A Leaders Guide to AI: Better Meetings, Real Results

Most leaders don’t need another meeting, they need more value from the ones already on their calendar. One of the simplest ways AI can help right now? Let it take the notes.

In this episode of Behind the Screens, Tyler Smith and Chris Harp dig into why AI-powered meeting tools might be the most practical, yet underrated application for busy business leaders today. They share what works, what to watch out for, and how to use these tools to capture action items, cut down on admin work, and keep your team aligned.

If you’ve been wondering where AI fits into your day-to-day, this could be the best place to start.

Transcript

Meeting Problems and Missed Opportunities

Jessica 0:00

You're listening to Behind the Screens, presented by the Clear IT Partner Program from Madsen and Isom Technology Consulting. If you've ever wondered how confident, forward-thinking businesses make smart technology decisions while others fall behind, you're in the right place. Every episode we pull back the curtain on the systems, tools, and leadership decisions that keep growing companies running strong, so you can apply them in your own business. Now, let's get into it with your hosts, Tyler Smith and Chris Harp.

Chris 0:34

Well, you have those meetings sometimes that are like, oh boy, this what's that? Uh this meeting could have been an email.

Tyler 0:41

Thank you for inviting me to another meeting that could have been an email.

Chris 0:43

Yeah. But you you forget you have that lack of clarity in the end of what are the takeaways, what are the action items?

Tyler 0:49

And that's that's I think that's a problem that everybody has. I don't care what business you work in. If you work with people of any kind, you're gonna need to coordinate, communicate, hash through ideas, brainstorm, come up with maybe solutions to problems or whatever. So you're gonna spend time with people, you're gonna have meetings. And the best meetings are the ones where everybody's engaged, everybody's prepared, and they're there and they're actually trying to work through the materials. But I mean, the problem really is that after that conversation happens, how do you how do you carry that forward and take action on it? Right.

Chris 1:25

Yep. Yeah, and that's that's why today's conversation matters so much. Absolutely. Um it's so framing around, you know, AI, AI's everywhere, right? Um, but how do you use it in a way that actually delivers value? And when thinking about meetings and talking about meetings, that's what like that's the almost the entry level of it, right? The best way to use AI originally starting out. You don't need to be an expert or a developer or anything like that. But yeah, I mean, let's use it in meetings.

Tyler 1:57

Let's talk about that. I mean, this that's the point of today and this episode today is to really talk about, you know, there's all kinds of different scenarios where, you know, maybe AI can help, but let's talk about this one simple use case, this one thing that um is is probably the best place to start, right? If you're if you're using it uh in in a few different ways, uh maybe this is the place where uh you could start using it today, like right now.

Chris 2:23

Yep. Yeah, and real great for for capturing action items. Um there's a lot of tools out there, but leveraging AI to actually capture those action items, capture kind of what do what do those next steps look like? Accountability, transparency. We'll get into a little bit of that later. Um, it's uh it's an absolute time saver.

Tyler 2:44

Everybody jokes about death by PowerPoint, right? Or or death by meeting, or everybody's like, oh man, another meeting. Oh no, please, don't no more meetings. And they do that, and and it's it's almost presented like the meeting itself is the problem, right? Like, why are we meeting? But to me, that's not really it. Like, obviously, you don't want to spend you know 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day in meetings. Um, but at the same time, it's not really the meeting itself that people dislike. And uh when it comes to small business leaders, you know, they don't hate the meeting itself. They just hate the fact that they might have to say the same thing over and over and over again, right? If you have a meeting with this, these three people, and then you're okay, great, and now I gotta have a meeting with these three people and it's the same thing. Or worse, I'm gonna have a meeting with these three people, and then at the end of that hour and a half long meeting where nobody took notes, uh, we we all forget what the actual who took who committed to what was, and then we have to have the meeting again because uh a week has gone by and nobody took action. I think it really comes down to people don't trust that the outcome of the meeting is going to actually have an impact on the organization. So whatever the point of the meeting was in the first place, if no one's taking notes, if no one's capturing action items, if nobody's actually really consolidating and clarifying what that was all about, then they start to distrust the process. And then when you distrust the process and you're invited to a meeting, you get that death by PowerPoint, death by meeting where the people they just don't want to be there because they already feel like it's going to be a waste of time.

Chris 4:23

Or it's another meeting. You have those also you mentioned 17 people in a meeting. I almost feel like the more people in a meeting, sometimes it feels like the less gets done, which I don't know if that's really true, but that's the meeting fatigue. It's like, you know, you're sitting on a Teams meeting and all of a sudden it's like so-and-so join so-and-so join. And it's like, oh man, you know, we partner with a lot of other companies and things. And um, I feel like larger companies are a lot like that. It's a it's it's a lot of people in a meeting. You end up with meeting fatigue. And almost like perceptually, you flip in your head like like something flips in your head of like, well, what are how many takeaways are we gonna have today? Right. So, so getting into you know, leveraging this, these in a meeting, what is what would you say the cost would be on walking out of a meeting with no clear takeaways?

The Power of AI in Meetings

Tyler 5:16

It I mean, one is trust. Like I mean, it's just people start to just like we said, they they start to mistrust the process because they say uh there's no clarity on who is responsible for one, taking notes, right? Maybe you're lucky enough in your organization to have someone who that's their their specific assigned role in the meeting. But in most small businesses, that's just another hat that somebody has to wear, and they've been invited to the meeting, and they want to engage in the meeting. They want to be someone who's talking and actively discussing things. But if they're the one that's frantically trying to type or take notes or do something like that, then there's a cost of their attention. Without actually focusing in on, okay, what should the takeaways be and whose responsibility is that, and did they do it the same way every time? Or is it a role that a different person in the organization has to play every single meeting? So in the first meeting of the day, it's this person, the second meeting, it's another person, third meeting, it's another person. That creates situations like you're talking about. There's no clear takeaways, or there are inconsistent takeaways. And so you start missing things. You you start dropping who was supposed to do what. If somebody says something like, okay, that's mine, I'll take that, uh, and then they roll right into another meeting right afterwards and they never wrote that down, people just they forget. And it's not because they're malicious and it's not because they, you know, committed to something and then are trying to get out of it, it's just because um they they literally forget and they're paying more attention to the attendance and the engagement than they are the action and the follow-up. And so um, you know, you start to get those feelings of, wow, we wasted a lot of time. If we had a conversation for 30 minutes that no one took notes, uh people said they would do stuff, but when it came down to it, nobody wrote it down. And then a week later you maybe have a rhythm meeting or you get in with the group and everybody says, So did anybody get anything? And uh and everybody just kind of looks at each other like, wait, did I did I say I would? I I don't remember. Um, so it's it ends up you you know, people do double work, right? They go, Oh, okay, I guess we have to talk about this again. I thought you volunteered for that, Chris. Yeah, and then you said I sure did not. No, that wasn't me. That was that was Tyler. You said that uh you have to like recap it, right? You're like, Well, let's let's spend some time talking about what we talked about last week. And this time, Chris, I'd really like for you to write it down, please. And you're like, I don't have a pencil. Wait, hold on, my laptop. Uh wait, what how do we do this again? Yeah.

Chris 7:50

Um well, I mean, it's a it inconsistency, I think is the is the word that you used. And the other big word in there is is the trust, especially if it's a a client-facing meeting, uh, maybe a vendor relationship or anything like that. You don't want to be in a position to have something, you know, create an action item or have it be an inconsistent experience at the end of the day. And if it is inconsistent, that would erode some trust. Yeah, you know. Absolutely.

Tyler 8:24

And and it's it's a lack of clarity, right? It's a lack of follow-through. And when you have to either restate or rework through follow-up meetings where you're just hitting the same territory all over again, um, you know, the the that term of eroding trust is exactly the right message. It's it's it's why people start to get that fatigue in meetings. Right. Really what what it comes down to is um if you can if you had a a person in your organization who had a full-time job of taking really good notes and making sure that every action item was captured and making sure that people were followed up with on summaries of what was said and commitments that were made, um, you'd be way ahead of like 99% of small businesses. Right. Because you just uh that just doesn't happen. People have an expectation that they will remember, that it'll just people will just get things done and they don't have to write it down. Um but I think by and large, what we see over and over again in in our own organizations and the in the clients we work with is if people don't come prepared to engage directly and take notes, then one suffers for the other, right? Maybe you have a great conversation, people feel really good about it, they go back to their desks, they go on with their day, but no notes get taken. Or you have perfect notes where one person was the only person talking, and then people don't feel like they had a good experience in the meeting.

Chris 9:53

Or notes that don't have any action items. Yeah. Or notes that, you know, maybe something could have been recorded wrong. I guess that's true in any in any process. But um, yeah, I think, you know, in the in large-scale corporate America, right? Maybe they have a leader. I'm talking like Fortune 500 companies, probably a an assistant that would be in there taking notes of that. Staff, something. Yeah.

Tyler 10:17

I mean, because there's value in it, right? And they and they have the resources to hire that person and to have an expert who this is literally their whole job. This is what they do and what they're good at. Um and it is a absolutely a valuable uh thing to do. But it's just, I feel like it's not something that in the small to mid-sized business space, people have the resources to to well, you're wearing multiple hats with it, right?

Chris 10:39

I mean, I've been in plenty of meetings with you where you're taking notes, you know, and and how much time would you how much time would you say, let's see if we can quantify this a little bit, right? How much time would you say, because I've been in many meetings with you over the last 65 years that we've worked together, but the um, you know, and you're in an exceptional note taker while being engaged, you know, it's the whole multitasking. Um and how much time would you say you would be able to get back after a meeting from going back and summarizing?

Building Trust Through Meeting Documentation

Tyler 11:12

I mean, that's the key, right? Like is for people who can type without looking at the keyboard and type fast, I would say you're you're you have a leg up because at least you can capture what's going on. But the the the challenge uh for me is one, it's re even though like you know, the multitasking, by the way, it's a little aside here. I feel like multitasking was the promise of the 90s, right? Like the future is all about multitasking and uh and the early 2000s, and when we all like grew up and and realized that it was just it was it's kind of a lie. Right. It's like quicksand. Yeah, it's like you you are fractional uh attention, is kind of what multitasking is. But you you get good at it because you have to be, because in small business you're wearing so many hats and you're expected to do so many things at the same time. Um so you you're still split. So even if you're typing fast, and even if you are, because I I know a lot of our clients, they type fast, right? And they and they can do it, but there's still a cost of focus and and engagement in the meeting because you're like, you know, somebody brings up a great point, and I can't respond to that great point while simultaneously typing out what they just said. Like even if I type 150 words a minute, which I don't, um, I don't think I could quite get there. And so over the years I've tried to like when I was younger, I would like type it all like verbatim, right? And it would it would come at a cost. I'd be like, okay, slow down, all right, what's going on? Um, but now I'm trying to type it slower, but it's still it I can't quite keep up um with what's going on. So the the problem is capturing is still not quite great. And then the follow-up, the summarization of all of those raw notes, because that's I always label my notes, you know, raw notes, right? Because I I I can't both capture and synthesize in the same breath. I have to just capture everything first and then go back through it. But um the the synthesis of it, the follow-up, the follow-through, um, you know, that's well not about you, but that's at least 15 to 30 minutes for me at the end of the meeting in a perfect scenario. Um, and because we're in the small business space and because things move fast and there's lots going on, usually I I can't carve out 30 minutes to finish up and wrap everything up with the bow and follow up with everybody. I really do think that when it comes to AI that we've talked about over and over again over the last several years and and how it's evolving and and what impact it's having right now and what we think is going to happen in the future. This right here, the the concept of AI note-taking in meetings, I firmly believe is the killer app right now for small business. I I think it's like there's a ton of that it can do. Uh everybody's seen, I think by now, these amazing demos of like generated images and video and uh taking you know a thousand-page document and creating like a hundred bullet points from it that allow you to pass a test or something. Those are all the like these things demo well and everyone's really impressed by it. But I think at the end of the day, for small business, especially for leaders trying to run an organization with small teams, 100% AI and AI meeting notes is is like the killer app. It's it's it's how you get started.

Chris 14:30

So you would say, so would you rank that as like the number one in the number one?

Tyler 14:38

Number one.

Chris 14:39

Number one. Let's unpack that a little bit. Yeah, I know. It's it's a bold claim, right? I mean, full disclosure, we've all used it. Let's talk about that a little bit. Let's unpack that a little bit because AI could do a lot of things. You just mentioned, you know, like creating the images and summarizing papers and um and and things like that. So why is it is like a robot, it's being built, you know, all its way on. Um well okay, so take me through take me through that then. Why do you think that that is such a key piece on the AI side for meetings? Take me through that.

Tyler 15:19

Yeah. For one, um AI is big, AI is scary, AI is a little bit intimidating. And but in this application of it, it's it's super low friction. Like it's literally, um, you know, we work a lot in the Microsoft space uh and do a lot of our meetings over Microsoft Teams. Um there's analogs within Zoom and Google and all the other uh meeting platforms, but it's it's incredibly low friction. You can literally just uh add a license. So all of those people I just mentioned uh have different license levels. In the Microsoft world, it's called copilot. You add a copilot license to just the person who's the organizer of the meeting. It doesn't have to be that everybody on the meeting has a license. You don't have to, you know, mortgage uh your your third born um to to get there. It's low cost, slow friction. Once you add it, it's it's a it's a one-button activation within the within the meeting. You don't have to change processes, you don't have to do a ton of like training and and understanding to get value from it. It just like from day one, it's your note-taker, you know, and it it immediately addresses a real world problem. You know, when you're talking about how could AI help summarize large volumes of data that my company needs to move something out of the discovery phase into the engineering or whatever, like those are all uh applications of AI as well, but they're they're kind of big and onerous and take a lot of planning and effort and energy to get off the ground. This is one of those, it's like it's it's almost like a light switch. It says, you know what, turn it on, record, and what comes at the end is real tangible value. So anybody who's running that organization, running the meeting, they can all stay focused during the meeting. So you don't have to, you know, say, um, okay, so-and-so, you're gonna be the official note taker for this meeting. And then they, if that's not their normal role, they kind of go, Oh, okay, all right, I guess let's see. And it's just because I can type fast, huh?

Chris 17:21

Yeah, the term volatiled.

The Human Element of AI Implementation

Tyler 17:23

You get rewarded with additional responsibility. Yep. Um, so they don't have to do that. They can actually be engaged in the meeting, they can have some confidence when that discussion is happening, that what they're saying is being captured and what anybody's committing to is being documented so that at the right at the end of the meeting, they can get a summary of of what was said. Um, they can pull who committed to what, they can uh see uh something where they could just step through and say, when was I mentioned? Um it's it's super super valuable from day one. And it's I I I know I'm probably a lot of people may disagree with me on this, but um I think it's it's one of those like 80% value use cases. Um can it help you draft an email? Absolutely. Can it help you synthesize large documents? Yes. Can it help you get through uh being stuck in writing or drafting like a long-form document? All of those things are true. But what do you do 27 times a week with everybody you work with? You talk to other people and you do it in a meeting. And 27 times might be a little bit aggressive, but I I know I have some clients where that that might be low. Yeah. Um, and it's just one of those things that right away it it has value. And once you do it, literally the very first time you do it, you see the output, it like you go, oh, that's where it is.

Chris 18:53

So what you're saying, so to rank that, I guess, you know, ad number one, you'd be talking about low effort.

Tyler 18:59

Yeah.

Chris 19:00

High value. Exactly. Right. Low effort, low cost, high value.

Tyler 19:03

Sure. Because it's in addition to it being super easy to to set up and do, you know, you literally in the Microsoft world, you know, you're looking at co-pilot, it's like 30 bucks a month. And if you licensed just the meeting organizer in the whole meeting and you had 20 people attending, because you have 20 people attending a meeting, um, that's the that's the only cost. And then that person who's organizing the meeting gets all those notes and can immediately share them with all 20 people. And by the way, the five people who couldn't come who were invited because something else came up.

Chris 19:37

That itself is probably worth a lot, right? A lot right there, yeah. Yeah, no doubt.

Tyler 19:43

Um so I mean, I have a question for you.

Chris 19:47

Oh okay.

Tyler 19:50

Uh so in in in what we do, right? Because we're a small business like a lot of the organizations that we support. Um, what have you seen? What's been some of the real world impact of of this application in and how you run your team?

Chris 20:06

Boy, I would say probably client onboardings. Okay. When we're onboarding a client, we have you know an internal kickoff call um or kickoff meeting, I guess it would be. Um, and then you know, we get you know everything kind of drafted up and outlined, and then we have a client facing, you know, kickoff call or kickoff meeting. Um and it's useful because that's one of like from an operation standpoint, that's like the the experience you're can you're trying to continue on the experience from like our partner success managers, right? And that that high level of value and you're trying to keep that experience. And I don't know, you mentioned trust before. I don't know a faster way to erode that trust than not doing what you say you're gonna do. Yeah. Um, so we use it a lot for any sort of like onboardings and action items oriented to that. So um if you know, let's say somebody's gonna reach out to um somebody on my team is gonna say, you know, I'll take that item and reach out to so-and-so, get a list of you know, the people that are gonna be on the agreement, we'll get them set up in the system. And um I would like to say we've been a hundred percent on getting that uh those tasks kind of scheduled out and divvied out, and somebody to take accept the ownership of that. Um, where this has helped us is especially on the action item side, doing you know, holding you know, accountability, doing what you say you were gonna do, what you committed to uh has been huge for us.

Tyler 21:38

Getting on the call, they're able to engage, they're able to talk, they're and even people who aren't to get on there. And that was what I was gonna say is for the people that are maybe not directly in that meeting but need to know what the outcomes are. If let's say, I don't know, promises were made. We're gonna use the passive voice there. Uh promises were made in the very first meeting uh about something that we're gonna do. And I don't know, that promise was made by somebody whose name rhymes with Skylar. And uh something was cast out there. Uh that promise is documented, captured, and then uh the people that are actually gonna have to follow up and fulfill that promise uh see exactly when it was made and and what they're gonna now be responsible for doing, right?

Chris 22:25

Yeah, I think the goal overall in that is to reduce that admin time and to get to get the action items in there, reduce that admin time. Um I know when I feel like I'm going to from one meeting to the next meeting to the next meeting. It doesn't feel like there's ever I'm ever completely out of the previous meeting because I don't have that time. But if I know that I can go back and just look at the notes, yeah, send out a recap, you know, um, and that I can see names where action items are assigned to, um, that's that helps me close the loop and I can be present and engaged for the following meeting.

Tyler 23:04

I like I like that phrase, right? The the closing of the loop because the the traditional problem with meetings is um if you have, if you are unlucky enough to have back to back to back to back meetings, and what I feel like is by the end of each of those meetings, you're opening loops and you're juggling them. And by the end of the third or fourth meeting in the day, you have three or four open loops of concern because you know you made commitments in those sessions where you said, Okay, yes, I I hear you. This is what I think we should do, here's what I think should be next. And you're like juggling that. And like I said earlier, if you're lucky enough to have somebody who is really good at taking notes and capturing all that, and you have that level of trust in them, then you can close those loops just by virtue of having that person. But in almost every small business uh that I that I've worked with, um those people that's just another hat people wear. So when you say reducing the admin time, it's like each person in that meeting kind of inherits a few loops that are open, and then everyone is feeling like they they individually need to do something. And so um, yeah, for me, 100% the killer app because if you can be in that meeting fully engaged, understanding that it's being documented, everything that's being said is being captured, all commitments are being uh written down, as it were, for follow-up in the future, and then it's something that you can check back on like within minutes after the end of the meeting, or at the end of the day, when you've finished your fourth or fifth back-to-back meeting, and now you have all of that perfectly documented and and right there. Um I I like that, that closing those loops, making that kind of uh helping you as a leader be more engaged in the conversation and less engaged in the the admin, follow-up.

Chris 24:58

Living in the moment, right, and being present.

Jessica 25:01

This episode of Behind the Screens is brought to you by the Clear IT Partner Program from Matson and Isom Technology Consulting. If you've ever had that sinking feeling that your tech just isn't doing what it's supposed to, you're not alone. Maybe it's the constant tickets, maybe it's the security risks, or maybe you just don't know what you're paying for half the time. That's where Clear IT comes in. We built it for leaders who want to stop firefighting and start planning. With the Clear IT Partner Program, you get a dedicated team, real strategy, and systems that just work. No more waiting, no more guessing. Imagine your IT actually helping your team get more done and your business feeling more in control. That's the whole point. Want to see how for your business? Schedule a free consultation today at mitcs.com slash hello. Now, back to the show.

Starting Small: Practical Implementation Tips

Chris 25:54

So, like any good leader, business owner, anytime you're bringing, especially AI, into a business setting, right? Um, you need to ask where could this go sideways? It's everything can go sideways. You know, what are the guardrails that you would advise leaders to think about before rolling this out?

Tyler 26:14

I think that's a good question because anytime you start talking about deploying any new technology, not just AI, but anything where this is gonna change a little bit how people do their job, you have to be thoughtful about how that's gonna impact people. And uh I think one of the most important things that you can do to keep it from going sideways just by virtue of the fact that people are afraid of it, is you have to be clear about the why. Why are we doing this? What value is it going to give us? And uh a lot of the stuff we just talked about, I think, is part of the narrative that can be built around this technology for people to say, hey, wouldn't it be great if you could spend less time documenting and taking notes about what the conversation is and instead just be more engaged in the conversation? So the first, I think, advice around this is don't just don't just drop this in the environment without any notice. Don't don't tell people, uh, this is here now, and you're just gonna have to deal with it.

Chris 27:18

Yeah, we've talked about that in the previous episode, right? He's kind of phasing that in and helping, you know, introduce that in a way people are gonna use it anyways.

Tyler 27:25

You you should help have a plan, uh have a strategy around it. And so the the number one thing is the human element, helping people understand the why of the technology. What is this going to help with? What time are you gonna give back to people that will be immediately valuable to them? Which is, I mean, again, one of the reasons why I think this is just an amazing first and easy use case for it. But you do have to be thoughtful about privacy. So um, you know, if you are if you have people in the discussion that uh are talking about sensitive topics, you know, if this is a, you know, this is an HR discussion, uh we've got to kind of walk through maybe some delicate uh situations. Um you don't want to bring AI in on day one and say, okay, okay, everybody, speak clearly into the microphone. This is going to be recorded. You need to just be thoughtful and mindful of that. You need to tell people, you know, you can't just spring it on them. Uh you do need to say, hey everybody, uh again, here's the why, here's why we're doing this thing. It's gonna help us with notes, it's gonna help us with action items, it's gonna help us all be more engaged in the discussion. But um you need to say, okay, we're gonna do this and maybe starting with the next meeting. So not today, not right now, give people a little bit of time to think it through. But you you need to really pay attention to the human aspect of this technology and make sure that you're not just just pushing it onto people without giving them time to understand why is this gonna be better for us, how is this gonna help us do better as a team? How is this meeting gonna be more productive because the technology is in it?

Chris 29:02

Yeah, and I I I think we've talked about that before in the way of even if you have AI help you craft an email and send it out, right? We had the joke last episode of the I hope this email finds you well. It's you know, a telltale sign. Um, but you know, I've heard this term called you gotta humanize it. Right. So when you're writing an email, you want to go back through and you want to humanize it a little bit. Um the same is true for privacy, right? And having something that is recorded, you know, there are gonna be people who don't want to be recorded, right? And I think to humanize that and to be a human about that and and really again you can explain the why, you know, but you to also humanize that and explain, you know, um, even to the point of of hey, I'm gonna start the recording here in a little bit, hopefully. That's not a surprise to anybody. If you're planning it, that shouldn't be the first time you've talked about it.

Tyler 30:04

Yeah. Right. In the meeting itself. Yeah.

Chris 30:06

Yeah. But you'd be amazed how you know I I could be transparent about this. Is I run a Friday meeting, you know, for the teams every Friday. And you know, it starts at 8 30. Uh it's a quote unquote stand-up only meeting. We do it over teams now, so I don't know how many people stand, but I um I I I attend that stand-up meeting seated every time. But you know, people like to get on, you know, if you have a great culture, people want to get on and talk to each other. So a lot of times, you know, 8 20, 823, people will get in there and they'll start talking and laughing and joking around what they're gonna do for the weekend and things. And then, you know, of course, I I come in and ruin all that, but I'm just I don't, I don't think I do. But um, and then you get in there and it's okay, hey, it's 8 30, I'm gonna start the recording, and the whole dynamic changes, it does, which I think is a good thing. You know, I I think it's them humanizing as much as maybe we're humanizing it.

Tyler 31:02

It creates some focus, I think. Um, and because you one, because people know it's going to happen. There's already a rhythm, they understand what the utility is, they've seen the value of it directly, and you're still, and this is what I like about how you do this, you're still providing that space pre-meeting for people to kind of do the, hey, how are you? What's going on? You know, the small taut part of it. Yeah. Um, before you get into the, okay, now we're we're getting down to the actual subject of the meeting and we're gonna go through and talk about the things we need to talk about. Um, I think those are really, really uh smart ways to embrace this technology because if you change nothing and you just say, okay, I'm gonna hit record the moment I jump onto this call, and it's going to capture all of the jokes that fly in the first five minutes or something. Um by the way, I I've yet to see Copilot actually have a sense of humor. So I'm hoping this gets developed at some point you know in the next year where it uh it subtly mocks us.

Chris 32:01

It's leaving some gray area for us to be the humor. I don't know how good that does.

Tyler 32:06

It's leaving us the job of being human, I guess, which is probably the best thing, frankly. We're okay with that. Uh but no, I I think what you said is is super important, which is you you give space for the people to do the things that people want to do when they're getting together, and in especially in larger groups, because the team that you're talking about has 15 people on it or whatever, or the meeting that you have as 15 or so people on it, maybe more. Um and you give them the opportunity to get that through and get that out, and then it's shift gears, and now we're getting through the agenda. And uh and no one is sitting there going, oh, I gotta write this stuff down. And what did you just say? What just happened, what's going on? Everyone, because you've told them at the beginning, okay, now we're recording, and and this is the other important part about what you do is at the end of that meeting, you've made a habit of sharing that the summary of uh of the meeting that Copilot generates, what, within like 90 seconds or something at the end of the meeting, it's it's very fast. And then you immediately share that out. And uh because it's a larger team, and because you know, in large groups, there's almost always a person on vacation, somebody got sick, whatever is going on, um, you're sharing that out, and the rest of the team is feeling like they didn't miss anything. The people that couldn't attend for that day, or maybe they're out of the office on a project or something. They know what was discussed, maybe what any roadblocks that came up were, any important announcements. Um, it's all right there, and it's all right there in a timely fashion, which is so important.

Chris 33:36

Well, that's showing that's displaying the value.

Tyler 33:38

Yeah.

Chris 33:39

Right. So then all of a sudden, okay, you know, team buy-in is critical at the end of the day. Team buy-in is critical.

The True Value for Small Business Leaders

Tyler 33:47

And and you got to deal with that, like, you know, some people are uncomfortable with that recording. So again, this is a this is a this is a human process. This is something that you have to have real discussions about. And that's why we're when we talk about it with clients, it's a you have to have this discussion in advance. You have to make the case for it to understand that the value of the technology maybe outweighs the the risk that people may perceive in it. Um and it's like I said, it's not a good fit for every meeting of every meeting type. Uh you shouldn't just say, okay, in our business from now on, we will always have AI listening in every meeting and conversation. But I think if you start using it, um, it can start to just immediately add so much value. And and your team will see that too. Um, the other thing that comes up is people want to know where is it being recorded? You know, is it being retained? Uh, who has access to it? If I made a weird face on the camera, uh, can somebody screenshot that and use it to uh just you know bully me in the office all the time? Um, and and I those are questions you want to have answers to. And that's where choosing which platform, which technology you're gonna use, who is licensed with those tools, um, what policies do you have in how long they are retained? Because you have to think about it from a business perspective. If it's generating summaries and action items, do you really need the recording after that? Could you set the retention for, you know, three days, and then at the end of three days the recording itself expires, so the audio and the video is gone, but you still have, you know, essentially a summary of the transcript and all the action items. These are questions that every business has to answer individually based on their policies and whatever business they're in, if they're dealing with sensitive issues or legal matters or whatever. But don't throw the baby out with bathwater, don't get so concerned about the you know, the the potential problems that you don't uh pilot it, try it out, um, you know, that kind of thing.

Chris 35:56

Yeah, simple, safe, strategic uh in the management side of things, right? You want to pilot it. Um, you want to learn it, you want to expand on it, you want to teach people it. Basically, the idea is to you want to humanize it at the end of the day, yeah. Mostly all humans. Yeah. For now. Yeah.

Tyler 36:15

Yeah. For now.

Chris 36:15

Okay. So if someone's listening right now and they want to try this, they want to try the note-taking, you know, and start to to lean into AI just a little bit. What's a first step? What's the the first step that they should take? Um, how do you introduce this to your team, right? In a way that's gonna build trust and not anxiety, right? We talked a little bit about change. Yeah, uh either some view as an opportunity, change is, I mean, at the end of the day, change is just hard. Whether you view it as an opportunity or whether you view it as uh, you know, as maybe a roadblock or something, it's hard. So, how would you say what's the first step? And um how would you introduce this to the team in a way that kind of builds that trust up?

Tyler 37:02

I would say start small. Um, don't have this grand vision that you're going to buy a license for everybody in your organization and apply it to them all and say, starting this afternoon, we're going to turn it on and everybody's gonna use it, and that's just the way it is. Um I I I that might work in some small businesses, I've uh but I don't think it's the right way to go about uh this kind of thing. So start small, try it. Um like I said before, you can uh you can buy just one license. And most of these platforms, they don't make it so that you have to buy it for everybody in your organization. You can just buy it kind of onesie twosie. And whatever platform you're using, if you're using Microsoft 365 with Teams, uh that's a co-pilot license. If you're using Zoom, I believe it's just called Zoom AI, uh, it's a license that's uh that's added to it. Uh if you're using Google, uh that's the Gemini suite. Uh there's whatever the platform you're on, start small. Just literally start with a single license or maybe a small pilot group. One, two, three people who all have that same kind of core understanding that this is valuable. This is something that we believe will help us do what we do better. Um, let them be the champions. Let them be the ones that that are the evangelists for the value of this thing. And uh so so start there. Um ideally, those people are people who tend to have more meetings uh so that they get a lot of iterations on it so they can see how it works, see what it does well, see what it might not do as well. Great point. Um, and then you obviously let people know they're being recorded. You you need to disclose that, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it helps people. You said earlier, and I like the term, it humanizes the technology to them. If you tell them, okay, this this meeting's being recorded, here's what you're gonna see after the fact, or better yet, for the pilot group, screenshot some examples and say, here's our you know, weekly meeting that we have, uh, here's how long it was, and look what came out at the end. Look at this beautiful summary of everything that was discussed and what was committed to by whom. Give people time to see the results of the technology and then start to establish that sense of value so that when you expand on it and you start maybe deploying it to more than just those two or three people in the organization, there's already some buzz. There's already some uh stories of success. Yeah, that ambassadors where they go, oh wow, yeah, now I've seen what it can do. And you are a hundred percent right. I would love not to have to try to keep up with the notes during the meeting while I'm also supposed to be participating in the meeting. So it's it's all about supporting the people in the organization, not about surveilling the people in the organization. So you need to make that distinction. Uh, if you're approaching it as uh this company will now do this thing and all discussions will be recorded, that's gonna have a little bit of an Orwellian vibe. Right, right. You don't want that, you want to really give people the sense that it's helping them do what they do better and allowing them that precious thing that is so hard anymore, focus more instead of the opposite. Um, and so I I think that's just really what it's all about.

Chris 40:31

Yeah. And so, you know, obviously being the the leader um of our organization, you have a lot of meetings with a lot of different teams, right? We call them teams, not departments, um, or um people on multiple teams that are all under one team. So what how do you read the room?

Tyler 40:56

Right?

Chris 40:56

I mean, is that does it go back to the transparency discussion?

Tyler 40:59

I think so. Yeah, and and because every organization has its own separate unique teams, right? Whether that's operations or uh admin finance or HR or sales or whatever else, um, I think you do need to approach it depending on the size of those teams. You know, if you're talking two or three people per team, that's a different approach than if you're talking 40 people per team. Um you do need to probably implement it in a team-specific way. So if you're gonna implement it in the finance team, that's gonna have a different vibe than if you're gonna do it in operations, right? Um if you're gonna do it in HR, obviously that's gonna have a different vibe too, because it might not be welcomed with open arms because they're a little bit more concerned with compliance and and those kinds of considerations, which maybe operations isn't uh when it comes to uh legal conversations or whatever. So I think you do have to, again, just start small, um, really frame it as um each team has its own considerations, but if you start small and you develop some champions of people who are like, you know what, I see the value in this, then that can help you kind of uh expand out from there.

Chris 42:13

So, Tyler, to bring it home, why do we call this the killer app for leaders? Summarize it for me.

Closing Thoughts and Key Takeaways

Tyler 42:21

At its core, it it tackles that universal problem, right? Um too many meetings, not enough clarity, too many people involved just because you want people to hear it, but you don't necessarily trust that the message will make it through in the follow-up emails. So uh it helps to solve that problem. It helps to kind of chip away at that, and it does so in a way that requires almost no behavioral change. People are still coming to the meetings. You have to set it up in advance, set expectations. But once you're there, you're literally just hitting one button to get it going. Uh, you you you press record, and then everybody in the meeting gets to stay focused. They get to stay focused on the actual conversation and be engaged, not looking down at notes or saying, What was it? What how do we do this? What was it going to do? Oh, wait, slow down. Do you say that again? Um, it it really adds it adds clarity, it creates those action items. So if somebody says, hey, you know what, we really need to do X, Y, or Z, it's pulling X, Y, and Z into a very tight, verb-driven list of actions. And I think the most important thing about it is it helps build team accountability. Because in a business where every meeting you have is annotated, captured, and uh distilled down to the things that need to get done, then everyone is looking at the same list of action that needs to come out and who is responsible for what is a part of the discussion.

Chris 44:04

Maybe it brings the team together. I think that's a good idea. It helps drive that.

Tyler 44:07

Yeah, there's there's no and and I maybe people are looking at that list that's generated and say, wait, I never said that. Great. Let's have let's have a discussion about it. Let's drive accountability around that, because turns out you did say it. And the uh the the the the AI found it right there and it was clear as day. And it it helps to make it clearer. Uh and once you do build that trust and you've done it enough, and maybe you're on your sixth or seventh meeting, where this is just a standard part of how meetings take place in your organization, um they start to actually see and feel and hear how this is gonna help the team, how this is gonna help the organization.

Chris 44:50

Yeah, and one thing we haven't even talked about yet is learning from it. So when you go back through, you know, us as leaders, and we go back through and you know, I want to see or hear the way things are phrased and what action items were taken out of that. Maybe I can learn to speak more clear about what I, you know, um, what I want the action item to be. Yeah. So there's a whole learning aspect of it too, right? It's not like you're using this to gamble with your business, you're using this to to bring the team together and drive forward and get more efficient at getting some action items out there to help, you know, others.

Tyler 45:29

Yeah. Absolutely. It's the first time in the small business world where capturing all of those words, literally the transcript of what was said, has been so accessible and so affordable.

Chris 45:46

Right. And it's not about replacing people, right? It's it's amplifying the impact to your team. Yeah. It's where can where can we add more? You mentioned it before, which I think is is fantastic. It's it's the high level of value for very little effort, right? And if you can do that, that's especially as a small to medium-sized business, that's like the unicorn, right?

Tyler 46:09

That's the that's when was the last time such a uh small entry point yielded so much value in small business technology? Yep. It's it's really extraordinary. So we're we're very excited about it. And I think that people uh if they evaluate this, if they build a small coalition of kind of pilot testers in their organization, they will see very quickly just how valuable this can be with just how little effort it actually requires to get going.

Chris 46:35

And this is just the entry point, right? Yeah. This is just the beginning of it. And again, you don't need to be a high-level uh engineer to use this. It's uh it's uh a lot of value. You know, the journey's long, right? I hope AI the AI journey's long. Um, but uh it's a great starting with meeting notes, um, recapping meetings. One of the features that I use a lot, and I was talking to uh uh one of our clients the other day, and they use it a lot too, is when you're going through and where something was mentioned, it'll put, I know Copilot does this with Teams, it'll put a little link to that portion into the video. So you can rewatch just awatch just that 15 seconds where that was discussed. A lot of value in there. Again, saving the time, not putting in a lot of time with the effort, but high level of value.

Tyler 47:28

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, we've been in this a long time, and the best technology is the technology that integrates into your workflow and gets out of the way, right? It just literally disappears. And what you see on the other end of it is the value, but your level of effort to leverage it is almost nil. And this is why I really think this is the most impactful early use case for AI because you can immediately integrate into the workflow, it completely gets out of the way, and at the end of every meeting, it just helps provide clarity. Thanks for listening to Behind the Screens. If you're ready to take the guesswork out of technology and lead with greater clarity, we'd love to help you build a plan that works. Visit mitcs.comslash hello to take the next step. And we'll see you next time.