In This Issue:

• A shortcut to productivity

• C.E.O.s Want Their Companies to Adopt A.I. But Do They Get It Themselves

• Time Management in the Age of AI – corporate workshop

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A shortcut to productivity

I like to take an engineer’s view of what I do during the day. I’ve done it all my life – but after one of my daughters, an industrial engineer, went to work for a large consulting firm and started doing deep studies on the way her clients worked, the habit rubbed off on me to an even greater extent.

One of the big questions is always, what small thing do I do so frequently that if I made an easy change, I’d get dozens or hundreds of small wins each and every day. One that’s common for most of us: using CUT/PASTE on our computers.

It may seem so small that you have overlooked the fact that if you can do it better, it will make your workdays seem easier and gain you hours each year. Here’s one of the secrets to unlocking it: use a clipboard manager.

Your clipboard is the spot that your PC or Mac uses to store what you just cut or copied so it’s ready to paste elsewhere. If you cut>>paste>>cut>>paste>>cut>>paste like almost everybody you know, you’re spending a lot of time moving back and forth between different parts of a document or between applications. But if you use a good clipboard manager, you’ll eliminate the back and forth time – and if you use a specific clip often, you’ll have it ready whenever you need it.

There are a lot of good clipboard managers, each one with a bit of different advantage. CopyClip is simple and stores at the top of your screen, with keyboard shortcuts to paste your favorite 10 clips. I have found CopyClip to be an excellent choice when you’re interested in text clippings.

Paste for Mac/iPhone is one of my favorite for images, because it shows me what I’m going to paste with a simple keyboard shortcut – and it allows me to paste easily across my connected devices.

Don’t limit yourself to these; try out several; then choose the one that best suits your way of working. Chances are your work on your computer or phone will simply seem easier. Clipboard managers are one of life’s simple miracles.

C.E.O.s Want Their Companies to Adopt A.I. But Do They Get It Themselves

The NY Times just wrote this headline to an article in which they exposed an issue that most people know; but about which few people want to utter a word. CEOs aren’t keeping up with AI fluency as well as some people on their staffs.

You need a keen grasp of the obvious to recognize that. CEOs are never the first to adopt new tech (except if it’s in their own company’s product – and only if they’re a tech- trained exec). They are often, no make that “usually” laggards in this respect.

Think about the roles of people in a large company. Most people at the lower implementation level have a single or few things to do during each business day. As long as AI aligns with their role, they’ll be likely to at least dip their toes in. For instance, marketing people have been quick to jump on AI as a tool. In that area, it’s easy to see that you need to adapt or die. Use AI to do marketing or lose your job – probably to somebody who knows how to use the AI that you don’t know, and thus can be more productive and more efficient. (Read that as: They can get the job done well and at lower cost too.)

CEOs have a myriad of functions from keeping the team focused in the right direction, dealing with stakeholders such as investors, media, and customers, maintaining financial order and in some cases, keeping the lights on the company – just to name the most prominent job functions. They have less time to experiment with AI. And if they did, they’d have to deal with various goals and AI capabilities. It’s complex and difficult. It’s much easier to issue edicts to their staffs and raise the flag for AI competency.

So let’s give that to CEOs. They have the right – and probably the need – to be AI laggards. But that doesn’t take away the requirement for them to understand it at the level that will direct their teams into best practices, ensuring the use of AI moves them forward, and that it doesn’t put them at risk.

They need to understand what a well-oiled AI infrastructure should look like for their organizations, where the risks are – and where the greatest rewards are. They need to set the direction to ensure consistency throughout the whole organization, communications so people understand why the company wants them to do it in certain ways. They also need to make sure that the organization is willing and able to enforce their AI policies and procedures.

They don’t need to know how specific types of algorithms work; or even the best AI tools to use for specific jobs (except for their own). They just need to lead the charge. Their competent staffs, with the help from deeply trained consultants, will implement.

So is having a CEO that knows less about AI than you do a bad thing?

Learn about the trend in the NY Times article about CEOs who want their companies to adopt AI, but might not do it themselves.

Time Management in the Age of A.I.

A workshop program for teams that helps them create their own customized methods of optimizing their time by combining the proven popular frameworks with customizations and new techniques like AI to get fabulous gains in their success.

Learn how you can have David conduct it at your organization

This workshop grew out of a successful program first conducted for Executive MBAs at a prestigious university. It’s interactive – and from the comments we get from participants, it’s both fun and impactful:

• "Such a great session! Very interesting on all the different styles of time management. I can't wait to start.”

• "Amazing session. Totally loved it.”

• "This session is essential in life.”

• “You hit the nail on the head”

• “The time flew by — so much info. When I noticed the time, the session was almost over”

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David