For nearly 25 years, the week after every Fall Conference took me 10+ days. This year it took 2. On Oct 8, I opened the hood and walked the community through how.
Thank you to Anton Maletich, our Internal Client, and Patti Ouzounian, our Skeptic and slide driver. Thanks also to our understudies, Paul DeSousa, Mira Wolf and Robert Snyder.
Anton set the frame early: don’t wedge AI into your existing process. Reimagine it from scratch. Laura Jones had already started. She went back to work after Oct 1 and scheduled “reimagining” sessions.
That was my move, too. I started with the outcome, not the old checklist. Claude in Chrome carried about 90% of the work. It split six rooms of raw audio into 21 sessions and built a briefing doc, a quote bank, photo picks, one-page takeaways and highlight videos. Some of that wasn’t in my original design. Nicole Skowronski added a tip: give the AI an example of the deliverable you want, so it works from a template.
Then the skeptics went to work.
Mira named the four human strengths from Oct 1: judgment, intuition, imagination and accountability. Anton, the math teacher, reminded us that a first grader with a calculator won’t know 60 + 23 isn’t 2,550. AI gives confident answers, and we still need to teach people the work. Paul showed what that looks like. ChatGPT synthesized a startup’s messy files in about an hour. His own judgment pass turned that into something worth taking to the CEO.
Vilson Simon joined from a car in Brazil and asked why burnout is rising with AI. Anton offered one answer: when AI is working, most of us fill the wait with more work. What if we took a break instead?
Adrienne Guerrero asked what many were holding: how much do I connect? I connect my Google Drive and calendar, not my bank account.
Put it together and a pattern emerges:
Start with the outcome. Split the work. Keep judgment human, and keep growing it. Use the time you get back on purpose.
What we learn in these Labs feeds In Search of Organizational Excellence, ELE's fourth book.
📌 In Search of Organizational Excellence — 4th Book Project [Start Here]
Next Labs: Nov 12 and Dec 10, with Paul DeSousa and Nicole Skowronski each bringing a real project. Use whatever AI tool your company allows.
Have a workflow that eats your week? Submit it as a talent challenge at Shape the Calendar.
