned into a full document.

Um, and sometimes the process is honestly just an oral tradition passed down from person to person with no written record at all. But the problem is, without good process documentation, your team’s gonna be lost. Your stakeholders are going to be confused and your organization won’t be able to scale towards its goals.

Um, so really the question I wanted to discuss and explore today, not as a lesson, but as a, as a, as a conversation is why isn’t there a better way in this? day and age of AI driven technology and all of this process automation to make process documentation and adoption just like smoother auto magic.

Like aren’t we there yet? Um, and you know, I suspect the answer is yes and no. Um, but I thought [00:08:00] maybe we could dive into it. Honestly, I think maybe just to tee it up, um, let’s start with the big question, which is, Yeah. Why is creating process documentation and standard operating procedures so painful in agencies and other organizations?

Uh, Allie, do you want to lead us off? You deal with a lot of folks in process pain.

[00:08:20] Alyson Caffrey: Oh yeah. We do a lot of documentation work at operations agency. And I think what folks struggle to, I think, understand with it. Is that it’s not a one and done project, right? So we can’t just bite this, this project off one time and not think that it’s going to need to be updated or refined or amplified over time.

And so there’s usually a three phase process, um, in which I kind of like assess whether a process is good or not good, right? And the first is we need to understand that we can be in these three phases. And only when we understand where we are, can we effectively create documentation or work to get ourselves into the next bucket.

So. The cycle is first you test [00:09:00] something. So let’s just say, you know, one of the key processes in any business, right? Is how do we generate leads, right? Let’s just use that one as an example. So the first thing that we want to do is we say, Oh, are we in the testing phase of this? Are we throwing the spaghetti at the wall and figuring out what’s going to net us?

The best leads and the highest quality prospects and things like that. Um, the second phase is the adjusting phase. So maybe we found a pretty good way, but we need to like work on the copy or work on the platform that we’re, you know, putting this on. And so are we in that adjusting phase? And then the third phase, um, is the operationalized phase, right.

And the amplify, so you can actually operationalize it and then you can scale it, right. So I think a lot of people think that they’re in the operationalized phase. And then they go to do their documentation, and then they’re like, actually, I’m in the testing phase. And so that’s why when I saw shelf life coming through the chat, I was like, yeah, shelf life is going to suffer if you’re in the testing phase because you’re constantly going to need to be updating best practices and ways that you’re finding on doing things.

So I think before you [00:10:00] sit down to tackle a documentation project, we need to take a look at the four major processes in the business. How do we get leads? How do we convert those leads? How do we fulfill and keep the promises that we make to clients? And then how do we improve? Those are the four big things.

Like we don’t have to complicate it. And then we ask ourselves the question, are we testing lead getting? Are we testing, uh, you know, conversion mechanisms? And if the answer is yes, then we might need to do a little bit more work before we write stuff down.

[00:10:27] Galen Low: I love that. And I see that happen so much and I’m guilty of it too.

Or I’m like, we’re testing this thing. I better write it down so we can, I don’t know, test harder. And then like, come back like six months later, I’m like, well, this document, I didn’t even finish writing a sentence in it, you know, like it’s like, you know, uh, it was a good intention, but not the right stage.

Uh, and I love that you’ve kind of broken it down into sort of like different parts of the business. Uh, not necessarily to oversimplify, but to like reduce the overwhelm of, Hey, let’s document everything we do in our company today.

[00:10:56] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. Yeah. Because if you’ve got like the temperature of the [00:11:00] room, you know, when you’re on a sales call, like that’s too much documentation.

Like we got to ratchet that back a little bit. So be encouraged by the answer is like first assess where you are and figure out whether or not documentation is actually, you know, just a pipe dream or whether you can actually do it. And then of course, don’t go too far in any direction, right? Because if we are new to this process documenting game, you want to be able to stay lean and stay nimble with, you know, that resource.

[00:11:25] Galen Low: Love that. Love that. Brian, I’m wondering, uh, you know, if you’ve got anything to add to that. I know you kind of like. You’re working in sort of op model and strategy, uh, specifically for agencies. Um, you know, where does process documentation come in and like, how are you framing it to your clients about this is important at these times?

Uh, and yes, it’s going to be a pain or, or maybe here’s how it won’t be a pain.

[00:11:47] Brian Kessman: Yeah. So, uh, when, uh, when a client contacts me and we start talking about process, I have to sort of point them back to the strategy of their overall organization. Cause [00:12:00] process is what makes the strategy come to life in the end.

Right. And so. There’s a few. I mean, I think you asked originally, like what, why is it so painful? Process documentation is so painful in agencies. And I think there’s a question of what factors need to be, or what pieces need to be put into place for it to even be possible. Um, so there’s, there’s things that I see all the time.

Like, uh, if an agency’s business strategy is that we’re a firm for all kinds of clients and we do all kinds of work, well, there’s never going to be a standardized process in that type of environment, right? And I’ve seen that way too many times. Because you get, you know, what happens is lots of reinvention of services.

Every project’s different, recreating the wheel, all of that. So how can you possibly have a process for that? Even if you try, it’s going to change, right? And so that just creates frustration, burnout, all the, all the stuff that you, you know, right. Um, but there’s other things at play, which is the agency business model in general.

Right. It’s actually working against an agency’s own success. Uh, if, if the agency is still using a [00:13:00] labor based business model, selling billable hours, the culture and the priorities for the business are going to be influenced by billable utilization. And so it’s always going to be about getting work done, not internal process, servicing client needs first and foremost.

Uh, and then there’s, there’s one other piece of that, that I’ll add in. And that’s usually team structure. All right. That also creates some complexity. Uh, it really, the traditional team structure that I see all the time really fosters the wrong mindset and behaviors. So the example is when today, like most traditional firms, new work comes in and people are going to be assigned to projects from different disciplines.

We’re going to pluck who’s available or who’s right for the job. Sort of that Hollywood model casting the right talent for the job. Um, but every project that a team members on Has its own set of meetings. So meetings start to multiply communication overhead of multiplies. And so rather than, you know, in a dedicated team structure or the pod model, I think, you know, it’s others know it by, and that’s where the team stays together from [00:14:00] project to project.

And what that does, it builds a shared sense of team. And the group is really focused on working better together. And there’s not any, there’s not going to be a resistance to process in that setting as there will be in a temporary project team setting. Right. And so there’s greater ownership and interest.

And you’re going to be working with that team together ongoing. So how do we just figure out how to work better together? Everyone’s invested in it. So I think those are some of the key pieces. And that’s the lens that I look at the question through.

[00:14:30] Galen Low: I love that because like, you know, I’ve worked in, uh, agencies and other organizations of various sizes.

And like, one of the hardest things to do is like, Wholesale rollout, a process across the entire organization. Uh, and you would need to do that if you had these sort of temporary teams that are always dynamic. And, you know, like, how are we doing things all the same way? The answer is no one ever does in that configuration, but if it’s a team process, then like, Hey, it’s actually everybody’s job to own that process, deliver that process, document that process.

And it’s not this thing that you have to go and evangelize and convince the [00:15:00] rest of the organization. It’s something that is more localized and therefore less painful to kind of. Define, I guess.

[00:15:06] Brian Kessman: Yeah. And I think there’s still a layer of foundational structure for the firm, such as everybody needs to use the same project management system so that we can work across groups and teams and all of that.

But then there’s also the team level culture and process wide. Right. And so how do we, how do we create that?

[00:15:22] Galen Low: Love that. Love that. Um, I’m imagining that. All three of you probably encounter, uh, clients and folks in your network who, um, just want to fight you. They want to fight you tooth and nail on, you know, not investing.

They want to not invest in their sort of process ecosystem. Um, how do you sort of frame the value of this sort of investment of time to some of your, your, your sort of naysayers, which is great. I know that in my conversations with you, I know that this is sort of, It comes up, right? When you’re working with, um, with clients of like, we don’t need to do this.

Great. It seems like a waste. Can’t we just plug in [00:16:00] the machine, turn it on and start making more money? Uh, how do you kind of frame the value of this and sort of endeavor?

[00:16:07] Gray MacKenzie: Right. So the reason that this feels like hell or we can’t make time for it in a lot of cases is because we’re not getting value from it.

No, nobody. Very rarely are, um, owners saying, boy, these sales calls take a lot of time. Like, I just can’t make time for sales calls. It’s like, no, cause we’ve seen the value that comes out of a sales call. But the reality is most people have not experienced the value that comes from really well done. Uh, processes where you can actually hand stuff off.

Ali, a question I want to come back to you on at some point is like, what is the threshold? How do we know when we’re now in the operationalize, um, or amplify phase? What are the, what are the benchmarks, um, for that? I’ve got some thoughts around how we identify where can we scale this or not? But, um, that’s the reason that it’s hard for folks to value this or [00:17:00] create time for it.

Um, it’s because they haven’t experienced the benefit that comes from having really easy to deploy. Right. Processes for their team to be able to delegate quickly and save time. Ultimately, uh, the, you know, you’re getting value if it’s done well, you’re getting value on two different hands. The first one is the efficiency.

So it’s either, Hey, we can do things faster or we may even be doing things. Slower, but we’re doing it with more cost efficient, uh, labor model. So it’s on that side. And then the other side of it is, um, what’s the outcome? What’s the efficacy of what we’re doing? Not efficiency, but how effective is what we’re doing.

And so that piece is around, Hey, remember the last three times that we did this and we screwed it up twice and. Because of that, that’s the piece that works. That’s the pain that we’re trying to avoid. So in terms of framing the value, it’ll be on one of those two sides at a minimum, usually two, but everyone is feeling kind of a different component of that.

So that’s where I’ll try to drill into conversations with [00:18:00] folks and figure out, Hey, what, what piece, uh, is the one that hurts the most to help motivate you? Like you can invest in. You’ve got process either way. Like there is a process currently, it’s just not documented. Everyone’s got a different process for how they do it, but there’s a process for how things happen right now.

Um, so you like, either way, you’re going to invest. You’re either going to pay in the consequences for not having done this on the front end, or you’re going to pay, uh, you know, some upfront work to make things smoother in the future. You can decide where you want the pain and the payment to happen, but you’re going to pay for it either way.

And really this is about. Um, not necessarily, Hey, do you have to work with ZenPilot to do this or not? We’ve agreed process makes sense for you and you decide what piece is going to motivate you. Like I’m, I’m trying to help folks get motivated to take that step towards, Hey, let’s, let’s invest in the areas where we ought to be investing here.

[00:18:52] Galen Low: I like that idea. Cause I, you know, I was, I knew you would go to the attributes and things like people not seeing the benefit directly from good [00:19:00] process, uh, design and documentation, but I hadn’t thought of the other thing, which is most of us haven’t seen what good looks like yet. But the pain we have is real, right?

The pain we have is real, and we can kind of get to good that would solve that pain. Um, and I like that sort of measurement angle of like, yeah, we all have the stories of the client that left, but like, are we measuring, like, the sort of benefit of some of the improvements we’re making to process? I do think, I like that you threw it to Ali, and I want to go there, actually, if we could, before we dive into some practical stuff.

I think the threshold question is interesting, you know? It’s like, when do you know that you’ve moved from testing to the next phase, and that phase to operationalization? When do you know when the right time is to start writing stuff down?

[00:19:41] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, so I think this is an excellent question, gray, and honestly, I get asked this a lot and I’m gonna tell a story first and then I’ll get a little bit more tactical.

Um, when I was in high school, I used to keep the stats, um, for basketball. And that taught me a lot because I was never a basketball player. I’m like a whopping five two, like never was [00:20:00] a great basketball player. I always want it to be, I love to watch basketball, I love to, um, be involved in the sport. And so we would keep these stats and what I would see in the stats.

being handed over to the coaches is that the coaches would take the stats and then they would augment the way that they would practice the next day. And I think that’s a really important analogy to kind of wrap our heads around at our agency. Because if we are moving from testing to changing, you know, augmenting process, We first need to measure the impact of some of those things, right?

Whether that’s, you know, decreasing our cost per lead or increasing our lifetime value or increasing our gross profit on projects, right? Those are three really key components that if I’m testing something, I’m changing some things around. I can keep those kind of three big numbers in my purview or whichever numbers I’m hoping that these implementation of processes will actually affect.

And then I can start to say, cool, now that I know that this particular project structure or tackling quality assurance or revisions in this [00:21:00] way helps us keep clients longer or have higher gross profit on our projects. Now it’s time to put that thing down on paper because I’ve done a required amount of, you know, connection between the business improvement metrics.

The other thing is like, I think Kobe Bryant said, best never get bored with the basics. Like you have to do the reps. I think a lot of us think that we go to change a process or we go to implement something. And I think instead of saying that that thing doesn’t work in the very beginning, we actually don’t give ourselves a long enough runway to see if it does improve our agency over time.

That proverbial shiny object. Syndrome, like every little thing looks like grass is greener on the other side. So I always encourage my agency owners to connect process improvement with an actual business metric that they can actually see that it does improve the business. And then the second is actually give yourself enough runway to make sure that this works.

Usually I like to do 90 days. It’s a really elegant, it’s a quarter of time. You’re usually measuring things in the business at that [00:22:00] rate anyway. So I’m a big fan of the give it 90 days and see how it works.

[00:22:05] Galen Low: I like that whole thing around like, um, We all have process because we’re all doing something. Um, but maybe we shouldn’t make it until we know it’s working.

And in order to know it’s working, we kind of have to be, we have to give it enough time. And we have to be intentional about what we’re measuring before we just throw it away. Um, or before we start spending like, you know, three days a week. Um, you know, 24 hours a week to like writing process down without knowing if it works or not.

I wonder if maybe we can dive in. I see it happening in the chat right now. Anyhow, we’re diving into sort of tools and we’re diving into sort of, you know, some tips and best practices. Um, and I thought maybe I’d open it up to, to the panel as well. Um, I’m just wondering, like delivering, uh, answering the mail on, on, on the title of this, you know, what tools and technology are you all using with your clients to like remove that pain when you get to that point of creating process documentation and [00:23:00] also.

Are these tools working for them? Are there situations where actually it ends up holding them back and you’re like, no, no, no, we actually probably shouldn’t use this. Um, Allie, I thought I’d start with you because, um, you know, I was, I was watching the webinar you were on, uh, last week with Marcel. Um, you had, you had said something that jumped out.

You said, record your screen. And I remember you had said that to me like three years ago. And I was like, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, I got it. And now. AI is changing everything. It’s not just recording your screen. There’s more to it. Um, can you, can you share about some of like how that works for your clients in terms of like taking a screen recording and then having it come out as something that is a usable sort of referenceable process?

[00:23:40] Alyson Caffrey: Yes. And loom, anybody there, if you’re listening, please sponsor me. Um, I’m a big, big fan of loom loom also just recently, um, released as a, I think a few months ago, like an AI feature to create documents and things like that. Um, that is personally my favorite, um, kind of landing place [00:24:00] for documenting processes, at least in the very beginning.

So the two reasons I love it are because they bookend the, the, uh, Documentation experience. The first is if you don’t have processes and you don’t have time to create processes and all those things, what’s likely happening is you’re working in your business. And if you can fold that time and record your screen and show somebody else how you’re getting these types of results, Even if the process isn’t perfect, they can likely take that video and pick that up, or you can get AI to work on a document for somebody and then they can go replicate that again.

Even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not massively scalable, if we’re still in that testing phase, right? So that’s number one, bookend. The end book end, which I actually think is super important, is that when you go and use a I to create your processes, so we use scribe quite a bit with our clients. I use loom and the a I function because that fits best with my workflow.

Um, but when you are writing all of your processes, I think what a I can do a really great job of is going to organizing, categorizing step by step [00:25:00] and making sure that things look nice flowable. But the real secret sauce, I think, especially for agencies that are looking to grow quickly is keeping quality under control and at the forefront.

So we can go through a process, but somebody can phone it in. But we really need to know to use Tony Robbins is a definition. He says definition of done right. Like what is that? thing that we should walk away with. And I think recording your screen does a fantastic job of being like, this is what the website wireframe should look like.

If you’ve run this process correctly and having a wealth of examples through the one on one work that either you’ve done or an account director or a lead builder at your agency has done can help kind of amass multiple examples of what this quality should look like at your agency. Um, so. Loom all day, when in doubt, loom it out, is my opinion.

[00:25:54] Galen Low: Does the loom side ever sort of create any sort of, um, I don’t know, I was going to say limitations for [00:26:00] folks. A, I was thinking of like, A, that paralysis of like, okay, well, we won’t document this process until we have a wireframe that’s good enough to be the benchmark of quality in this loom video. Uh, and like, secondly, you know, I’m imagining there’s a lot of folks who are like, Please don’t make me go on camera.

I don’t want to be recorded. I don’t want to, you know, be sort of documented. I just, just let me type.

[00:26:23] Alyson Caffrey: I mean, no, you don’t have to be recorded, so you don’t have to turn your camera on. You can just, you know, show your screen and kind of talk through things. I think that’s a really important thing. And then like zooming out 30, 000 feet, like my opinion on operations, isn’t that operations in a business exists to put red tape all over stuff.

It really just shows us how we rebound, like how we fix stuff that we break so that nothing falls through the cracks, right? It like seals a nice foundation for us because we shouldn’t believe that for an entire year or for an entire three years that we’re never going to find a better way to do something.

That’s just. Asinine, right? Like we’re always gonna find better ways to do things. Our processes are [00:27:00] going to be improving. They’re going to be changing. And so to me, I’m like, well, I’d rather just swap out a loom video on something. I found a better way to do a week from now, rather than go through the whole process of like updating the S.

O. P. And then putting it into our knowledge base and then rolling it out to the team. Like those air for the things that we’ve already made it into phase three on right that we know we want to amplify and that I’d want to train somebody on in terms of a best practice. Yes. So I love loom. It’s a great, like little incubator tool to be able to kind of share some of the things, in my opinion, that I’m working on that other people can help me with.

[00:27:34] Galen Low: Love that. See some folks in the chat also loving loom. Um, Brian, I thought maybe I’d throw to you, are there any other sort of tools and techniques, sort of technology hacks, I guess, so to speak, um, that you’ve seen your clients, uh, working with, or that you’re recommending to your clients in terms of just like how they are capturing the process of what they’re doing?

[00:27:54] Brian Kessman: Yeah. Uh, so, so just a little context on the role I play sort of in this camp. Um, so there’s two [00:28:00] ways that I would help in, in related to your question. One is first setting up an AI council with the agency so that we can determine their tech strategy and policies, all of that and quality expectations, um, data security, all of that.

And we choose the right tools. The second is, um, uh, not necessarily documenting the process on their behalf, but creating the work sessions so that we can get that from the teams, right? So that they all have that, um, Ownership over that process. And then I’ll coach somebody on how to now build that out.

So there are a couple tools that we would use. Um, but we need to figure out. Are we writing documentation for people? Or are we writing documentation for machines to automate workflows? And so there’s two categories there. That’s how I look at it, right? So for people, it’s got to be easily consumable, right?

So the tools that, uh, that we focus on there is custom GPTs or assistance, uh, through open AI. And that’s really easy for drafting processes, take what you learned in those work sessions or from interviews with team members and let. The custom GPT, however you configure it, um, write the documentation, organize your, your insights, [00:29:00] the analysis, all of that, uh, as a draft.

There’s also, you know, you know, this, you all know this workflow platforms, click up monday. com notion. They have all, everything has AI built in now. So is that enough? Right. Do we really need to introduce another tool? Um, on the video side, though, loom is, is excellent. I’m not, I’m familiar with looms full capabilities, uh, but I have come across a tool called tango, which is where you, if you’re familiar with it, you just screen recordings and it creates the chapters and the documentation for you.

I mean, you just walk through it and it’ll take care of basically most of most of the task. Uh, scribe is another, someone was mentioning that in the street, in the chat. Uh, if your product manager chat, PRD is a, is a great product for writing product requirement docs, um, and test it for other purposes too.

You’d be surprised what you get back and it can be really helpful. Uh, and then Jasper for marketing needs. So, so that’s all the people side of things. But then there’s for the machines, right? And so I don’t know if you’ve, uh, the recent news from open AI [00:30:00] or, or others in the industry are saying open AI will be publishing their first agent, uh, or releasing their first agent functionality by the end of the year or early next year.

So now agents can follow workflow. You can automate workflows with your agents. And so if that’s true, that’s. That’s amazing. I’m interested to see what that’s like, but there are other tools out there now where you can do that. And so, um, and it’s all about prompting the, the AI to follow this specific steps of your workflow and then combining all those agents to complete that workflow.

And so copy AI is great for any sort of go to market or sales or marketing needs. Um, there’s make, uh, make. com. I believe it is right for just general workflows and writer. com. Also can automate workflows. So all of those are really powerful tools. And, uh, yeah, so, so that’s how I look at it. It’s really those two categories.

Um, I can. Keep going. Let me, let me pause and give you a chance.

[00:30:52] Galen Low: I love that sort of like, I hadn’t, I hadn’t even really necessarily grouped them together in my mind, the sort of process for humans and process for [00:31:00] machines, like automation. I kind of think of as like, sure, we’re going to, you know, document steps, but I like this notion of like, Creating, um, approaching in a different way to create an experience for whoever is going to be executing the task or whatever is going to be executing the task and like, yeah, this notion of agents has been like flooding my feed recently, right?

I was like, Oh, no, agents are coming. They’re taking our jobs and blah, blah, blah. But like, I love that thought of how can we set ourselves up for success so that we can kind of feed this in. To an agent situation.

[00:31:28] Brian Kessman: Well, the nice thing is that it’s really not all that different, right? If you’re speaking to the, OR typing to the AI as you would a human in terms of setting those expectations, providing the inputs, giving examples of the quality you’re expecting, it’s all just natural.

So it’s just a matter of how you break it up into specific agents, and that’s really the hardest part of it all. And there’s UI interface. You need to learn how to navigate, but it’s generally pretty easy. You can, you can probably figure it out in half a day.

[00:31:52] Galen Low: Is there like a criteria you follow to be like, this has to be a human process right now, and this is something that we should automate?

Um, what does that sort of conversation look like? [00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Brian Kessman: Yeah, well, I start by thinking about who’s going to be following the process in terms of are they looking for like, is it predictable? Is it a predictable process? You’re not going to need any guidance. There’s no question whatsoever. The inputs again, you can define those really clearly.

You can set the expectation for outputs. You have example, and it can complete a task from start to finish. automate that. Still, there’s always human revision or review, but you can also create an agent to do that for you as a first step too, and then can give it to yourself. Um, so that’s what I look for, right?

And then the other area is people, uh, the people side where we can’t automate. It’s going to be, is there trust? Is there a need for greater trust? Is there a need to tap into unique experiences? Are there nuances that we need to think about or navigate? Uh, and so if we put them into those two categories, we can start to figure out what is appropriate for automation.

[00:32:50] Galen Low: Love that. That’s super cool. Um, I thought maybe I’d shift us into, you know, the, the other bookend, I guess, thinking about Ali’s model, um, not just [00:33:00] the documentation, but also, you know, how we’re kind of getting there with you, Brian, anyways, right? Like the, how are people using this process or this documentation to do their jobs, you know, and iterating it?

Uh, iterating on it and how are we improving it? Um, how do people actually adopt these and I saw this in the chat earlier where you know, someone’s like yes adoption resistance is something It’s real. It’s something i’m dealing with right now Um, you know around these pain points about like finding the documentation when you need it Um, like what tools have been effective for you at you know, being able to Just put this information at the fingertips of the people doing the work so that they’re not like searching through the J drive or whatever.

Um, also does anyone have like an SOP chat bot yet? Um, I thought maybe I’d take that to you because you know, I know that there is a lot of this woven into some of these productivity platforms. Um, and you know, Brian, to your point, like some of the automation and AI is, is, is inbuilt. Um, how, how are you helping people have these processes at their fingertips so that they actually [00:34:00] use them and want to use them?

[00:34:01] Gray MacKenzie: Right. Yeah. I think that’s one of the big drivers for not finding value out of this is like, I wrote this all, it went on the binder on the shelf and then, oh man, it got opened again next year when we were required to look at. A huge believer in make the process live where the work gets done. That’s one of our core pillars of the Zenpilot methodology is, um, we’re signing out work to people to do.

We want to make the SOP, um, linked to directly from that task. So wherever we can, uh, we want to have that in place already. We may not have an SOP. That’s fine. There’s ad hoc stuff that comes up, but there’s an awful lot of repeatable work that happens in most organizations. And so link to it directly from the task itself.

Um, that piece helps a lot. And then the other piece is just, this is a habits problem. Like most of this is a habits problem. We can talk about. And I’ll maybe if we have time, I’ll talk about a, um, a custom GPT as well that we’re using. But, um, a lot of [00:35:00] this is like culturally we get what we tolerate and we get what we celebrate.

Those are. Like that determines what we wind up getting in anything. And so the same thing applies with process adoption or people doing it. If you’re fine saying, Hey, you’re good at what you do. And generally things work out well. So I don’t care if you do things in the wrong order, you’re constantly slacking people asking for updates.

Instead of checking the PM system, even though I said, everybody keep everything up to date, then like you’re tolerating. So you’re going to get more of that. That’s just inevitably going to happen. So it’s like any other habit. They’re all hard to build at first and they get way easier once, you know, you don’t even think about it once it becomes a routine, um, but building that habit of not tolerating, not, um, using the process and, and part of that not tolerating has to be like, well, what’s the reason you’ve got to be a little bit introspective and realize, you know, following it cause it’s a bad process or because it’s too cumbersome to, um, you know, Allie and Brian both mentioned, Hey, how do we make this simple and consumable for people?

Um, that’s a piece of it. If you throw a six minute loom video to me, [00:36:00] there’s no way I want, I want the, uh, I’ll follow that my first time ever doing it. Other than that, like, give me the bullet points real quickly. So using loom to get it, that’s way more efficient to get it out for the first time, that makes total sense using loom for somebody’s first time doing it or first time doing it in a long time.

That makes total sense. But then combining that with, Hey, here’s the bullet points and here’s the timestamp to go grab what you need. Like, okay, now we’re talking. Now I can like, Go, go grab what that is. So I think it’s gotta be, Hey, we’ve got to make these as accessible as possible. Make the process live where the work gets done and then don’t tolerate, um, and make sure that we do celebrate the consistency that we’re, um, that we’re bringing from those new processes.

And to Allie’s point, like gross margin in most of our clients cases, that’s the core thing that we’re going to influence with process work.

[00:36:45] Galen Low: I love that. So we’ve

[00:36:46] Gray MacKenzie: got to celebrate the advances that we’re making there.

[00:36:49] Galen Low: I’m totally that guy too. Like I feel so like, uh, triggered right now. Cause I’m that person.

I’m like, yeah, you know, you’re smart. Like if you don’t follow the process, like that’s fine. Like I celebrate you because I hired you as a, you [00:37:00] know, smart individual. And, but it doesn’t mean that. Them following a process makes them not smart. My why for having a process is so that when I don’t have, you know, a small team, my team gets bigger.

I don’t, it’s not the wild west. Right. And we can kind of grow and it won’t be chaos. And so if I can kind of remember that and, and, you know, it will be a lot of work for me not to celebrate the sort of like, yeah, be a professional human. Like, that’s fine. I know you get the job done without sort of seeing the long game, which is like, but later, you know, when I have 27, Smart, capable humans all doing different stuff, all doing one thing, you know, uh, 27 different ways.

Yeah. It’s going to be a problem. Yeah, that’s really true. Can we, can we dive into that custom GPT? Now I’m intrigued. You teased it.

[00:37:44] Gray MacKenzie: Yeah. So, um, like this is just one, there’s a couple of different ones that have been very helpful for us, but one simple one is, so we’re, we’re helping teams take the processes they have and build workflow look like in ClickUp specifically.

And so that means, Hey, [00:38:00] we’re using a parent task here is your deliverable. And then each of the individual action tasks or actionable steps are subtasks beneath that. And then there’s a whole methodology around for most teams wanting to see workload combatant, like how do we do capacity management, um, and kind of day to day tactical resource allocation.

Um, how do we make decisions around what gets bumped and where we need to let a client know, Hey, this is going to be late or whatever else it looks like. So things like time estimates are important. What role is responsible for getting that done is important. Um, so one of the custom GPTs that we’ve got built, uh, you throw in kind of a Of Hey, here’s what I’ve got built as a template.

It gives it a grade on a scale of one to 10 and it tells you what specifically should look different. So like naming mechanisms, keeping those consistent is pretty important. So like you’re deliverable is a noun. And then each of the tasks is, you know, it starts going to start with a verb. Is there an estimated amount of time or their dependency set between tasks?

Do we have a timeline here that we normally follow in our workload? And so it’ll go through and spot any issues and point out, Hey, here’s what. Doesn’t make sense for what could be better so that you can have a [00:39:00] whole variety of people creating those. Cause that’s a huge piece is otherwise you get one person does this one global overhaul one time, and then it’s all out of date six months later.

And it doesn’t matter at all. So we need to have the ability and the muscle built by various team members. Um, the people who are actually good at what they do to get stuff in there, but they’re not going to remember everything or build it the right way. The first time, every time. And so that has been a really useful, uh, custom GPT that we’re using.

[00:39:26] Galen Low: I really like that. Actually. I wonder if we can kind of dive in there too, because like this whole notion of keeping things up to date. Um, and I see some of the questions and we’ll kind of get into them as well, but like, you know, what does that look like for some of, uh, some of the others here on the panel and even in the audience as well, of like, how do you, how are you reinforcing?

Um, like updates, uh, so that your process always reflects, you know, what is actually happening. I don’t know, Brian, do you want to, uh, do you want to jump in on that one?

[00:39:58] Brian Kessman: Uh, well, so, um, [00:40:00] about the updating, well, I think there’s a process of sort of continuous improvement that needs to happen there and the culture to support that, but there’s a, uh, if you’ve used Google’s, uh, notebook LM, uh, that’s really great for uploading a really large wealth of, of documentation.

It’s, it’s. I believe it was originally positioned as a research tool, but there’s so many great ways to use it. And, um, if you upload all of your different process documents, then you can create instantly some pretty good deliverables for that, such as a table of contents, even a study guide. If you wanted to test your people on your process, uh, and even a podcast, right where you can have someone listen to a podcast all about your process.

Processes, what could be more exciting than that? So there’s a lot of great use cases for that, even beyond what I’ve shared. But it’s a great, uh, it’s a, what do they call it? A rag system, right? Retrieval augmentation generations. And so that’s what it’s all about. And I think some of the other products have this, right?

But Google’s is, is really effective and really, uh, really easy to [00:41:00] uncheck and check different documents you want. And so when you add a new document, you can uncheck an older version and check the new version and so on. And so it’s, it’s just a powerful tool for, for that kind of purpose.

[00:41:11] Galen Low: Love that.

[00:41:12] Brian Kessman: I

[00:41:12] Galen Low: like that.

Super cool. And Ali, I was thinking about, uh, like the Loom video side of things too, because, you know, we were talking about the bookends, um, and like, yeah, there’s that initial effort of creating the video. Is it like, is the answer to, uh, augmenting that process to record another video, or is it kind of like, we just kind of go through and do the text updates, like what is the sort of source of truth and process for augmenting, um, documentation that starts as video?

[00:41:40] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, I think always having a fresh video is ideal, right? And I think that that it’s, it’s not as cumbersome to create because somebody is doing the process in the different way anyway. So it might not be you, right? Say you’ve created the initial process with the walkthrough video. You’ve handed it to somebody.

Um, and then you’re like, Hey, maybe they you. Have found a better way [00:42:00] to do that, which is awesome. That means we’ve hired the right people. And then we say, Hey, listen, would you just mind next time you go to tackle this thing, just go ahead and create a new video. And I actually think that that helps a lot with adoption because oftentimes, like there’s two big reasons why I think.

Teams don’t end up following our documentation or updating it is like number one. Nobody’s reminding them on a consistent basis. Like I read a Patrick Lincioni book recently, and he was like, you need to be chief reminding officer like as the CEO of your company, and that’s a really important function.

So if it doesn’t live with you as like the founder CEO leader, It needs to live with somebody so like assigning an S. O. P. Champion or an internal knowledge champion, somebody who’s going to actually take point on doing some of the things that Brian mentioned, like tactically and going through the material or reminding people to update their screencasts.

Or their documentation in text form is super duper important. And then second, we haven’t really painted the picture of what possibility looks like. So a lot of what Greg was talking about in [00:43:00] terms of being sure that we understand, like, what are the benefits and the impacts of doing this? We talked a lot about data, but like, if we’re talking to a team, the team maybe doesn’t see it.

Super care what our gross profit margin is because they’re not attached to the bottom line. But what they do care about is work life integration, being able to go out on vacation, not having to train every single team member that they’re overseeing from scratch one on one and taking a ton of time out of their day to day.

So I think being able to position some of those benefits is super, super important. When you want to talk about adoption and following process, tell your individual contributors that there’s a path to become a manager. Tell your manager that there’s a path to become. a director and it all comes down to being able to create some of this repeatability and being able to kind of create a Google for your business.

Because I think the power of Google is that it has so many contributors. It’s not just one person word vomiting all of their opinions and thoughts and facts on everybody. So like your knowledge base and your processes become stronger when there’s [00:44:00] lots of contribution as your team grows. Um, I always say that until the team.

Is that about 70, at least from working with agencies over the last 10 years? Um, so until you’re about 70 operations or process documentation is like a small portion of everybody’s role instead of just like one department’s role, if that makes sense. So I think if you’re an agency listening to this and you’re like, yeah, I’m a team of 30.

It’s like cool. 10 percent of everybody. Everybody’s job description is you help improve processes. You help document procedures that specifically relate to your role.

[00:44:33] Galen Low: I love that idea of like Google for your company and multiple contributors. And it’s like, you know, let’s let the good ideas, um, sort of Oh, recognizing we’ve got about like 12 minutes.

I do want to get to Q and a, um, and I know that, uh, you know, over the next 12 minutes, uh, some of you folks will probably need to, you know, go to your next meeting. Um, so if that’s you, I just wanted to take this opportunity and say, thank you for joining us [00:45:00] today. Um, if you are loving this, then, um, I’d love for you to just.

Join our next event. Um, we’re kind of taking a hiatus in December, but, uh, we’ll have more details about what we’re doing in January onward in 2025. Um, so, uh, I’ll just post a link maybe just to our, our homepage. We, we kind of have all of the juicy details about what we’re doing there. Um, and just keep, keep checking us out if this is something that you enjoy.

Um, also if you’re a guest today and you want to continue the discussion by becoming a member of our community, uh, check us out, um, at the digital project manager. com slash, uh, membership. Um, Also, even though I said, I told Becca, who is backstage producing this, um, that I do this later. I thought maybe I could just, um, throw in the feedback survey for this event now.

Um, again, we are trying to augment our process on these events. We’re trying to iterate every time. Feedback is the way that we do it. Um, so we’ll post a, a little type form link in there. And if you wouldn’t mind taking two minutes, a, I want to get your feedback, uh, B, I think it would be [00:46:00] great if you have any ideas of what we should cover next year, uh, looking for topic ideas, if there’s something you think we should get a panel together and, and talk about, um, add it into that survey as well.

All right, I’m going to go. And I’m going to try to, uh, be as good as Becca has been about putting the text on screen as I go. Um, but I’m just going to grab some of these questions that we’ve got along the way from our members and folks in the audience. Um, the first one is, uh, it’s kind of about, um, the sort of, you know, Um, the sort of, uh, remaining agile, the question is what kind of solutions have people come up with to remain agile?

Well, at the same time, setting up parameters and guidelines. So new hires have a good starting point. Uh, which I think is a super cheesy question because we’re talking about this notion of like Google for your company and how do they know which one is the right one to follow? Um, how can it be sort of clear, uh, what solutions have we come up with to sort of be agile, but also, um, not chaotic, if anyone want to take that.[00:47:00]

[00:47:01] Brian Kessman: I don’t mind. I can, I can kick us off. I think, uh, if that’s all right. So, so there’s, uh, operating principles, uh, start there. I think, how are we all going to work together? What are the principles that we’re going to all agree to? Um, there’s, uh, you can borrow lots of principles from agile and just translate them to the creative space.

Being sensitive of the limitations, uh, that agile may put on the creative process, but, uh, we can certainly learn a lot from agile and lean as well. Lean in terms of eliminating waste in processes. What’s your minimum viable process. Let’s think in terms of that way and how we define our processes. Only looking at the most important, those that impact revenue or client experience and so on.

So those, those operating principles would be really a great start. And then at the team level, there’s just a simple team charter, more of that informal social contract. How are we going to work together? As a team, let’s and you know, you can do a search online and find examples of team charters with 20 or so questions that you would answer as a team.

Start with the top five [00:48:00] that the team feels are most important. And then after your next retrospective, are there other questions that we realized we should be really asking and answering as a team to define how we’re going to work together? So those are just two quick ways. Uh, where you can maintain your agility and also, uh, eliminate confusion and create more consistency.

[00:48:17] Galen Low: I like that sort of charter approach and like community approach as well. Um, and it ties into what you were saying earlier, uh, in the discussion about like maybe having like pods, uh, like dedicated teams, um, smaller groupings of people that are like working together often. Um, and then Allie, what you were saying, right?

Like everyone kind of owns it together. Um, and if you have a new hire or you’re onboarding someone into that team, you know, you can kind of like, Go through the charter, go through the values and the way we work together. And yes, things are fluid and we’re agile, but you know, here’s, here’s how we know what each other are doing at any given point, I think it’s cool.

Um, Ellie, great. Anything you want to add to that?

[00:48:54] Alyson Caffrey: I’ll add really quick that if when I’ve worked with agencies over the years, there’s really two sets of [00:49:00] standards that we can operate by to remain agile and feel like we’ve got at least an end, a shared end result. And maybe the process still seems a little hairy.

And I think creating production. Standards. So, like, when are we responding to clients? How? How fast are we getting this done? Like those types of things? So deadline driven types of standards and then quality standards, right? So what should this look like when it’s met the quality standards and the production standards?

I know a lot of agencies that operate really lean that really benefit from that instead of kind of figuring out the messy middle of the process. They say this is the production standard and this is the quality standard that we all operate by.

[00:49:40] Galen Low: That’s super cool. I like that. I love that. I love that. Um, I think maybe I’ll shift on to the next question here.

Um, it’s a more tool specific. The question is, uh, would love to hear the panelists thoughts on tools like trainual or scribe. Uh, and I know we’ve talked about scribe a little bit. I’ll be honest. I’m not. As familiar with either of those [00:50:00] tools. Um, but that was a great opportunity. If you’ve got thoughts or opinions and folks in the audience as well, um, on, on using tools like train, you’ll and scribe.

[00:50:11] Gray MacKenzie: I can take the first shot at this one. I actually like, and know the folks that train you all in at scribe.

[00:50:17] Galen Low: Huh?

[00:50:17] Gray MacKenzie: Um, both the tools are. Um, great at what they do, like process documentation, easy to repeat and push it out there. I think they are a really dumbed down version of a project management tool with some features that are enhanced.

And I think for most teams, um, you should pick between like one or two of the, like either do a PM tool and build it into your knowledge management tool as well, or go the other way and say, we’re gonna use this knowledge management tool, we know that we are sacrificing some PM resources. Capabilities. Um, but running those in concert has just led to a lot of challenges for teams.

And there’s some teams who use it and love it. And they’re like, Hey, we, we have stuff in RPM and we link out to that. And that makes sense. [00:51:00] So I realized that there are some, uh, cases where that. It does make sense that both across, uh, the thousands of teams that we have seen and worked with way more frequently, the results in terms of gross margin and efficiency and efficacy, um, get improved when they just pick one or the other.

[00:51:19] Galen Low: But yeah, too many tools syndrome. And to your point, like if someone looking at that might not make that connection, that a PM tool can do some of those things, you don’t need both necessarily, it looks like you might need both, but it might not be the right answer. Interesting. Brian, Allie, any thoughts on things like train you will inscribe?

[00:51:38] Alyson Caffrey: I’m a partner at train you all. So I have to go ahead and shout from the rooftops. I super love train you all. Um, we’ve been working, um, we were actually one of their first certified partners. So I’ve been working in training you all for the last six years. I think that for my higher growth, uh, companies, ones that know that we’re about to enter into a season of hiring or maybe an agency that has an acquisition based growth model.

Um, we’ve actually seen [00:52:00] a ton of solid success with training because training will, one of their core values is like getting people up to speed. That’s like the name of the game. And so when a new person joins the organization or when organizations merge, there needs to be like an adoption time. And I think On ramping with training while using your standard operating procedures, putting all of that information in one place.

It’s really user friendly. Um, but from a pure, like AI documentation perspective, loom and scribe are really incredible tools. Um, if you’re not like entering into a massive season of hiring, or if you’re, if you don’t have an acquisition based model. I think that using scribe to keep everybody on the same page and scribe can be embedded, like Ray was saying, in project management tools.

I’m also a big fan of like keeping the information where the work is done. I always say that you should be like one to two clicks from anything you might need inside of the organization. So if we know like, okay, we’re doing the work in this platform and it easily links to some of the knowledge and all of that stuff.

Um, I think it’s really great. Um, and I agree [00:53:00] that keeping the project management Tool for project management and keeping the documentation tool for documentation is super important. Um, and I do see a lot of companies benefit from having both, but integrating them is, and making sure that rules of engagement are established is super important.

So what goes into which tool is, is a critical element.

[00:53:21] Galen Low: Love that. It goes back to that charter thing too, right?

Um, let’s see if I can get, I’ve got two questions in the, in, in the queue, I want to see if I can get to them both in three minutes, I’m going to try, um, but one of the questions is, are there any tips on prompts that people have used for AI to help build processes? Um, and I, you know, we, I see in the chat, people are talking about, you know, Claude and Gemini and all these other, um, tools.

Yeah. Are there any sort of prompts that y’all have been playing with to sort of help build processes? Great. I saw a glimmer in your eye.

[00:53:57] Gray MacKenzie: Well, I’ve just, I’ll go super quickly on this one. I’ve just [00:54:00] prompted it for the, um, like level of the person who’s going to see it. So like, I’ll take some of the documentation that we have and I’ll prompt it to say, if I was a new hire at this company, um, that does this, like, what would you change about, um, the documentation and just paste in what we have.

And onboarding stuff. So that’s my, maybe the one thing that pops to mind that, Is it as condensed a version as I can think of?

[00:54:25] Galen Low: I like that. I like that. Brian, any good prompts? And you’re quite deep into

[00:54:30] Brian Kessman: it’s a, I think it’s, it’s hard to say, here’s a prompt that’s going to work for you. And everybody’s situation is so different.

Everybody’s audience is so different as Gray was saying. So I think it’s more about the principles and it’s, it’s just as if you were managing somebody or helping to guide a new hire in your office, just be very specific about what you’re looking for, who they’re developing it for. Uh, what you need the outcome to be right.

And then provide any sort of additional context and, and, and the task exactly what you need, uh, [00:55:00] even the format that you need it in. If you have even a template without the information in it, but just showing the headers and all of that, um, as specific as you can be, then you’ll get, you’ll get better results that way.

[00:55:12] Galen Low: I like that. I also liked that the answer wasn’t here’s a prompt to create a process that you don’t have now from scratch. Please generate a process for me, act as an agency that wants to grow real fast. Make it,

[00:55:26] Brian Kessman: it would be helpful to have a prompt that, that helps you write a prompt for a new process or something like that.

I mean, you could certainly develop that or, or, um, a prompt really more useful would be, uh, something that. asks you for the right information that you need in order to create the right kind of output so that it’s at least guiding your thought process for you. I think that would be something helpful and, and, and helpful.

And you, so I’ve developed something like that. It was a, a virtual chief pricing officer. And so basically it would help agencies price their work into three different options and use and [00:56:00] understand if you’re up against a price driven buyer or a value driven buyer, and it would give you pricing strategies and all of that.

But it does the same thing. It asks you the questions it needs to know to execute the task. So aim for something like that.

[00:56:12] Galen Low: Boom. I love that. Um, I was hoping I’d get to the last question, but I don’t think I will because I want everyone to be able to carry on with the day. I know we’ve got meetings to get to.

Um, I think I’ll wrap it there, uh, to everyone in the audience. Thank you for being here. I know you need to run to your next meeting. If you’re still here, just a reminder, if you could take a second to fill out that feedback survey that we posted in the chat and let us know what you thought of today’s session, that would be great.

Let us know what topics we should cover in the future. Um, and of course. A very big thank you to our panelists for volunteering their time and knowledge today. Uh, Gray, Brian, Ellie, this was so much fun. I always love chatting with each of you. Glad we had this opportunity to get all three of you in the same room together.

Uh, this has been a slice.

[00:56:53] Brian Kessman: Same here. Thanks for having us. Thanks Galen,

[00:56:55] Alyson Caffrey: appreciate [00:57:00] you.