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AI for Employee Engagement – a conversation with Derek Crager, practicalai.app
0 Playsin 9 hours
Using AI to enhance human relationships at work, not to replace the human.
Before setting up Practical AI. App Derek Crager had worked at Amazon where he developed the leadership development programme that achieved the highest employee ratings in company history.
Aged fifty Derek received confirmation that he lives with ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism, yet he has developed technological applications at Practical AI that successfully put the human first.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Derek and host Michael Millward explore how AI can enhance employee engagement.
They debunk some myths about AI and clarify what it is capable of Derek explains how Practical AI has developed tools that use AI to provide the right information at the right time so that people can make better decisions.
Listening to this programme will help you understand how to capitalise on the potential of AI in enhancing employee engagement by using it as a mentoring tool.
Discover more about Derek and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr.
Introduction to Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:07
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Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:24
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I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysseedah.
Exploring AI in Employee Engagement
00:00:29
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In this episode of the Independent Minds, I will be learning how The practical application of AI can be used to improve employee engagement and productivity from Derek Crager, who works for practicalai.app.
00:00:46
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As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, the independent minds is made on Zencastr because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy.
Podcast Sponsor Highlights
00:01:04
Speaker
Regardless of whether you are an experienced podcaster or just starting out, I recommend that you use the link in the description to visit Zencastr.com and take advantage of the built-in discount.
00:01:18
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Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to, and probably good enough to share with friends, family,
00:01:33
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and work colleagues as well. As with every episode of the Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
00:01:45
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Today, my Independent Mind guest is Derek Crager from practicalai.app. Derek's career involves periods in sales, engineering and training.
00:01:59
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Whilst working at Amazon, He created the company's highest rated training program ever. He is based in Indiana in the United States. I've never visited Indiana.
00:02:11
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When I get the opportunity, I will be sure to make my travel arrangements at the Ultimate Travel Club. Because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I get access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, all sorts of travel related purchases.
00:02:29
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In the spirit of sharing, I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club and just like me, travel at trade prices as well.
00:02:42
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Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds. Hello, Derek. Michael. Thank you for inviting me here and I'm um i having a happy day. i hope you
Derek Crager's Background and Insights
00:02:55
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are too.
00:02:55
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Very much so. Thank you very much. I do appreciate that. Please could we start by giving us an introduction to you, Derek Crager, and what led you to being at practicalai.app and that course that you dev developed at Amazon.
00:03:14
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Yeah, absolutely. So ah my background, much like every listener that you have here, is unique. Mine, I learned that, um well, let me ah do a little foreshadowing here. I learned at age 50, I'm a bit, have a different thinking model. I'm ADHD, dyslexic, and autistic. So that, at age 50, kind of explained my first five decades on earth.
00:03:41
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But what i learned going through life the hard way is that the simple connection was if I had the right answer at the right time, then I could make the right decision. I can make the right move, the right build, the next step, whatever that was. So flash forward to, um, oh gosh, I don't know, eight years ago or so I started at Amazon and by this time I was on their talent development, which is, you know, fancy HR speak, uh, for their training development.
00:04:13
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And I took everything I learned from my personal experience and I built a program that put the human first in the equation. Amazon and their spin off AWS is known very much for all the technology that they throw at problems.
00:04:29
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But what was really good. Yeah, the data, the data is important and it is. But even Jeff Bezos said, you know, when, when the anecdote contradicts the data, well then investigate the data as well. So it's, it's never a truism just because the data is there. The data, I think there's a a accounting term that's used a GI, G O. If it's good in, good out, or some people say garbage in, garbage out. So,
00:04:57
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It's very important to keep that human factor. And the technical term in the AI front is human in the loop. Let's keep that human in the loop, which, you know, I think that's a great idea for every conversation, every whether it's between humans or not. We should all be in the loop on what's going on. And and that was the foundation to my program at Amazon. It was connecting people.
00:05:20
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to all the employees at an equal level. you know Trust and respect was the bedrock of our success. you know Trust the people next to you, respect their opinion.
00:05:32
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And the success came about that they were able to have the answers that they need to make them productive in their roles. So once I left Amazon, I built practical AI. And I believe in very simple solutions, just like Google.com is nothing but a search box. No fancy this or that. It's just very simple. Remove all the barriers. Give me what I need.
Introduction to Pocket Mentor Product
00:05:58
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So I learned that I can do that with AI. And the practical AI has a product called Pocket Mentor that it makes sure that nobody's ever alone.
00:06:09
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And we can get into that later. But essentially, it's phone a friend. you know Tap that but that magic button on the phone. and say, hey, I haven't done this before, and you have. Can you talk me through it?
00:06:23
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And then we're using AI not to think for the human. We're actually using AI to think with the human, just like the greatest mentor-protege relationship can be. That's what we're here as a mentor, not a not just a pure solution provider. We're here to enhance the individual, that human in the middle.
00:06:46
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So you're using AI, practical AI.app as something that is about solving problems for people at an individual level.
00:06:58
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It is, yeah. It's the ah the individual and our our focus is on enterprise. So it's you know the individual and their employee role, whatever that role is. it's There's so much okay so much ah inefficiency in onboarding employees that most companies don't even do it. or they throw out an SOP manual and they say, you know memorize this and the SOP manual might be 10 years old. So we build that single source of truth and make sure it's there available for that that individual in the role.
00:07:30
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Right.
AI's Capabilities and Philosophical Perspectives
00:07:31
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Okay. here's you know I think a lot of people are seeing AI as the solution to everything. And yet when you ask people about how they use AI, it's really they're using it as ah an enhanced search engine. They're Asking a question, getting some information back. But as someone who is using AI to develop specific tools to solve specific issues, how would you define AI artificial intelligence?
00:08:03
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Well, i think you put your finger on the the pulse right there, Michael. it's ah It's a fancy search box. It's a fancy ah you know information gatherer and deliverer.
00:08:15
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um And let's let's step away from technology for a moment. You know, if ah before computers, how would you go about you know learning about something you would go to another human and ask them so ai here all it is doing is just facilitating that interface it's being able to ask questions and then receive answers based upon the sum of human knowledge, because that's how AI is. And AI is not sentient. And I really don't believe ai shall ever be sentient because to build something with technology, we have to put all this information in a box and then we access that box.
00:09:00
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The AI is always going to be limited there. The ai ah will never possess the capability. Now, this could be a philosophical perspective, sure, but at least in the next 10 or 20 years, AI, i don't see AI being a creative, right? I don't see it being a Nikola Tesla. I don't see it being a Galileo or any great mind like that. So that's why i direct those around me to you leverage AI for what it is, a tool to augment the human mind and in a good, true mentor protege relationship, the mentor doesn't just answer questions.
00:09:42
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It asks questions to help the user or the protege in whatever the scenario to understand, not just deliver and copy and paste, but to understand what they're doing and how they're doing it.
00:09:57
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Right. So in in many ways, then the AI can be used as, as many people do use it as a search engine. But at the same time, if you do and understand it as something which augments human intelligence, human activity, rather than it being artificial, capable of doing all the things that the human brain is doing, it is not.
00:10:26
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It does not work in that way. Then you can focus the development of AI to perform specific tasks which may actually require it to do a variety of different things rather than simply the repetition of the same task because i'm thinking like um when a this when an analyst looks at an issue they're looking for something for which they can almost say you code is written as on or off so if if this is what we're looking at
00:11:00
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and then this is option one this is option two we switch one off and one on that sort of thing and you're saying that ai it is easier to have more variables involved ai is yeah ai enables a more varied response from the computer than we are are used to having from the computer
AI as a Mentor: Enhancing Decision-Making
00:11:25
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It does, yeah. And there's a saying about technology being so advanced that humans think it's magic. You know, the difference between magic and technology is our level of understanding.
00:11:36
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And this first impact of AI, it it looks like magic. And if we go back and if we stick to that mentor-protege relationship, you know, let's say that, you know, I'm i'm a golfer or a footballer or a rugby player and I ask a question, you know, how would you go about this play? How can I make this shot?
00:11:58
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The difference between using AI to assist humans versus just the copy and paste that people use with, ah let's say, a Chad GPT would be akin to ah turn into your rugby teammate and say, hey, why don't you do this for me? And I'll just sit here and watch. I'm not going to participate at all. You just do it.
00:12:19
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And that's not a mentoring protege relationship. That's that's a you know given up on being a human relationship, I think. um Whereas the mentoring protege relationship would be talking to your teammates, say, hey, you've done this before. Talk me through it.
00:12:36
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And that's the participation that we really see AI. So, you know, to stick with that searching perspective. Yeah, we're searching ourselves. So we ask questions and it it doesn't matter who we or what we are asking.
00:12:53
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we're gathering answers and responses, and then it's up to us to decide what we're gonna pull from those responses. So even when we talk to the humans around us, that's just analog search. we know We're searching, we're asking them to search their minds and their experience to give us an answer. And that's really right now the the sum of what AI does we know when we click a keyboard is I put in a question and it kicked back and answer it, thanks, you wanna hear?
00:13:22
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And in the wild, you know, there's really no way to verify that the answer it gives you is the right answer. But if you took to if you talk to your teammate and you see the success that they have had, then you know that the answer they give you is going to be of higher value than just asking ai or asking the world or asking Google or just asking a random person off the street.
00:13:49
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So the AI can help us to structure a conversation with someone else so that we can actually get a higher level of learning from other people. Exactly. Yes.
AI in Emotion Interpretation and Personalized Interaction
00:14:01
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yeah And what we do on our product, if if I talk in science fiction terms, and it's no longer science fiction, it's become science fact,
00:14:12
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In essence, we download your brain, we put it into a box, and then we allow people to talk to it through voice conversation. And it it's this manner. You and I speaking to each other, you can tell when I'm excited and I'm happy. You can tell from my voice, maybe if I'm...
00:14:35
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had a bad day or a rough time and when we use ai to not only search the information deliver it but also to monitor that voice conversation this is the equalizer that brings it up on par to speaking to a human mentor and and that's the practical application that we bring into that so the ai is capable of interpreting emotions It is, yes. And my experience in training, just just basic experience, anybody's experience in training, there's a process called train the trainer.
00:15:16
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And when we train the trainer, we're looking to scale our organizations or your individual ability to train more people. And so when we train the trainer, whether they're human or machine, we give it basic instructions and Then we um monitor its usage.
00:15:39
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And then if it's working correctly, we reinforce that. And if there's there's speech patterns or word patterns that we we want to remove, well, we tell them that. And if it's a human, that's exactly what we do. we say, hey, you know, we're in a different region of the world, so use this language instead of that language.
00:16:00
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And we do the same thing with with AI. AI has that capability to identify the intent, to identify a emotion, pacing and to respond accordingly.
00:16:13
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We teach it just like it's train the trainer. We would another human. Yes. oh Having spent the large part of my career in training and running train the trainer courses, I'm reminding that I asked the group of trainers to write a manual are the instructions for pouring water from a jug into a glass.
00:16:33
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Part of the problem that every everyone always has is they will say things like, or pick the jug up. And if you don't know what the handle is, then you'll pick it up in any way. can It's almost like start the process by identifying the separate parts of of the machinery, the resources that you are going to use.
00:16:56
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if This is the handle, this is the spout. this is the class and then you can provide much better instructions to someone because you haven't made any assumptions about what they may or may not already know.
00:17:10
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That seems to be one of the issues with AI. We assume that the AI already knows. What we seem to be saying is that the AI has to be educated in the same way as we need to train the trainer. We need to train the AI as well.
00:17:29
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yeah That's true. We need that watermark. I believe it was Carl Sagan that has said, if you want to create a cherry pie from scratch, first you must create the universe.
00:17:39
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Yes. So if if you can imagine creating the universe or you know starting at the empirical with every conversation, how long it would take. And in a human
AI and Personalized Learning
00:17:50
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v. human conversation, even the best trainer in the world has a rough day and they lack patience at a certain point. There's a threshold. Yeah.
00:18:02
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Sometimes you just don't connect. So if if you put two humans in a room that are from opposite sides of the world, you know, we understand, we we understand this today, that first we must understand, know, who they are, their culture, um anything that is, would influence or bias them a certain manner. And it's in essence, we're setting the ground rules on what words mean. Even if we speak English to English, there's still a translation going on.
00:18:37
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um There's in communications training, it's intent versus impact. The intent. of what was said might fall differently on the ears it's being said to and that would be the impact. So a trainer's ability to correct for that is limited on their experience and what we do to get around that we imagine if we take the experience of not just one trainer
00:19:08
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but multiple trainers. And it's kind of like that story about the, uh, the elephant and the six blind men that, uh, that only see one perspective at a time.
00:19:19
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You know, uh, the blind man is, uh, one of them's holding the leg and says, Oh, this elephant, it's, it's, big and round like a tree trunk. And somebody that's holding the tail says, oh, no, no, you are wrong.
00:19:32
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An elephant is long and thin like a rope. And these perspectives independently are just that one perspective. it's It's one dimension, but it's when we combine all those perspectives into a single view is where we understand the entirety of it. And so we do that with Train the Trainer. We put all this knowledge in a box from different perspectives, and we use AI to emulate or proxy for the human trainer. And the thing that the AI can do today, the way we're using it anyway, is leveraging the support that AI can give, leveraging the infinite patience that AI can give.
00:20:19
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um And we are allowing AI to adapt, training it to adapt to the individual user in a one-size-fits-one solution.
From One-Size-Fits-All to One-Size-Fits-One
00:20:32
Speaker
Typical schools, it's a one size fits many. Whether you're at university or K through 12, it's a teacher professor that speaks out and they have to use words that that has some sort of absorption rate for 20 to 30, maybe even 50 or 100 people at a time. And the learner learns at the generalized level, but they don't learn in a specific level.
00:20:59
Speaker
And that's something that we can overcome by putting this professor's brain in a box and allowing AI to connect with the user to that knowledge in a one size fits one connection. So the translation is always going to be on point, as the kids used to say over here. the translation is is always going to be understood and adapted to the individual at at every turn. And that's really the value. it's It's the ability to scale that knowledge and democratize the absorption of that knowledge for everybody.
00:21:37
Speaker
must admit, I love that expression, know, one for one rather than the one for many. And I think it is something that...
00:21:48
Speaker
I've seen lots of training programs developed with the idea that, yeah, this is the solution. Everyone is going to go through the same solution, regardless of their existing level of knowledge, exist regardless of what they actually want to use, what we're trying to teach them to do. It's exactly the issue that started when e-learning first came in.
00:22:11
Speaker
To get to the piece of information that you needed, you had to prove to the computer that you knew the information that you already need before it would share with you the piece of information that you needed so the AI is moving us beyond that one size fits all to one size fits one and leads to the that personalization I suppose of the learning experience Yeah, personalization on the one-on-one and when we're when we're working with a global company like I did at Amazon, we talk a lot about regionalization, ah you know, Amazons in multiple countries. So,
00:22:54
Speaker
I know my training had to be at the high level. It had to be adapted, you know, regionalized for localized, also another term for different traditions, different cultures, different languages. Sometimes going from one language to another, there's a value in meaning that is lost. So it's that's the right direction to go. And humans can only do so much. Humans only have a certain amount of capacity and time limits that capacity on how we can pivot in the moment to train you know region A versus region B. And we understand and we capture that. But today is that augmentation of AI just just accelerates that ability to go to that straight.
00:23:44
Speaker
The end result is that one-on-one. And that's that's what we continue to do. We really think that's the the singularity point for AI today is the ability to communicate in a one-on-one manner.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah. It's a huge subject, isn't it, really? And we're only really just everyone, regardless of who they are, really, I think is just starting to understand it and starting to yeah really just understand the potential beyond thee the enhanced search facility.
Balancing AI and Human Input in Training
00:24:18
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I'm not sure I can improve on that. ah that's ah That's flattery indeed. But I think it's the realistic to sort of say, like, we mustn't sort like throw everything out and throw everything into all of our budget ji into AI.
00:24:34
Speaker
Because as you were saying earlier, there is still very much a role for the human being in learning, coaching, developing. But it's an asset, an additional asset, additional tool that can help us deliver much more effective training.
00:24:51
Speaker
I find it fascinating and I hope that we get the chance to explore it more at another day. But for the moment, Derek, I have to say thank you very much. Time has flown and it's it's been really interesting.
00:25:05
Speaker
I do appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for having me, Michael. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. i am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Derek Crager from Practical AI.
00:25:23
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description.
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:25:28
Speaker
One of the things that we need to think about as well, I think, is our health and how AI can help us to manage our health.
00:25:35
Speaker
We need the information in order to be able to do that. And that is why we recommend the health tests provided by York Test, especially the annual health test.
00:25:46
Speaker
The annual health test from York Test provides an assessment of 39 different health markers, including risks of chronic conditions like diabetes, vitamin levels, organ functions and a full blood count.
00:26:00
Speaker
The annual health test is conducted by an experienced lobotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests are carried out in a UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory.
00:26:15
Speaker
You can access your easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime via your secure Personal Wellness Hub account. There is a link, as you would expect, the discount code in the description.
00:26:33
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Derek and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:26:46
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. And remember to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues as well. The aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:27:03
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.