AI Change Desk | EP051: What Changes After the Conference?

The first starts with Will Guidara and his talk about unreasonable hospitality.

He told a story about visitors to his restaurant who had eaten at extraordinary places in New York but had missed one simple experience, a New York hot dog.

He heard that, arranged for one, and served it as part of their meal.

The point was not that every restaurant needs a hot dog cart.

It was that an attentive person noticed something the standard experience had not provided.

That is where the story becomes useful for technology leaders.

We spend a lot of time designing the service we intend to deliver.

We spend less time noticing the experience the other person is actually having.

Here is a fictional example.

An employee cannot get into the system they need to finish a time-sensitive task.

The assistant finds the correct knowledge article.

It sends the link immediately.

The interaction is marked resolved.

Unfortunately, the instructions require access to the system the employee cannot get into.

The answer is accurate.

The experience is a locked door with a beautifully written explanation of the handle.

That is not a model problem alone.

It is a service design problem.

Somebody needs to ask what successful help looks like from the other side of the conversation.

Can this person complete the task? Do they know what happens next? Can they reach somebody when the normal route fails? Those questions do not become less important because the first response arrives in two seconds.

In my notes from Gadara's talk, another detail matters just as much as the hot dog.

Giving people permission to create a better experience was not the same as giving them resources to do it.

He described adding support so the team could actually carry those ideas through.

That is the part I would bring to an AI planning meeting.

We tell employees to experiment.

The first starts with Will Guidara and his talk about unreasonable hospitality.

He told a story about visitors to his restaurant who had eaten at extraordinary places in New York but had missed one simple experience, a New York hot dog.

He heard that, arranged for one, and served it as part of their meal.

The point was not that every restaurant needs a hot dog cart.

It was that an attentive person noticed something the standard experience had not provided.

That is where the story becomes useful for technology leaders.

We spend a lot of time designing the service we intend to deliver.

We spend less time noticing the experience the other person is actually having.

Here is a fictional example.

An employee cannot get into the system they need to finish a time-sensitive task.

The assistant finds the correct knowledge article.

It sends the link immediately.

The interaction is marked resolved.

Unfortunately, the instructions require access to the system the employee cannot get into.

The answer is accurate.

The experience is a locked door with a beautifully written explanation of the handle.

That is not a model problem alone.

It is a service design problem.

Somebody needs to ask what successful help looks like from the other side of the conversation.

Can this person complete the task? Do they know what happens next? Can they reach somebody when the normal route fails? Those questions do not become less important because the first response arrives in two seconds.

In my notes from Gadara's talk, another detail matters just as much as the hot dog.

Giving people permission to create a better experience was not the same as giving them resources to do it.

He described adding support so the team could actually carry those ideas through.

That is the part I would bring to an AI planning meeting.

We tell employees to experiment.