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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: Gini, I, AI, I just, with AI, I don’t know how to do anything anymore. I mean, it just, I just rely so much on it that I’m not even sure I could figure out how to walk anymore.

Gini Dietrich: I’m still waiting for it to do my laundry and my dishes.

So I still have to do those things, unfortunately.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, look, AI is a great thing, and I think we’ve talked about it a lot on the show before. It’s something that most agencies should be taking advantage of to help them do their jobs quicker, more cost effectively, get better results, all those kinds of things. But I’ve been troubled lately by the number of times I’ve heard that Because of AI, young people in, pick your industry, for us, let’s pick marketing communications, just by happenstance. That AI is, is preventing them from being able to figure out how to do their jobs the right way, because it just does so much for them.

I have to tell you, this gets me irritated. It’s really, really irritated.

Gini Dietrich: It doesn’t make sense. Like what? That, yeah, this is akin to saying that email… Because you’re not faxing anymore, you’re emailing, you don’t know how to do your job. Or because you’re not using the Bacon’s Green books, you’re using an online database, you don’t know how to do your job.

People – things evolve, things happen, technology happens to make your life easier. That’s not, that doesn’t mean you don’t know how to do your job, or that your team doesn’t know how to do their job. They’re learning how to do things differently than maybe you learned how to do them, but they’re still doing their jobs.

Chip Griffin: I mean, look, this is, this is not a new argument with AI. This has been an argument every time new technology comes along. You know, I, I remember when, when the transition took place from using the old fashioned card catalog at the library to find books. And people started using computers to look them up and people said nobody’s going to know how to use a card catalog anymore.

They need to learn how to use that before they’re able to use the computer.

Why? Why? Why? Why?

I mean, if you go to a university library these days, not only you’re not going to find a card catalog, you’re not going to find a lot of books. Right. I mean, university libraries are, are increasingly removing books.

Instead of talking about how many they’ve added to the collection, they talk about how many they’ve removed and replaced it with other resources.

Gini Dietrich: This is like saying you don’t know how to use the phone if you didn’t use a rotary phone first. It doesn’t even make sense. That doesn’t make sense.

Chip Griffin: I mean, it does, it does give rise to some entertaining moments.

I think I may have shared this on the show before, but when my younger son was in a hotel a number of years ago, and we were showing him how to call from room to room because we had a separate room from the kids. And so, you know, showed him how to make the call from room to room, and it was a corded phone.

And so after he’s done with the conversation, he’s holding the phone, and he says, What do I do with this now? Because he had never used a corded phone, and so he was used to hitting the end button on a cordless phone, or the hang up button on a cell phone, or something like that, but didn’t know. Corded phone, , you have to put it back in the holder for it to hang up.

Things change.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Things change.

Chip Griffin: You know, and, and I guess the, more close similarities would be things like grammar checkers and spell checkers. Sure. Right. And Yep. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, all you gotta be able to do these days is spell close enough that the auto correct gets it for you.

Yep. Is that the end of the world? No, not really. No. I mean. Unless you plan on entering a spelling bee, I don’t really care that the computer is helping you do it, because you’re always going to have the computer.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Correct.

Chip Griffin: I mean, almost nobody, it’s the same argument, I see this argument in the local community Facebook page, you know, the schools are not even teaching you cursive anymore.

Why would you? I mean, I think it would be helpful if you showed, if you taught kids and made them regularly actually sign their names, because

Gini Dietrich: Yes, they don’t know how to do that.

Chip Griffin: My kids don’t know how do a signature.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chip Griffin: At least it’s better than X, I suppose. But still, I mean, there are some basics that you ought to learn somewhere along the way, but I think that viewing AI as an obstacle to, whether it’s junior or mid level, senior people learning how to do their craft more effectively is just, it’s a losing argument.

What you need to do is figure out how to integrate those things. The only reason it would ever matter. Is if you said, look, I think this AI is a passing fancy. And, and it’s something that’s not going to be available to us in five years. If you’re using something that you legitimately believe is no longer going to be available to you, which is rare with technology, but if that’s what you believe, okay, now then you may want to think about understanding how to do it without that tool.

But here’s the reality. AI is not going away, right? We are not going to lose access to it. It is, we are at the early days and it is only going to get better. So, it seems to me, figure out how to use it. Don’t lament the fact that it’s making it so that people aren’t, you know, writing a press release the old fashioned way.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, so I just saw, I just saw research that said that 97 percent of U. S. teenagers are using ChatGPT for their homework. And everybody’s all up in arms about it. And it’s like, okay, I’m sure that’s the case, because last year, in fifth grade, there was a little boy in the class that was using ChatGPT for his homework. And the teacher was like, you, you can’t do that. So if they’re doing it in fifth grade, it’s exponentially more in high school and college, right? And that is the world that we live in. So if you’re worried about junior level employees joining your team and they’re using AI to help them do their jobs, I would be less worried about that because the AI is pretty smart.

And I always say like Claude is my really smart intern because it can do things so much faster and so much more intelligently than an intern can. Because I, I have to tell it one time I say, okay, I’m going to train you on this or I’m going to upload all this to my knowledge base or I’m going to create a project and have all of this data and documentation in there and you’re going to learn from it. And you only have to tell it once.

That’s not the case with a, with a human. So now you have junior level people joining your team and you say, okay, we need a news release and it needs to say this, this, this and this. And you have, they have the AI draft it for them. It’s going to be a better piece. What you should be focusing your junior level team on is editing, prompting, like those kinds of things, because the, the true value comes in the, in the expertise that you have and making sure that it’s, it’s legitimate and valuable. I just saw, that the Google AI Gemini has, had suggested that if your cheese is falling off of your pizza, perhaps you use non toxic glue in the cheese. That was like, well, it’s not quite there. So I think where you’re, what you have to be training your team on is

Chip Griffin: Although if it’s non toxic…

Gini Dietrich: fair. I mean, it’s glue, right? If you can eat glue. Some, some people eat glue when they’re kids. If you’re training your team on editing, ensuring that the information is correct, sourcing, and driving the expertise, who cares if they’re using AI? Who cares?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the key. It’s, it’s, it’s figuring out how to use it, how to use it in the right way, understanding what the potential pitfalls are.

And you know, you mentioned fifth graders and chat GPT, and it sort of reminds me of 15 years ago when there was all the hullabaloo about students using Wikipedia for reports.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: I know you need to go to the actual encyclopedia or the original source or those guys. Okay, cool, great. How about instead you just teach them what are the risks of Wikipedia and how you have to follow up on things and you have to be careful with controversial topics because of the editing wars that take place.

Teach people how to use it the right way. Teach people to question what ChatGPT or any other AI comes up with. And, and how do you verify it? And how do you test for potential copyright violations and all of that? How do you think all of those things through? And that is a far more productive use than to tell your juniors, do this without AI.

Show me how, let’s, let’s figure out how to do it without AI. Because unless you think AI is going away, there’s no value in that. The value comes from understanding how to use the tools you have in front of you and how not to use them.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I’m going to use this example again, but that is like saying to them, I know you have Muckrack available to you, but we’re going to use the big green Bacon’s book.

So that you really understand the value of going alphabetically and looking up the publication and then finding the reporter. And then going through and picking up the phone, like, that’s, that doesn’t even make sense. It’s the same thing. Let them use the AI and teach them how to use it appropriately.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, look, there was a time where I would have loved to have forced my juniors to use the X Acto knives like I did when I was getting started to cut the articles out, tape them with scotch tape onto a piece of paper, take it to the copy machine, make a photocopy, stick it in the fax machine, fax it off to somebody else instead of just logging into one of these platforms and instantly seeing something that was not on, not published yesterday or the day before, like we were doing with the X Acto knives, but were published in the last hour or the last few minutes.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yep.

Chip Griffin: It is entirely different and you need to rely on the tools that are there in front of you. And, you know, that the folks who are arguing things like, well, you know, you can’t use a calculator without understanding how to do long division or whatever. Why? When was the last time you had to do long division on your own?

Gini Dietrich: In your head. The only time I had to do it is when my sixth grader is like, Hey mom, what’s? And I’m like, And then I have to give her the answer. Right. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: I mean, when I went to school, we, we didn’t have calculators, generally speaking. Sure. And you certainly weren’t allowed to use them in class. Now you can.

And you ought to be.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: Because it’s a common tool that we have. Yes. I mean, when I was in elementary school, I had to learn how to write with a dip ink pen.

Gini Dietrich: No, you did not. Yes. You’re not that old.

Chip Griffin: I went to a private school for a few years and they made you do weird stuff. So you had the little inkwell and you had to learn to write with that.

Gini Dietrich: Wow.

Chip Griffin: Which was silly.

Gini Dietrich: That is silly.

Chip Griffin: I mean, they didn’t make us do everything with it, but we were actually taught how to do this.

Absolutely no value. There wasn’t value to that in the 1980s when I did that, let alone the 80s or 70s. It was early 80s, I guess. That’s ridiculous. Yes, that school did a lot of ridiculous things.

Gini Dietrich: How often do you use that skill?

Chip Griffin: Uh, precisely never.

Gini Dietrich: Guess what you’re getting for your birthday this year.

Chip Griffin: Please do not. Those things are insanely messy. And unless you’re doing, like, calligraphy for artistic purposes, there’s really no value in it.

I mean, that said, I do like modern fountain pens for writing. I mean, those

Gini Dietrich: Sure. Of course. Yes.

Chip Griffin: They do a nice job, but that’s, that’s not the dipping.

Gini Dietrich: You’re not dipping it in ink.

I’ll get you a feather and some ink and you can

Chip Griffin: Because then you’ve got to clean the nibs and all that. I mean, it’s just, aah, That was, it was a whole lot of no fun.

Gini Dietrich: Well, yes, I think that’s a really great, really great point. You don’t need to have your team dipping into ink to write.

Chip Griffin: I feel like we’ve gone almost completely off the rails here already.

Gini Dietrich: Amazing.

Chip Griffin: You know, I, I think that it is, as an agency, practically speaking, you do need to think about how you’re using AI and how, what kinds of programs you have in place for training, not just your juniors, but everybody. Because AI is new to everybody on your team.

And so whether you are just getting started or whether you’ve got 10 years or 20 years or 30 years of experience, you need to learn how to use it the right way. And so as an owner, your job is to work with your team to come up with policies and processes and training and education that helps you to get there.

And, and I would not fight AI. You will lose.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Even before we get to AGI. You’re going to lose. So figure out how to put it to work for you in the right way for your business and you will get much further than torturing your team by making them do things the old way.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and it’s, I mean, it makes you so much more efficient. And it will help your junior level team learn and it will help your junior level team understand.

But they don’t have to necessarily do it themselves. I mean, 10 years ago, I’ll never forget this as long as I live. Christopher Penn said, we want to think about AI as conductors. So you are the conductor, and you are, you have your symphony of AI robots, and you will be conducting them. And at the time, I didn’t fully understand what that meant.

And today, I understand that you’re, you’re conducting, your team is conducting. The Claudes, the chat GPTs, the Geminis, the, all of those, the napkin AI, all of the things that you have available to you and getting out, getting the work out of it that they need so that you can be more efficient and, you know, more profitable and all the things that we want to be able to do, this allows you to do that.

So I totally 100 percent agree. Do not say, well, you have to write a news release on your own, because that’s not the way the world is going. And that’s not where you should spend your time.

Chip Griffin: Right, and this is not the first time we’ve had an episode talking about fighting AI, right? Because agencies just seem determined to fight AI at every turn.

Whether it’s fighting your team using it because they’re not going to learn the fundamentals if they do that. Or whether it’s because you’re fighting, you know, changes in pricing models because you can now create content more quickly and more effectively, but you still need to charge the same amount.

No, you don’t. No, you don’t. No, you don’t. As you save time doing things, you find other ways to leverage the time, and you do, you produce better results more quickly for your clients. You don’t say, well, just because we’ve got these things that are going to help us, we’re either not going to use them because we need to justify our higher prices. Or we’re going to just charge you exponentially more because we’re giving you the same thing. You are and you aren’t. Figure out how to use all these things to make yourself better, to make your team better. Yep. Don’t view them as the enemy.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s and it’s not. And I totally agree. If you know, if you can find ways to be comfortable with it, it’s going, you will be so much happier.

It’s so. So much happier. Like, even, even for me, there have been, there have been things on my list for years that I’ve always had to do, that I haven’t enjoyed doing, that I’ve always procrastinated because I know how much brain power it takes. And those things, if I can sit down and at least ask AI to get me started, like, it does, I don’t procrastinate anymore.

There might be other things I procrastinate on like laundry and dishes, but like, I’m not procrastinating on the big like brain things anymore because it helps me get started. So it’s, it’s just the argument that all of the things that you just said, all of the arguments that we hear, it’s ridiculous.

Use AI. It’s amazing.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, to, to your point on procrastination, I mean, this podcast is a perfect example. When I finished a podcast and I had the video done, I would often procrastinate on the actual editing to, you know, to get it all looking good and, you know, I used to want to try to, you know, spend a lot of time on camera switching and all that kind of, it was, it was a pain.

And so then I said, well, forget that. We’re just going to go simple side by side.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And, and more recently I’ve started using AI editing. And so at literally the click of a button, it does automated camera switching. Is it perfect? No. Is it good enough? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I’ve had people tell me that it’s more interesting to watch these now because they can see the camera switching back and forth between the two of us.

And so, I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s video editing 101. Don’t have a static shot for 15 or 20 minutes. Right. And so, even though it doesn’t change the substance, at all, having that one click allows me to stop procrastinating. I do it very shortly after we’re done and I wrap it up and I send it off to Jen who does all the fancy other stuff, show notes and that kind of things.

But even that is all assisted by AI. It comes up with the first draft of the chapter markers for YouTube. It comes up with the first draft of the key takeaways. It comes up with the first draft of the transcript. Does it need touch touch ups to get to where we want it to be? Absolutely. Yep. Although, frankly, you probably could let it largely just go untouched and you’d still be close enough for the use of most people, but I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, so.

Gini Dietrich: Well, that, and it will probably spell my name wrong every time, so.

Chip Griffin: Yes, well, that can be entertaining. But in any case, I think that’s probably a good place to wrap up.

Gini Dietrich: I agree. Use AI. Stop being stubborn.

Chip Griffin: AI is your friend. It is not the enemy.

Gini Dietrich: That is right.

Chip Griffin: I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.