Adaption or Copying?
Experimenting with Chat GPT
My wife and I are thinking about organising a holiday touring South America , neither of us have travelled there before so as an experiment I decide to ask the current free to use version of ChatGPT to propose an itinerary for both 14 and 21 days in duration. It duly returned with the itineraries as requested. I then, to try to push it a bit further, asked it to adjust the itinerary to focus on Iconic scenery and history. It made some excellent suggestions and adjusted the itinerary accordingly!
The paid for version has a plug-in to Kayak so in theory it can suggest flights and hotels to go along with the itinerary.
So the next experiment was to see what it could do with recipes
Adaptation or Copying?
I’ve been fortunate enough during my career to see some examples of absolute brilliant and outstanding leadership, much of which influenced me and helped me to grow and develop the teams I managed and the organisations I worked for to be successful.
There are soundbites I will use regularly that were taken from others and I made them my own. For example;
Less is more (especially true when presenting)
Learn the learns (a more positive way dealing with setbacks or failures)
Use your senses in the proportions they were given to you (i.e. listen!)
True leaders emerge when times are tough.
One of the most memorable learning experiences was during a visit to a major energy supplier in South Africa. We were at the end of a long sales cycle with a significant 7 figure deal which included software licenses, maintenance and services. I had flown to Cape Town with the regional Sales VP and we joined the account manager to meet with the head of purchasing to “close the deal”. Commercials had been agreed and Contract terms were concluded by both the legal teams prior to the meeting so the plan was to sign all the paperwork in person.
After all the pleasantries the head of purchasing opened by saying he was not happy with the price of the software and wanted an additional concession of another 10% off the negotiated amount and would only sign once the paperwork was updated which would move the deal into the next quarter.
The regional Sales VP was a very experienced leader and despite the quarterly pressure which I knew was causing some sleep loss, turned to me and said “Erlend, I have to apologise for wasting your time and bringing you all the way here to talk to the customer about the project start up. With the CIO and Chief Architect in the room, he turned back to the head of purchasing and reminded him that verbally the terms had been agreed to prior to us flying in for the meeting. All the work and effort put in by both teams was with the intention to sign the paperwork today and the situation is disappointing to say the least. He pushed back his chair stood up and said “ok Erlend let’s head back to the airport”. It took me a few seconds to get over the shock so I got up along with the account manager. We started to pack up and move towards the door when the Head of the purchasing jumped up and said hold on, hold on, please don’t go, ok we can do it at these terms and I’ll sign the paperwork today.
I was stunned and later back at the hotel bar for a celebratory drink I asked my colleague how he knew what to do in that situation. He said that after many years of sales negotiations when you are in front of the head of purchasing at the end of their buying cycle they are not there to say no to the deal – their job is to buy things so there was no way he was not going to do the deal particularly with the CIO and chief architect in the room. It was an important lesson in understanding the tactics and pressure customers can exert at critical times in the sales process.
As you can imagine I copied the approach on many occasions even when others were willing to give a final concession at the 11th hour.
Cultural Influences
The importance of cultural diversity and the way recruitment is done was brought home to me recently during a round of graduate recruiting.
We were recruiting graduates or, young professionals with limited experience, across a number of major European countries and I went to their training bootcamp to introduce myself and present to the group. When I entered the conference room it was a pleasant surprise to see that we had recruited a very good mix of gender and ethnic diverse young people.
For background information we had decided to organise some assessment days where the candidates would come in for interview but also be observed together as a group for their interpersonal and team based skills. We flew managers in from Spain, UK and Sweden and a local Dutch manager also attended.
During the evening dinner I asked one of the young women why she had selected our company for her first job. She told me that she met a very strong female leader and a mix of managers from different European countries which made her feel that we were a European business with excellent strong senior female leadership.
The next day she went to a Dutch company for an interview and sthere he only met middle aged men from Holland so the decision was easy despite the fact that they were offering more money!.
I wish we could claim we planned it this way!
Conclusions
In conclusion, I suggest it’s essential and will accelerate your learning, to copy and adapt the best of what you see others do. Now with the introduction of easy to access large language models (ChatGPT is essentially this) there is no reason to stare at a blank document or piece of paper ever again.
Finally, if your objective is a culturally diverse gender balanced workforce then make sure your hiring process reflects that with the type of people you want represented in the community of people interviewing the candidates!
