020 AI for Operators

Hi there, 

Welcome back to AI for Operators. Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:

• The Operator: Trey Pezzetti, AI Lead at the PGA Tour (listen here)

• The Essay: Tactics to Thrive in Post-AI Orgs

• The Links: 7 links including how Gamma and OpenDoor are using AI to cut costs and move faster, why coding is the first real AI use case and when it’ll expand to other knowledge work, and a (very) brief history of the LLM era

If we take it's given that all companies will have to transform their companies into a post-AI-org chart, what should operators be doing today to adjust to that new reality?

As a recap, the post-AI org chart essentially means that teams will transform from human-only to hybrids of human plus AI. Whether it looks like a “short pyramid”, a “rocket ship”, or a “billion-dollar one-person company”, the best companies (and soon every company) will have to recognize that smaller teams are capable of doing as much - or more - than bigger teams were only a few months ago. The corollary is that every individual will need to level up into a manager (of agents, if not humans) and every manager will be exercising a much larger span of control. 

Here are some areas where you’ll have to adapt and some tactics to try:

Adjust to a world where you’ll be taking in lots more information. More direct reports means more reports directly sent to you, so you’ll have to get better at information triage without it consuming your entire day. 

Information intake tactics: 

• Do an “Input Audit”: write down all the reports, dashboards, email updates, 1on1s, etc. that you receive information regularly from each week, then score them as “very useful”, “useful but could be improved”, or “not useful”. Adjust accordingly. Then make a wish list of information that you’d like to have in order to make better decisions. How could you get that information regularly?

• Test out an inbox agent. Companies like Fyxer and Jace AI have built dedicated email agents while multipurpose tools like Lindy and Zapier make email triage and response drafting simple. The key is to make sure you’re saving time without outsourcing your thinking to an LLM. 

Start moving faster. It’s no mistake that more companies are going from $0 to $100m in ARR in times that would have seemed inconceivable a couple of years ago. While some of this is due to loose definitions of ARR and some is due to speculative budgets that could disappear tomorrow, some is certainly real product and GTM velocity. 

Speed tactics: 

• Upgrade your expectations for what a fleshed-out idea looks like. A written proposal or plan is the beginning, not the end. AI tools can help you prototype, get feedback, and iterate. When you take an “idea” to your CEO that has a working prototype, user feedback, and an implementation plan, it goes from speculative to inevitable. Here’s how Gamma does that.

• Identify underutilized team members (human and AI): idle time is everywhere, whether it’s employees waiting for feedback or agents that have run their processes and are waiting for their next instructions. Make sure you have visibility on the state of all the work that you’ve delegated so you can swoop in the moment it’s finished and shift them to the next task.

Get better at storytelling when it matters. As execution speeds up, more ideas can be taken off the drawing board and made into reality. If you’re working as part of a team, that means you’ll either be the one coming up with those new ideas or the one taking more orders. Which do you think will be seen as more valuable?

Storytelling tactics:

• Build a small stable of prompts that start like “Imagine this project goes spectacularly well over the next 12 months. Describe in detail how the company will have changed, including P&L impact, competitive dynamics in our industry, team motivation, etc…” Add downside cases, outlier cases, and more. Weave some of these details into your presentation to make the future more tangible.

• Experiment with new formats for team presentations. Could your product launch announcement at All Hands be an AI-generated movie trailer instead of a powerpoint? Could you use AI voice tools to generate individual podcasts for each employee with your CEO’s voice, explaining the impact of a policy change on each of them?

Create Your Company’s AI Transformation Plan

• 4 classes

• ~8 hour total commitment

• Next cohort starts October 30