Has your organization created guidelines for using AI responsibly and ethically? This episode focuses on policies and guidelines for using generative AI responsibly within organizations. The hosts discuss why it's important for companies to establish AI principles and guardrails even if they don't have full policies in place yet. They provide advice on how to get started creating guidelines, emphasizing keeping them simple and accessible. The hosts recommend collaborating cross-functionally with legal, IT, marketing ops, and other teams when developing guidelines to ensure alignment. They also stress the need for continuous communication, education, and updates as AI policies evolve over time. Key takeaways include: start with high-level AI principles and values; balance guidelines between enabling and restricting use cases; leverage templates to create initial drafts; work across silos for broad input; keep guidelines concise and easy to find; and make AI governance an ongoing process. The hosts share real examples of AI guidelines and policies from companies like VMware and IBM to illustrate best practices.
Jasper AI policy template
https://www.jasper.ai/ai-policy-template
Marcom awards page detailing the VMware Marketing AI Council Story
https://enter.amcpros.com/marcom/entry/vmware-marketing-ai-council-innovates-and-empowers/
Chief AI Officer story
https://www.businessinsider.com/chief-ai-officer-tech-hot-role-skills-strategy-machine-learning-2024-2
AlphaGo Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
[Subscribe to the Podcast]
The AI Edge Podcast for Enterprise Marketers - Apple Podcast
The AI Edge Podcast for Enterprise Marketers - Spotify
The AI Edge Podcast for Enterprise Marketing - Simplecast
Ai Edge Podcast - Transcript
EP 002 – Generative AI Policies and Guidelines
Jessica Hreha, Michelle Moore, Suzanne Ambiel, Yadin Porter de León
- Edit v1 -
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:22
Michelle
If your organization isn't using generative A.I. yet, it's really only a matter of time before it will be. Although interest and even adoption are growing really quickly, most organizations still don't really have well-developed policies or guidelines in place.
Yadin
Welcome to the Age podcast for Enterprise Marketers Show dedicated to sharing insights, strategies and experiences from a group of experts who have successfully implemented A.I. Solutions in large enterprise B2B software companies, specifically in the context of global marketing and how that effort can connect to sales I.T. product.
00:00:37:04 - 00:01:00:00
Yadin
The rest of the Business podcast aims to help other marketers navigate the complexities of scaling AI tools with the organizations. So we share lessons learned best practices around implementing marketing at scale, providing guidance to other marketers on strategy, governance, change management, tech stacks and more. And we like to inspire marketers to embrace AI to enhance capabilities and performance.
00:01:00:02 - 00:01:27:17
Yadin
I mean, in Porto de Leon and I'm joined by a whole host of wonderful characters today. I've got Michelle Moore. I've got Susanne. I've got Jessica. Let's go around the room real quick and just introduce everyone who's going to be on the show today. I'll start with you, Michel.
Michelle
I am Michel Moore. Glad to be here today. I'm a brand strategist slash content strategist who cares a lot about how generative AI is adopted and used responsibly across businesses.
00:01:27:19 - 00:01:48:02
Yadin
Suzanne?
Suzanne
Hey, Suzanne. Ambien, colleague of Michelle's and the rest of this crowd of clowns, if you will, is really important today. And it's going to be one of our tools. And I'm interested in the tech side of it and the wonky side. So I'm your neighborhood wonk right here. So back to you. You're doing fabulous.
Yadin
And I think we've got Jessica here as well.
00:01:48:04 - 00:02:10:11
Jessica
Yeah, I am here. But I'm so excited for Michelle and Suzanne to show off their chops on the topic today. I started the market in the I council at VMware last year with this group of doers, and I'm currently at Jasper helping other enterprise clients do the same thing.
Yadin
Excellent. We'll go into I like just giving a little bit of context to the listeners to who everybody is.
00:02:10:13 - 00:02:26:22
Yadin
This is one of our earlier shows, so I think it bears that we kind of compete some of the things that you said in previous episodes. If you haven't seen episode zero and intro that goes deep into each of us and what we do, what we're about. And of course, episode one, which is our origin story. But now is this a first show where we're doing a standard show flow or standard run a show?
00:02:26:22 - 00:02:39:23
Yadin
So this is going to be the format. If you're going to be listening to the future episodes, it's going to be the format you'll get moving forward. So each show we're going to take a topic and we're going to talk about what that topic objective is. They're going to have a section of show where we go over strategies and tactics.
00:02:40:00 - 00:02:54:12
Yadin
They're going to a section where we talk about teams and tools. And then, of course, we're going to talk about business impact at the end. And so we're going to ground each show in each of those pieces, and we're going to dedicate each part of the show to digging into each of those. At the end, we're going to do our wonderful lightning round.
00:02:54:14 - 00:03:10:00
Yadin
So be prepared for the one thing that's happened in the last week or two since our last episode that you think you, the listeners, are going to benefit from and kind of what that means to you and what it means to.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Part 1: Topic Objective
We'll start off with this first part of our show, which is going to be the topic objective.
00:03:10:00 - 00:03:29:07
Yadin
And so today is going to be all about Jenny policies and guidelines. Something which Michelle, Suzanne, the two of you have dug in to very deeply and have been doing this for quite some time, even though all of this really hasn't been going on for a tremendous amount of time. But it's been long enough for you to develop a practice and for each of you to share what you've learned.
00:03:29:07 - 00:04:04:12
Yadin
So we start with the topic objective, or we start with what's your objective for the day details and why it's important? The Who's it for and what's it for.
Michelle
Thanks, Yadin. So this topic arguably is for everyone, because if your organization isn't using generative air yet, it's really only a matter of time before it will be. And also because even though a year into generative AI getting into the hands of the masses, although interest and even adoption are growing really quickly, most organizations still don't really have well-developed policies or guidelines in place.
00:04:04:16 - 00:04:38:16
Michelle
And so we want to address the reasons why that doing so is so important. And we want to give you our listeners a good starting point. So we'll be sharing some resources to help you get started in creating those policies and guidelines. Or if you already have some in place, there is plenty of room to evolve them. They should be living growing documents so we can share some of our own personal experience along these lines, because as you alluded to, we were instrumental in getting those off the ground at our own company last year and hopefully inspire you to take yours to the next level.
00:04:38:18 - 00:05:06:03
Yadin
Suzanne, did you want to share your thoughts?
Suzannne
Yeah, Let me chime in on that, Michelle. Guidelines may sound scary and restrictive and maybe, you know, cramping your style or or something like that. But in this instance, you know, yeah, don't be scared yet. Even used an important word in the intro scale. Scale How to make this grow. The way to make this grow in the way you want it to is to give people guidelines, guardrails.
00:05:06:03 - 00:05:29:04
Suzanne
Let them know where the safe spaces and where they're safe spaces. And and when they understand that they could go faster without the guardrails. Some will be very tentative and be afraid to step into the water. So give people guardrails, let them know what's in, what's out, what's okay, what's marginal and what's absolutely know, and then stay in touch with it.
00:05:29:06 - 00:06:01:17
Suzanne
Stay in touch with the doers. Great word, Jessica, the doers, and understand how your guidelines are helping or hindering and where they need to move. Michelle said something else important. These things evolve. At VMware, we evolved our guidelines multiple times within the first six months. Yep, multiple times. As we learned, as we evolved, as we got better at it, we realized where we needed to remove, amend or add to the guidelines.
00:06:01:19 - 00:06:24:14
Suzanne
So yeah, guidelines are important.
Michelle
Yeah, we were all learning as we went along and then gathering input, so we had to start somewhere. So our initial set of guidelines was pretty basic and high level, but we wanted to put on paper what we did know and what people could expect to be forthcoming. So we set that expectation from the beginning that these guidelines were a living document.
00:06:24:15 - 00:06:46:06
Michelle
People needed to visit and revisit them, and we continue to find every opportunity to make sure that people were aware of the guidelines and had ongoing access to them.
Suzanne
And the other thing that was really interesting, it was that we didn't have just one set of guidelines at VMware. We had one for marketing. There was a set of guidelines for the legal group.
00:06:46:08 - 00:07:07:09
Michelle
There was another set of guidelines for the CTO. There was yet another set of guidelines for sales. And as we saw all these guidelines evolve, we realized we probably needed an Uber document to umbrella all of them. And that was an evolutionary process as well. But ours were the first set of guidelines that came out and the company evolved from there. Really interesting.
00:07:07:10 - 00:07:32:06
Jessica
Yeah, and I love what you said, Suzanne, about decreasing the fear of using generative AI with guidelines, because I'm hearing more and more that even in pilots, where users are part of a pilot, it's a paid pilot. They're supposed to be in there to test out. There's still a fear factor or risk that they're not sure if they can use it or what they should be using it for.
00:07:32:08 - 00:07:49:13
Jessica
That's why it's so important to have guidelines, even if it's just guidelines for using general AI writing tools, which happen to be what ARS were called, so that people understand that it's okay and you are allowed to use it and we want you experimenting. And here's how and I'm sure going to get into that next.
00:07:49:18 - 00:07:58:06
Michelle
Yeah, I mean, I think developing responsible AI policies ideally would be a first step in adopting generative the AI.
00:07:58:08 - 00:08:22:20
Unknown
But what we want people to understand is that it's not too late to put them into place, even if you feel like you're doing so retroactively. It is so important to increase adoption and to give people that safe space to really take off and start reaping the benefits of using generative A.I.
Yadin
I like the point of view is, like you said, Michelle, starting high level and also teachers, and you were talking about sort of different teams having different sets of policies.
00:08:23:01 - 00:08:41:10
Yadin
But at the same time, we don't want to scare everybody off because you don't have to create these big, huge, heavy, super scary documents. But it is really important to not just say, hey, we're going to go do this, like to go do it. You have to put something in place. Like you guys said, you have to have some guardrails or as people aren't really going to want to do it.
00:08:41:10 - 00:08:55:00
Yadin
Or if you don't put anything in place and you say, no, we can't use these tools at all. People are still going to use them, but they're just not going to know how to use them. They're going to use them anyway. And you can have both of those up.
Michelle
Yadin, have you encountered big, scary documents from the path?
00:08:55:03 - 00:09:10:12
Unknown
Because I was on the brand team, so I just want to make sure I didn't create any of those big scary documents.
Yadin
I don't think. I think the ones that you guys created were really great because they just captured the essence and they were just covered. The key things was like all this and not that. And that's all you really have to do.
00:09:10:13 - 00:09:30:02
Yadin
Those guidelines don't have to be big technical things. They can just be very simple, very straightforward and very easy just to get you going. Like you said, they're going to be living and breathing. You just say, hey, look at, hey, everybody, don't put personally identifiable information into these tools. Don't use this tool or don't use that tool. Or if you're going to do it, don't put company sensitive information.
00:09:30:03 - 00:10:04:08
Yadin
It's mean, just basic stuff, just super basic, and then start there and then say great, and then start building all the different things, build the enablement, build the education, build those other things, and build the experimentations and the pilots.
Suzanne
And the other thing the guidelines can do is guide people on which tool to use for what. And if you can get your organization to that point, that helps people too, because like Jaidyn said, you'll have the curious rebels who will go off and do it anyway, and they may use a tool that you're not fond of or is not approved, but they didn't know.
00:10:04:10 - 00:10:26:10
Suzanne
So you're going to have kind of two ends of the spectrum there. So the guidelines help to bring everybody towards the mean or the middle, which is what you want. You want the guided use of tools that are approved and within bounds and how to use them. Like do I use my company log on email or do I use my own personal want?
00:10:26:10 - 00:10:46:11
Suzanne
Or all of those things help people understand the right way to do it. Michelle, you were going to jump in. Sorry I stepped on you.
Michelle
Oh, no, just a one thing I was thinking in terms of what makes documents scary versus helpful is I think nobody wants to be given a set of like, do not, do not, do not.
00:10:46:13 - 00:11:13:23
Michelle
You've got to balance that and even lead with what you can do. So do use generative AI for ideation, for brainstorming, for whatnot, but do not enter any company proprietary information or customer personally identifiable information into your prompts to do that. So yeah, just as an example there, because again, the guidelines should really be more about enabling people to use these tools versus scaring them away from it.
00:11:14:01 - 00:11:36:10
Yadin
Yeah, I think it's good to transition because I think we've done the Who's it for, What's it for maybe the next part of the show, which is that strategy and tactics piece.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Part 2: Strategy and Tactics
Michelle
Yeah. When it comes to getting started, what I would really recommend would be to start if your organization doesn't have any guidance in place as of yet, or even if it does, you can still take this extra step.
00:11:36:12 - 00:11:57:02
Michelle
Consider creating an AI mission statement or a set of core values that can really provide a North Star for your organization. As you flesh out those policies and usage guidelines, it will also really impart more meaning and answer the question like Why? Why are you using AI rather than just how were you using it and what are you doing?
00:11:57:02 - 00:12:35:16
Michelle
What are you not doing? So there's also the opportunity to make sure that your A.I. mission, your A.I. value statement, ladders up to and supports your corporate values and can really help to further those values. And this can change across industry. I mean, maybe if you're, say, a health care company or organization and your mission is to improve access and elevate care to all of your patients, then of course, the focus of your A.I. use and your AI value statement is going to be along the lines of extending care or personalizing care, leveraging the technology for the good of your patients.
00:12:35:18 - 00:12:57:22
Suzanne
Yeah. Michelle, that's great point. And I recall in our journey we had those how do use guidelines, do this, do this, do this, not that, but we came back and circled back and put in a layer on top after the fact about the values, the value statement behind our use of A.I.. And I think that was a brilliant addition.
00:12:57:22 - 00:13:21:01
Suzanne
I remember when you brought that up on and what yes, that's what's missing that Northstar, because a lot of people were intimidated by AI, you know, like this could take away my job. And with that Northstar put in there, they realized, no, they're enabling me with more skills to do a better job differently. And that clicked on a light for a lot of people.
00:13:21:01 - 00:13:40:21
Suzanne
So retroactive kudos to you for saying, Hey, we need some more. We're not quite there yet. We haven't nailed it. So all those listening out there that is there a right order or wrong order? No, just start. And like we said in the beginning, it will evolve and you'll go, Something's missing and you'll figure it out and you'll add that to it.
00:13:40:23 - 00:14:00:17
Suzanne
There are plenty of guideline documents out there. I remember Michelle and I did a presentation on AI to the legal working Group, and I found a whole bunch of resources of different companies that had different corporate statements, public corporate statements about AI. And you can find those all over the place. I encourage you all to go and look today.
00:14:00:19 - 00:14:24:05
Suzanne
What does Google say about the use of AI and how A.I. is going to impact humanity? Goes Look at Microsoft, go look at IBM, see how they differ, Study the language that they're using in those statements and understand how you might incorporate similar things in your Northstar or different things to pay, not who you are as a company and as an organization and where you're trying to get to.
00:14:24:07 - 00:14:50:09
Jessica
Yeah, and as an example, our guidelines for using AI writing tools at IBM are came out in March, but our core values didn't come out till June, I think, or maybe even after that August. And we have them publicly posted on our Markham Awards so we can put this in the show notes. But for example, it's this slide that says our core values, the beliefs that drive our actions as a counsel to what Michelle is talking about.
00:14:50:09 - 00:15:12:07
Jessica
And I'm only going to read the high level first three, but it's that air literacy is foundational to the safe, effective and ethical use of generative AI. Productivity gains from gen AI usage must benefit workers as well as their businesses, and that we show others how to leverage Gen AI for the greater good. And then each of those goes into one or two more specifics under that.
00:15:12:09 - 00:15:31:16
Jessica
But Michelle, I'm wondering to if you can share a couple examples from our Gen AI writing guidelines too, just to give people some more to think about.
Michelle
Yeah, absolutely. Well, what I'd love to do is just touch on to some of you may be thinking, I get why we need to do this, but like, can you give me some examples or something?
00:15:31:18 - 00:16:18:08
Yadin
I mean, obviously big issues are pertain to legal compliance, regulatory compliance, plagiarism, brand quality, accuracy. These are often top of mind for people. So there's going to be a basic checklist and there are templates available to add that will point you to to get you started on this. But just as an example for legal issues and considerations, you want to make sure that you review your AI vendors, content policies, their acceptable standards, bias mitigation, and not just any new AI vendors that you may be evaluating, but those that are already in place because your MarTech stack is guaranteed, including companies that are using AI and ML in new and innovative ways. So you'll want to stay on top that.
00:16:18:10 - 00:16:36:03
Yadin
The vendor piece is a great point because your vendors could be using doing work for you, producing work for you, and you may not have that kind of governance over what they're doing or how they're doing or what tools are doing or what type of information they're putting in or what tool so critical to to make sure that those guidelines extend to everyone who is doing work with you.
00:16:36:05 - 00:17:05:15
Michelle
Yeah. So ask them about that and always maintain human in the loop oversight of all of your data and publish outputs. Plagiarism is a tricky one because plagiarism detectors are notoriously inept, and so you'll want to also do your own due diligence on that. One good tactic is to take any unique phrases, put them in quotes, and Google them to make sure that the A.I. isn't actually lifting or replicating entire sentences from elsewhere.
00:17:05:15 - 00:17:28:05
Suzanne
So you can do kind of your own spot checking their content quality and brand consistency. I think we're going to do future episode just on brand alignment and strengthening your brand A.I.. But of course, the good news is, is this is really doable even in a lot of the free models to train them on human written top performing content to give them instructions about your brand voice and tone.
00:17:28:07 - 00:18:00:12
Suzanne
Again, make sure that the outputs are being reviewed by humans and by creative teams. So again, AI's not the replacement for the humans, it's the assistant to the humans.
Suzanne
Interesting aspects. You know, you touched on legal and you touched on purchasing and procurement and that's about kind of the team behind putting the guidelines in place. And it's really important to work CROSS-FUNCTIONALLY So that you're building specific guidelines for your team, but you're not to be apart from the rest of the company.
00:18:00:12 - 00:18:21:04
Suzanne
So bringing in your legal team, first and foremost to have them help you first, help them understand what the guidelines are and are not. This is not legal instructions. This is usage guidelines. But have your legal buddy there along your side so that they understand what you're doing and they can embrace what you're doing and support what you're doing.
00:18:21:04 - 00:18:47:08
Suzanne
So that's my favorite team to get involved. My philosophy in business all along, as your two best friends are either in finance or legal or both, get them on your side. So definitely reach across to your legal team and you may have to reach across into your IT team. Jessica you've got some experience with that. On getting them on board so they understand what's going on, what we're doing and what we're not doing because other organizations could react in a negative way.
00:18:47:08 - 00:19:25:12
Suzanne
Oh my gosh, look at they're going rogue and you've got to help them understand that. No, no, no. What you're trying to do here is actually bring people to the middle, not blow up the box.
Jessica
Yeah, exactly. First of all, I love that advice. Your two best friends are either or both in legal or finance. Like, think back on your careers are true, but I would also add it to your point make them your best friends to for example, the MRC give us advice in the middle of the year last year, even in terms of future pilots saying that get his team and his VP involved as soon as possible to grease the skids so
00:19:25:12 - 00:19:49:03
Jessica
that they knew what was coming. They knew what we were starting to look at and you don't catch them then off guard or on the defensive. And I would say the same goes true for your marketing ops team. So in terms of especially the tools that are coming in, make sure you have somebody from marketing technology involved so that they are a clear part of the problem solving and solution just the same as it. But all of these functions are incredibly important.
00:19:49:07 - 00:20:13:01
Yadin
Now. The fact this is a fantastic transition into our teams and tools.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Part 3: Teams and Tools
Yadin
So how do we bring those people together to accomplish this? And I think you've already sort of touched on that to knows how you're starting to reach across these different functions. And for some people that might be something that's a huge chasm between them and maybe legal or I.T. or brand or other parts of the business-like finance.
00:20:13:03 - 00:20:32:01
Yadin
How did each of you start to bridge those gaps? And a lot of times it comes down to relationships, but maybe some people don't have those relationships in place already. How do you just sort of crash into those different lines of business and say, hey, look, here's something really important that you need to know about? We need to build these policies and we need to do it together.
00:20:32:03 - 00:20:51:03
Michelle
Well, exercising leadership in that area is key. And this was a great learning experience that we had because a year ago we didn't wait for anybody to tell us that we needed to put forth some usage guidelines for marketers. We just understood the urgency of doing so and so put a stake in the ground and got some guidelines published.
00:20:51:03 - 00:21:13:04
Michelle
And then in parallel, our opposite, the CTO was working on more of a corporate wide policy statement, and fortunately, because those parallel efforts did come together and because we had showed some leadership in that area that really earned us a seat at the table for collaborating with the office of the CTO to further shape and revise the corporate policy.
00:21:13:05 - 00:21:47:08
Michelle
And then because we were an enterprise company, it made sense to have that overarching policy that spanned all kinds of use cases, but then also to drill down and continue to update marketing specific usage guidance. And so I wanted our listeners to really think about the need for both that you may very well need a policy statement and some general guiding principles, and then you might need your functionally specific guidelines depending on which teams are using, which tools for which use cases.
00:21:47:10 - 00:22:11:16
Suzanne
And I would say when you start working cross-functionally, it's messy at first. That's okay. Expect that policies will run into one another. The CTOs office tried to tell us what our policies would be and we gently pushed back and said, No, you don't understand. We're not application developers, we're not writing software. So those guidelines don't make sense to us.
00:22:11:17 - 00:22:38:14
Suzanne
Here are the guidelines that make sense to us and how we are using generative AI to produce content and assets that are not code based. So we had to be really clear. Everybody comes to the table with their own point of view and they don't necessarily realize that that's just one of many points of view. Because, Jenny, I can be a tool for all types of areas within a business.
00:22:38:16 - 00:23:05:05
Suzanne
There will be different types of guidelines and so don't get bullied into accepting some very technical oriented, developer oriented guidelines, be firm and say, no, actually this is how we use it and this is why these guidelines are important to us and how we're deploying this new technology. So stand tall, turn your shoulders back, turn out and have and have that grown up conversation.
00:23:05:05 - 00:23:28:04
Jessica
That's right. That is such, such great advice, because I think that applies to a lot of things around this conversation is that the CTO and CIO, they're thinking developer first and you just have to continually share the marketing use cases. I mean, even when you're onboarding new tools, I can't tell you how many times I was talking about what we were going to do with the tools.
00:23:28:09 - 00:23:49:16
Jesssica
Initially it was it's publicly available information only. So nothing is secret about the data that we're sharing back and forth at this point. Ultimately, we did go through data privacy agreements and all that, but you have to educate others. Don't assume that just because they're in I.T. or because there's a C in front of their title, that they understand exactly how you're going to do it.
00:23:49:18 - 00:24:31:22
Michelle
And that is a great segue to my next point, which is that all the policies and guidelines in the world won't really matter if you don't have a governance framework in place to make sure that people know about them and adhere to them. So it's got to go hand in hand with training. They've got to get that training and enablement out the door and then do what you can to conduct audits and surveys and create metrics to assess accuracy, reliability, fairness in your air systems, how they're being used and collect that data from your users as well, and also make sure that there's a mechanism in place for people to report air related incidents and
00:24:31:22 - 00:24:53:02
Michelle
concerns in your organization. I know Jasper has a great template to help people get started and that's customizable. That's freely available. Jessica Did you want to share anything about that?
Jessica
Yeah, I mean, we'll put it in a show notes. It's Jasper. I slash ethics. This is something we were widely sharing last year too, so certainly before I came over here.
00:24:53:02 - 00:25:16:06
Jessica
But it's a great way to get past the blank page syndrome and getting you into thinking about how to put this together.
Yadin
From a tools perspective, did you use the tools to create the guidelines envisioned for the AI tools, or was this just sort of sort of old school?
Michelle
No,
Suzanne
This was handcrafted.
Yadin
Hand crafted, see.
Suzanne
So this is artisanal
Yadin
Artisanal, artisanal, free range… content.
00:25:16:08 - 00:25:45:02
Suzanne
Yes. Yes. Yes, exactly.
Yadin
It's fabulous.
Jessica
I love this.
Michelle
They were totally organic guidelines. Yeah. I mean, we did some research as well. Interestingly enough, it was Boston University, I think was one of the earliest ones to create this beautiful, very non scary document. So that served as some inspiration. But really it was with us just applying what we knew so far about A.I. and its perils and potential and then going from there.
00:25:45:03 - 00:26:07:14
Jessica
And I'm sure we'll talk about education and A.I. literacy throughout all of these episodes too. But to Michelle's point, we had a very broad based AI literacy and education plan, and you heard that succinctly in our core values as well. So every single time we are in front of a group talking about generally the AI or anything related, we are pushing those guidelines.
00:26:07:16 - 00:26:29:08
Jessica
Any opportunity we had to review them, we were sharing that. So it's just this continual comms and evangelism. And I think with a lot of this and with broad scale adoption, you have to treat it almost like it's an internal comms or marketing campaign. So there's a lot more that goes into that than just your guidelines. But how are you sharing this on what channels, how often?
00:26:29:10 - 00:26:51:11
Jessica
Making sure that there's support bottoms up and top down and then being open for questions and along that And there's a lot more that can go into that internal campaign aspect in terms of setting up some rah rah in anticipation before you pass out licenses and get people excited. And there's a lot of fun with that, too. But I just wanted to plug like how often we were sharing these guidelines along the way as well.
00:26:51:13 - 00:27:20:09
Yadin
I think it was was consistently you had to constantly communicate, constantly communicate over and over and over versus no too much communicating because it was something that for someone in every call or every email thread was always, I feel like seeing it for the very first time. No matter how many times you felt like you were sharing it, because this is still very, very new for people
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Part 5: Lightning Round
Yadin
And maybe we could transition so that the last sort of segment I know we move quick here by segment of the show, not the last but last this thread, which is the impact.
00:27:20:11 - 00:27:48:05
Yadin
So really sort of saying each of you alluded to it throughout their conversation, but was that the real, like tangible impact of creating the guidelines, creating the vision, creating those relationships across different teams and making sure that you were educating and communicating?
Suzanne
You know, I think for me, the impact really hit me when I saw the CTOs team struggling with creating their guidelines for the corporate usage and just sitting back and watching them.
00:27:48:07 - 00:28:10:06
Suzanne
And this is a little bit of a dig and a little bit of throwing under the bus, but going to go do it anyway. They over rotated the over engineered it. Oh my goodness. By the time they were done specifying this, this it was like eight pages long, like, yo, no one's going to read that. Go back, start here and simplify, simplify, simplify.
00:28:10:11 - 00:28:28:22
Suzanne
It was just a fascinating exercise to watch them just get completely wrapped around the axles on this and I know why they were doing it. But again, keep it simple, be direct and constantly evolve it. That's one thing. The marketing that I consulted, we would constantly bring those up, need to touch it. Do we need to change it?
00:28:29:00 - 00:28:45:06
Suzanne
When we got this change, should we wait till next week when we don't know the change? We were constantly evolving this thing. This is not a right. It put it on a shelf, walk away and don't ever look at it again. It's a living, breathing thing.
Jessica
Well, let's touch on that, because some people might say like, how do you keep touching a document that's published?
00:28:45:09 - 00:29:11:02
Jessica
So like, where did we posted? And it was in a way that every time we touched it, people would see the latest version, right?
Michelle
Yeah, it was on our company intranet that made it really easy to access. We could just share the link in all kinds of forums. And one thing we also did, I love your point about this really being like an ongoing internal campaign is we tried to find out where people were having these discussions as well.
00:29:11:02 - 00:29:32:00
Michelle
Who outside of marketing too. And of course we were heavy users of Slack and so quickly discovered somebody had spun up like a chat CBT, Slack channel. So we all joined so we could follow this conversations and inevitably every few days, if not more often, somebody would ask, Well, does the company have any guidance on this? And we'd be like, As a matter of fact, they do.
00:29:32:01 - 00:29:52:20
Jessica
Boom.
Michelle
That was another opportunity to point people.
Yadin
Yes, it's huge because now they're one of the big benefits of you created these guidelines. Any time you're in any conversation, interaction, every time you have an enablement call, every time there's email comms, you have somewhere to point to give people that guidance. They know how to do it, what to do, what not to do. And you're able to say, look, go to this and here's how.
00:29:53:01 - 00:30:12:20
Michelle
Exactly.
Jessica
Yeah. And we also had in those guidelines, here's how to request access to our current company tool that we're using, which luckily we created into a process. So I didn't get emails and slack messages multiple times a day, which is what happened initially.
00:30:12:20 - 00:30:37:13
Yadin
Yeah, oh, poor Jessica. You got just a tsunami of communications.
Suzaanne
Yeah. As an aside for the audience, when we started this…
Jessica
I love the energy people. Yeah, yeah. Jessica put her email in as if you want to license, contact Jessica. Jessica, what does your inbox look like? She goes, Don't talk to me like, okay, you walked into it.
Jessica
Love the enthusiasm data point to show your leadership that it's necessary.
00:30:37:13 - 00:30:59:10
Jessica
But we also linked to training libraries, I think, and our own internal prompt library so it can kind of serve as a hub if the guidelines are your North Star and that's where people start, then depending on the how you're building that internal your intranet page, you can start to link out to all the other things they can do with the tool. So it just kind of becomes a really cool hub.
00:30:59:10 - 00:31:17:15
Michelle
Exactly.
Suzanne
Yeah. Hey, Michelle, I recall one person I think was on Slack there asking if we had any A.I. guidelines, and I said, Sure we do. And here they are. And then they said, Wouldn't it be great if we had brand guidelines to when your you know what? We've got those two and here they are like, what? Yeah.
00:31:17:17 - 00:31:47:13
Michelle
And how long have you worked here? That you didn't know we had these?
Suzanne
The person had been there quite some time, but yes, so you never know. The Jenny guidelines can be your delivery, your carrier pigeon for all kinds of other things that you want them to know.
Jessica
That's hilarious. Continuing along with impact to just to circle back to the initial comment on, you want to make sure that people understand that we want you to use these tools and learn them and test and experiment.
00:31:47:13 - 00:32:14:13
Jessica
We want to have success stories that we can share. We also want to know what's not working today for you so that we can tell other people. And then maybe like in Michelle's case, this happened last year. Two weeks later, it worked again, because that's how fast the technology is evolving. So getting comments even about how people were more excited about their job since they started using our tool than they have in years can't imagine going back.
00:32:14:13 - 00:32:46:18
Jessica
I love it. I use it every day. Like that's the type of impact that we want here ultimately. And the guidelines are just your first kind of stepping stone into unlocking some of this opportunity and potential and this reskilling, upskilling, professional development and ultimately. Right. Get into those business outcomes.
Yadin
I love the idea of all these tools, not just increasing efficiency, but improving your career, improving the way that you work, making you love your job more, making you look forward to it. I just love that whole theme.
00:32:46:20 - 00:33:08:18
Jessica
Yes. And just because I'm looking at these feelings about AI tools from VMware marketers, which is also on our Mark Award page that we're going to show, it says like without this tool helping with the mountain of things I've had to write these past few weeks, blogs, interview summaries, questionnaires for video, captured, news that are content transcripts, I've had ten meltdowns already.
00:33:08:23 - 00:33:28:19
Jessica
I would have had ten meltdowns. Really. I was able to boost my productivity by some astronomical amount and also saved my sanity. It's like that's where we want to get to at the end of the day. Sure, there's this hierarchy of time savings, cost savings and then performance improvements that we want to get to. From what I can do for us as marketers.
00:33:29:00 - 00:33:50:23
Jessica
But there's also the human aspect of it and the human plus eye piece of it. But the fact that now we're happier, we can do things we didn't know was possible, we can spend more time not working, saving our sanity. It's this type of stuff that I love.
Yadin
This fabulous I think is great. Unfortunately, we've got to start to wrap up the show right now for everybody.
00:33:50:23 - 00:34:13:00
Yadin
So I think this has been a phenomenal topic. Let's go ahead and quickly move into our lightning round.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Part 5: Lightning Round
Yadin
We’ll we go around the room and talk about one quick thing that happened recently that I think everyone should kind of know about and keep on their radar. I'll just start with one super quick, and I think that's really interesting how the hottest new job apparently in corporate America is the chief fire officer.
00:34:13:05 - 00:34:30:23
Yadin
So I feel like I mentioned that one, too, because I feel like it's pertinent to this shows if you are one of those wonderful forward looking organizations that's got your Chief Guy officer, you might have a little bit easier job in getting sort of these guidelines and principles off the ground because you've got an easy team or leader to go to to say, look at I want to raise my hand and I want to do this.
00:34:31:04 - 00:34:53:06
Yadin
How can I be a part of it? So that's mine for this episode. Michelle what’s your quick lightning round topic for today?
Michelle
Oh, just so many exciting new tools to try and apps to download. I mean, every day. Yeah, Gemini!
Yadin
I know it's exploding.
Jessica
Yeah. We should say we're recording this on Friday, February nine. So the Gemini news just hit this week.
00:34:53:06 - 00:35:17:11
Michelle
Yeah. Yeah. True. True. I may be dating this episode.
Suzanne
You stole my thunder. That was going to be my thing.
Michelle
Oh, sorry. I'm also using perplexity a lot, so I know this isn't meant to just, like, plug tools, but that's kind of what I'm excited about right now.
Yadin
All right, Suzanne.
Suzanne
So why don't you go? My takeaways just kind of watching Google as they unveiled Gemini and Bard is no more.
00:35:17:13 - 00:35:39:12
Suzanne
So it was very interesting to kind of go back and reflect. Remember when Bard came out and some people said, Bard, what's a bard anyway? I'm like, You don't know anything about what? Shakespeare? Hello. Anyway, it just an interesting branding move for them to have Bard as their stopgap until Gemini was ready. So now Gemini is the lead foot.
00:35:39:14 - 00:36:10:03
Suzanne
Was that the plan all along? We don't know, do we? Maybe. Yes, maybe. No. The Ethan molik. I read his comparison of the two. I'm sure you guys have all dug into his newsletter, but really interesting. Understand that these things have personalities and they have a point of view and the creator built them in. So know that that exists and try and identify that so that you know what you're working with, right When you think about them, how they respond, are they trying to be your chatty best friend or are they a listicle machine?
00:36:10:09 - 00:36:31:16
Suzanne
So again, they all have point of view. Gemini does so does open AI. So Those are my takeaways.
So important. I love that Gemini is a more gender neutral name as well as we're finding that there's even bias in the way that they were naming AI systems Siri and Alexa as more female names that are more like personal assistants.
00:36:31:16 - 00:36:52:22
Jessica
And then the heavier, more production workhorses are getting male names. And so Gemini seems like a great and it's that perspective too.
Yadin
I think Amazon's new tool is called Rufus, which is named after a dog.
Suzanne
Rufus?
Jessica
Did you hear Paul Racer's podcast this week? Apparently there was a Rufus dog that would roam the Amazon halls. They kind of go through the story.
00:36:53:00 - 00:37:16:07
Yadin
That's all saying he was named after a dog.
Michelle
I was going to say that's a total dog name, but probably a male dog though. So I giving it the thumbs down.
Jessica
I don't know. I think that could go either way, but okay, mine is not new news, but I am finally watching the AlphaGo documentary. Have you guys seen this yet?
Michelle
Not yet, but…
Suzanne
No.
Yadin
I watched it a while ago.
00:37:16:09 - 00:37:45:05
jessica
Well, Paul Razer talks about it all the time. By the way, Paul Razer, founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute. We're so excited he's going to be on an upcoming episode. We'll also talk about the institute a lot throughout the show. So I started watching this and it is completely fascinating, like thrilling, almost like a sports show because their lives broadcasting in this show, these games with the computer against like the world champion of this goat game.
00:37:45:07 - 00:38:06:13
Jessica
Then in game three, the computer makes a completely unheard of moves that no human would make this move. So then you start to think and get into like the creative new aspects of AI, not just doing what it was taught to do from other games. I'm not all the way through it yet because I'm only watching it when I'm on the treadmill.
00:38:06:13 - 00:38:34:12
Jessica
But I am completely fascinated. You guys love it too. If you're listening and into this topic that is.
Yadin
Well, thanks, everybody. Thank you for all those who listen to this episode. And I want to thank you all who hosted today and giving the perspective on guidelines and compliance. And we'll see you the next episode of the A.I. Edge podcast for enterprise marketers. Thanks, everybody.