Welcome to the Everyday PM Podcast, the podcast where we
discuss project management principles for your everyday
life. My name is Ann Campia, I'm a
certified project manager. I've worked in the program
management space and I'm currently in an operational role
for a nonprofit marketing agency.
So today I'm so excited to welcome Galen Lowe, who is the
Co founder of the digital project manager.
He has his own podcast. He does, he's doing his own
thing. And I'm so excited that he has
reached out to me and we're looking forward to doing some
sort of podcast swap at some time here.
But Galen, welcome to the podcast.
For those who have not met you yet, please take a brief moment
to introduce yourself to our audience.
Yeah, sure. No, thanks for having me on the
show. It's a total honor.
You kind of covered a lot of it in your intro.
I think the things to know about me, I'm a huge digital nerd.
I came up managing digital projects like website builds,
digital transformation and now I run this thing, the digital
project manager. We are basically a knowledge
sharing community and also a training provider and we're just
hell bent on helping digital project professionals get
skilled, get confident and get connected so that they can lead
complex projects towards real impact.
I've got my podcast as well, a digital project management
podcast. We will have you on.
I think that's exciting. Yeah.
And that's all about just like, I don't know, tough
conversations into tough topics so that we can get like
practical and actionable insights out of those
conversations. I, I'm just excited to have you
on here because there's so much synergy even in the naming of
what we do right. Digital project manager everyday
PM There's just connectivity and all the things that we're trying
to do and accomplish for our community, our project manager,
project management community. And for those of that are not
project managers that listen to this podcast as well, because
today we are talking about artificial intelligence, which I
think is just all the rave right now, such a relevant topic.
I think Galen will probably get to a point where AI is just a
part of our everyday thing, if not it already.
And as project managers, I'm sure we're all scratching our
heads asking the question of what does this mean for us?
You know, it in terms of everybody who is encountering AI
is probably asking the same question.
And I think we're going to kick off with let's just kind of rip
the Band-Aid off here and I'm going to ask you about AI and AI
as a project management solution.
And really, what does that do for the role of project manager
in terms of redundancy if anything?
So your thoughts there? Ripping the Band-Aid off, yes,
juicy question. And yeah, absolutely at the
forefront of every conversation that I'm having these days.
I think our a lot of our immediate reaction is AI is
here, is it going to take my job?
And when you look at some of the tools that have been coming out,
like especially in project management and productivity,
like we are making leaps and bounds week over week, it's easy
to see a path where, OK, yeah, it does all the things that I do
now what? But you know, I kind of have
like there's two sides to to my answer here.
Yes, I'm going to sit right on the fence.
My biased answer is no, project managers are not going to be
made redundant. And I'd say that because a lot
of folks assume that project management is about planning and
being organized and identifying risks.
And it is, absolutely. But the bulk of project
management, for me at least, is actually about the human skills.
It's about like building rapport.
It's about casting a vision. It's about inspiring the team.
It's about managing through influence.
It's about like negotiating. So there's all of these things
that AI is not yet there to replace.
And I think that's still, you know, it kind of almost reveals
the like collaboration layer that is not the administrative
layer. Yes, those things have to
happen. Yes, AI can help, but no, I
don't think it's going to suddenly stand in for a project
manager. And I'll, I'll dive into it in a
little bit, but I mean, you know, the reality is the role is
going to change. It's not going to be the same,
right? And The thing is project
management is a skill that is very much in demand, but the
number of roles with the title project manager like isn't
necessarily going to keep expanding, right?
It's not like project management is in demand.
Now there's thousands of more PM jobs like the title of PM.
But I think what's going to happen, and I see it happening
already, and I've worked in organizations like this where
the bulk of projects being run within the organization are
being led by folks who don't even consider themselves to be
project managers. And I've worked in agencies
where they've even, you know, said, OK, listen, for a small
kind of less complex project, like let's save our PMS for the
big complex stuff. Let's just get that SME who is
like the UX researcher or, you know, the lead engineer to lead
that project. We don't need APM on it.
Let's like, you know, let's see how that goes.
Let's save our PMS bandwidth so that they can tackle something
bigger. But even still, I would say that
doesn't mean that PMS are going to become redundant.
And I think that for two reasons.
One, what I just touched on is that there are some pretty
complex projects going on right now.
And you know, we talk about this notion of like, you know,
running a project off the side of your desk.
There are projects that are too big to run off the side of your
desk, too complex to run off the side of your desk.
And that will always need a dedicated role.
And, you know, like project requirements are getting more
and more complex. The team configurations are
getting more and more complex. The the stakeholder ecosystem is
getting more and more complex. And that's where we will always
need dedicated project managers to, you know, it's could be a
full time job for some of the, you know, larger transformation
projects and that is always going to be required.
Yeah, I I agree. I agree.
Go ahead. I was going to say, like the
other part for me is like actually the mentorship side.
And I don't know if a lot of people are thinking about this,
but you know, who's going to teach and like oversee and like
bring consistency to the way projects are run within an
organization. Like I've seen it when it's the
Wild West and everyone delivers a different way and has
different processes. It's confusing for people.
Eventually it stops, you know, it puts a lid on productivity
and you can't really kind of get to where you want to get to.
Project managers also become, you know, we, we, we will take
on this responsibility to also be educated educators and
coaches and mentors for our colleagues who are running
projects. And that's OK.
We are the people who are sort of, you know, the arbiters of
project management, the like oracles of project management,
helping other people deliver projects, not necessarily
hogging all the projects and going, you know, get away from
my projects. I still want my job.
I think the role is going to change.
We're going to be dealing with more complex stuff and we're
going to have a mentoring component.
I definitely think that hoarding mentality is something that a
lot of project managers when early on, of course, you're
eager, your appetite is there. You want to take on as many
different things that they classify as projects as you can
and you'll hoard those for quite some time because you think by
taking all this on, I'm showing my value back to the
organization. And maybe I'm speaking from a
place that this was the mentality 5-10 years ago.
I don't know, right? Because I've been in the space
for quite some time. I know you have as well, Galen.
Maybe that's not the mentality anymore, but I do think that
there's something interesting about project managers who
aren't at a point where you can kind of divide the complexity of
things and really understand the application of AI.
And I love the point that you make around, you know, for those
non project management roles, AI can really be something that
will help enhance the workflow, will eliminate some of those
repetitive tasks. But it's not necessarily
replacing the soft skills, which are now known by PMI as power
skills, which whatever semantics.
I I still kind of have an issue with them changing soft skills
to power skills. I think it's kind of silly, but
that's just me. But that emotional intelligence
part of it, you're still working with other human beings.
And to your point, I think until that is eliminated, I think AI
and its application is not going to make the PM role redundant.
It's also not going to hurt if you are a non project manager to
utilize AI. And it's not going to take
anything away from project managers who then need to focus
on the more complex projects that you had described,
especially in the digital space, right?
When it comes to the complexity and knowing who you need to work
with, what types of stakeholders, I don't think AI
can do that just yet. And until we are in a space
where the other roles have been overtaken by AIII think that
piece, the whole is this PM redundant?
I don't think that will ever be something where we can say the
role itself has been completely eliminated.
So all great points in terms of what you're saying.
And I love, again, the aspect of PMS can play an active role.
And let me know what you think about this.
I think PMS can play an active role in figuring out across
their organization what are those tasks or things that you
could utilize AI for in those roles where it's a not a project
manager, but it feels like project manager work, if that
makes sense. Do you have a take on that?
Absolutely. I mean, so I mean coming back to
your point, I think, you know, there is this we are susceptible
to feel like projects have the scarcity around them and then
the project rolls have a scarcity around them.
But you know, projects, bigot projects, you know, I think that
we'll be doing, we'll be doing a lot to help projects in general.
If we're helping non PMS run projects in terms of like AI
helping non PMS, you know, manage projects, is it going to
suddenly make somebody, you know, who has never LED a
project into a senior project manager overnight?
No, I don't think so. There are a few key areas.
And I think, you know, like, I wouldn't, I'm sure I'm not the
first person to compare something like ChatGPT or Gemini
to like Tony Stark's Jarvis from like the Marvel Universe.
Yeah, we're going to be doing this all of a sudden, Yeah.
Yeah, we have a hologram. We're going to be asking for
help. And like, you know, honestly,
it's already impressive as a, as an assistant, right?
It's a great assistant to help you achieve a goal as long as
you know what you want. And it's actually really quite
great as like a practical teacher in the moment when you
haven't really got time or you just aren't motivated to like
read a textbook or like take a course, right?
You know, like, well, let me pause and get my PMP right.
I'll be back in like several months.
It's there in front of you. But in terms of enhancing
project management processes, I think just like I would say
there's four big areas where I see AI being a big help for
folks who don't consider themselves to be project
managers. One is, I guess the 1st is just
like gut checking your approach. And I think as project managers,
we kind of all know this. And part of it is that instinct
to be like, is what I'm being asked to do or what the team
telling me, is that feasible? Can I still deliver by this
deadline? Are we going to hit this
milestone? Or is this just a crazy plan?
Like is this plan like absolutely unviable?
And actually we've had a lot of great luck, like with things
like even ChatGPT 4, just like straight up being like, hey,
listen, like here's what I need to do and deliver.
And like, it always kind of has a little bit of an opinion.
It's like the the timeline's pretty tight.
You know, you might want to like, you know, check this.
And it's much easier, I think, to kind of like, you know, not
raise your hand and be that person who was like, I don't
know, boss, I don't think this is feasible.
Like you've never LED a project before.
Like how do you know you can kind of like lay it out and not
like, oh, because chat GPG told me, but because you can be like,
OK, well, you know, here are the activities and, and, and here
are some of the durations. And here's who would need to be
involved. And like this needs to plug into
that. Like we've got dependencies
here. Like there's risk, right?
There's risk in this timeline. And I think it's a really good
thing to put in front of a non PM who doesn't have that
instinct necessarily to be like 12 tasks easy.
Yeah, we can do that by the end of the month.
Yeah. Yeah.
But what are they? How big are they?
And then, I mean, I think the other one for us is, has been
like identifying risks because, you know, risk management is a
huge part of project management. It's also like the least sexy
part of project management. I think.
I've yet to meet someone who is like really jived about
identifying risks. It's like a blank canvas to
think of like everything that might go, you know, opportunist,
opportunistically right or like very, very wrong.
And it's like it's a very difficult exercise actually.
Have you seen have you seen the new movie Inside Out too?
By the way, this is a little bit of a quick OK for those that are
listening. Just the image of anxiety in the
scene where she's running hundreds and thousands of
scenarios. That's what Galen is talking
about right now, which is in, I think in the reason why you said
it's not a very sexy part of our role, but we had somebody has to
do it. Somebody has to be looking
around those corners for sure and.
Anxiety is the perfect emotion to be doing that right because
that's what it makes people feel.
But you know, we've had actually great luck, you know, giving,
you know, a large language model like the OR, you know, a
ChatGPT, the context being like, I'm running this kind of
project, like what could go wrong?
What could go right? And just giving us, you know, we
prompt it, it prompts us and we're like, yeah, no, that
probably won't happen. I don't think we need to worry
about that risk. Oh, that's a good one.
We never would have thought of that on our own.
And there is this sort of, it is a knowledge base of some of the
things that have gone wrong or have gone terribly right,
wonderfully right on projects that you can, you know, bake
into your plan and keep an eye on straight your plan.
And I think that's a great thing because we've all had a good
plan that just gets kibosh by some big thing that we didn't
see coming. For sure we had seen it coming.
Especially like someone who's new to project management.
Yeah, that is like an ace up your sleeve.
So, yeah, I think got checking your approach, identifying
risks, I would say knowing who you need, because a lot of the
time you're like, OK, well, who's on my team?
Do I have the right people on my team to get this thing done that
I've been asked to do? And we've again, kind of been
able to use something like a ChatGPT to kind of suggest
A-Team and then go, wait a minute, we're missing this
person. And then you can be like, what
does this person do? And we're like, no, actually,
you know, Soren does that. Actually, it's not, it's not
their title, but yeah, they can do it.
And you can kind of make sure you don't have a skills gap on
what you need to get done because that's the other big
risk of like, can we get this done by this date?
What's the risk? And do we have the right people?
Interesting. And then I, I think my 4th one
is just like, you know, I said it, AI doesn't help with some of
the like human skills, but it can.
So we, we use it sometimes mostly just for fun, but like to
prepare for a tough conversation or negotiation.
You can kind of give it the context.
You don't have to like give sensitive information and you
just like, here's where things are at.
Like, you know, what are some of my options to like approach this
really difficult conversation? Because that's the thing that a
lot of the experience, project managers listening like we cut
our teeth doing things like we learned the hard way.
We probably went into that first negotiation and it probably
bombed and it hurt and we didn't have the help.
We built over time. We're like, OK, well, next time
I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do this, but there is
a lot of sort of knowledge that can be aggregated and brought
right to you. But like, OK, well, think about
this, you know, consider, you know, seeing things from the
other person's perspective and not just like running in saying
this is how it's got to be. Project manager says no, you
know, like it doesn't have to be.
You can get guidance on that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And do you think a lot of the information, so AI obviously
it's learning everyday, taking in more and more information.
So the Chat GPTS that we knew when day one it became available
versus today is vastly different, right?
So I have a few questions in terms of your key
considerations, because I think that do you feel that it has
enough, Do you have enough confidence in what it is
returning to you from your prompts in terms of has it kind
of taken all of the various aspects it would need to at this
point? Or are you still doing kind of a
verification of the information it spits back at you?
I'm, I'm just thinking about the last example you shared where
you said, you know, you're asking it, do I have the right
people? Are these the right?
Do I have the resources to support a project of this
magnitude and scale and complexity?
Are you seeing that the information is speaking directly
to that, or do you still have any to do a little bit yourself
as a person? I mean, I'm the kind of person
that would never take anything at face value like just because
it's. Honest IRPM.
All right, I mean, you know, like our even just our media
literacy, right? Like, you know, you see an ad on
YouTube, doesn't mean it's true. You know, someone writes
something in Wikipedia, doesn't mean it's true.
I think we should always be a little bit critical.
And I think that is as natural as it will get because if a
human came and told me, now you got to do this, let me, you
know, let me sort of explain your job back to you.
And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.
But but I'm going to do it a little bit differently.
I think is the right way to use AI, I think.
Take it with a grain of salt and lends it through your
experiences. Heck, bounce it off other humans
too. Like it's more a starting point
than it is the solution or the answer.
And I don't ever think that there is sort of one answer to
anything. And the way we build technology
is to try and achieve that. So, you know, you have your like
Google search where it's like, listen, I think I know, you
know, like the all the way from the I'm feeling lucky button
right back from the way the way back, but just give me the 1st
result. That's probably right.
And a lot of our behaviors around the technology we're
building around our knowledge is to give you the right answer.
And I think fundamentally that's just not how humans have
progressed this far. But having one right answer to
something, there's always multiple ways to look at it.
So I would encourage anyone to kind of look at it critically.
And and then of course there's the other stuff, right?
The technology is, is, is advancing very, very rapidly,
but it's just the technology side.
And so the other things that I asked folks to consider is that
like, you know, you kind of have to know like what is sensitive
data or what should I not be putting in there?
What is my company policy on this?
Sure. Because, you know, it's so easy
to take this powerful tool and have it go terribly, terribly
wrong for. You.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
You're jumping into, you know, a, a sports car, rocket ship,
you know, read the manual kind of thing, right?
It's like, know what it's capable of.
But even beyond that, like, you know, we're all adopting AI so
fast and it's easy to assume that everybody is open to it.
But I think the other consideration for me is like
that might not be true. And we've had a couple of
instances, you know, people have very differing opinions on those
like note taking bots, right Fireflies or whatever shows up
in the meeting and some people get their get their back up.
Some people like it's as natural as just showing up to a Zoom
meeting and everything in between.
But I think, you know, that's going to impact your
collaboration, your team culture.
If you've got a stakeholder that is really, you know, like not
open to AI, Like that's a conversation to be had with them
before you start, you know, plugging every AI tool into your
project, you know, to make it go.
And then I get, I think the last bit for me, it comes back to
that grain of salt, right? The technology knows stuff.
AI knows stuff, you know, it's been learning.
It continues to learn. It does not know everything that
you know, and it's going to depend on the quality of what
you're asking it. And the thing that you know, I,
I notice all the time is that we've got this behavior like we
are programmed to do web search, right?
Give me to the, give me the answer to this thing, the end.
We don't have this chance to refine and like chat with it,
but that is what AI is. That's how it learns best.
If you get something and you're like, I don't know, I probably
could give you a bit more information.
Give it more information, like have a conversation.
Give it the context, let it sort of like let yourself get there
through refinement. It's not a one and done, you
know, OK, yes, I've used ChatGPT to be like, hey, I have to
write, you know, thank you cards from my kids teachers.
Can you give me some suggestions?
Yes, here you go the end of by. But also, you know, you can
refine that. You can be like, can you make
that shorter or like, hey, can you speak in the voice of, you
know, someone who has this experience?
And you might need to like craft it together with AI.
It's not supposed to just deliver the one right answer.
It's supposed to help you achieve a goal.
And the more information it has, the more information you can
safely share with it, the better it's going to do.
So I would say it's a conversation.
I think the people who are using AI wrong are the folks who are
thinking it's just a one and done.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely create a project.
Plan. I love that, you know, something
you said stuck this entire time that you're going through the
key considerations, which is even in the responses, there
could be bias in that right, depending on the type of
information that the chat bot or whatever has taken in.
And so we have to really be cautious about what type of
biases that the responses are carrying.
And it could also be to your point in the way that we phrase
our prompts. And there's another thing that I
wanted to highlight of what you said, which was really relevant
to, you know, I think a lot of spaces where when we were
growing up as project managers, a lot of people would say, we
need APM, we need APM, but they didn't really understand what
the role was. They just thought they needed
it. And they had a very vague
definition of this catch all person that could do all the
things to help stabilize and bring structure to a company.
And I kind of think in that same perspective, you could put AI in
that space and say, I know you said there, there could be, you
could have some leadership that's adverse to AI.
But then on the flip side, you might have some leadership teams
that think they know what AI can do for them.
And then their expectations are completely off base from what it
can actually do when it's applied to your organization.
I'm wondering if you've seen some examples of that, both the
successes and the the failures around AI in terms of its
application. No, I think that's a really good
question. And you know, we've been seeing
it a lot in the project world, even in the product world right
now where it's kind of almost AI for AI sake.
But I'd add an inflection to that, which is like there's a
sort of competitive nature to it.
It's like everyone else is going to be using AI.
We need to figure this out now, but as leaders of an
organization or leaders of an operation, like coming in and
like trying to do wholesale change.
We're AI now, AI and everything, please.
Or like coming with that ambiguity.
It's funny because you know, we talk about like crafting a
prompt for AI. Well, craft that prompt for your
teams, right? To be like, here's what we want
to do with it. Not just like go do AI wholesale
change, AI everything, figure it out.
That's where I see it go wrong. Where everyone's like trying to
like rewire their entire business to use AI everywhere
without understanding what is what, what is it that they
actually want from it. And I mean, the flip side of
that is that, you know, I'm sure someone is doing successful
wholesale AI change, but I haven't seen it.
What I have seen is people doing like safe to fail real world
practical experiments to be like, OK, everyone hates risk
identification like we and, but and yet all of our projects seem
to run into these risks time and time again.
We're not doing anything about it.
OK, let's work on this one project and let's do risk
management with the team with the support of a chat, you know,
like you know, ChatGPT or AI tool of your choice.
You know, let's run an exercise in mirror using it's AI solution
where it's generating some stuff that we can react to.
And then let's see, let's see if a people enjoyed that better
than trying to come up with things that might go wrong from
scratch. Let's see if it helped us avoid,
you know, a big pothole in the road that we keep running into.
And let's see if like our our our stakeholders or our clients
or our sponsors or the people working on the project, let's
see like what friction it creates or what, you know, it
empowers them to do. And then let's scale it because,
you know, it'd be easy to say even in the risk management
example, right? OK, all risk management must use
ChatGPT now. Goodbye is not necessarily going
to lead to, you know, meaningful progress, but if you can like
run it kind of scientifically right, you're iterating through,
you are incrementing your way towards being an AI enabled
organization. That's where I've seen it be
much more successful, not least because the change management
aspect is much smaller. So yeah, you have an extra
meeting. In your project now, right?
Yeah, it's not like suddenly your world is upside down, yes,
and you don't know how to do your job anymore.
And now AI does and then it's easy to be like, OK, I guess you
know, need to find other work now.
Isn't that true of any change? I mean, AI or not, it's like
when you when when your leadership team decides
everything we're going to do is going to be turned upside down.
I definitely think there might be some risks involved in that.
I'm just I'm just going to put some money on that.
But I think, you know, kind of going back to those non project
manager tasks, because I think this is a really interesting
space because in most of the conversations we are both of us
are hearing within the project management community, it's so
much focus on the project management role itself and those
tasks that are related. But then, you know, you wanted
to come on here and let's talk about the stuff that's not
project management, right? A non project manager who has
tasks that we could utilize AI for.
You know, what are some of those potential challenges when it
comes to transitioning from that those tasks to something that AI
could maybe effectively do for the organization?
What are some of those challenges?
How do we address them? Have you seen any use cases that
you can share with the audience? Yeah, actually.
So I did really want to specifically talk about talk to
non PMS and also PMS at the same time, because I think, you know
that some of these transitions are relevant to that entire
group. And whether we like it or not,
whether the listeners like it or not, projects are being
delivered by folks who are not trained as project managers.
And that's OK. But then there's these tasks
that sort of come out to their plate and then the AI sort of
variable like adding complexity, well, seemingly like looking
like it's going to remove complexity or as it's actually
adding complexity. Yeah.
So I mean, here's here's where I've seen some issues.
OK, Well, like a 5050 split. Sometimes when you are prompting
something like ChatGPT, as someone who's not a project
manager, you're like, teach me this thing.
Tell me about this thing that I don't know.
It will know and it will respond to you as you're learning.
So you're going to get a very non PM answer.
It's like, OK, you're starting out and here's what you need to
know, which might not be the answer you need now that you're
actually kind of a project manager.
So if you're getting the sort of basic ground level definition of
a thing and then you're taking that to your team and you're
being like, yeah, I know what I'm doing this thing.
You might need a PM answer from it.
And you actually can, you can prompt it.
You can say, act as a seasoned project manager working in the
nonprofit space. Yeah.
And then do this thing and please give me bullet points out
of it. So you can kind of, I was
talking to someone and they're like, I use both voices.
Sometimes I'll be like, I don't know a thing about this thing,
Tell me about it. And then now tell me the same
thing as though you are an expert and let me get that
vocabulary and let me understand the bigger picture.
Again, not a one and done. You can ask it the same question
and sort of angle and tilt the response to what you need.
So I, I, I've seen that happen where people are like, OK, you
know, it's not really helping me.
It's giving me, you know, dictionary definitions of a
thing. And that's not helping.
But you can actually prompt it to act as something, you know,
act as an experienced project manager and it'll give you a bit
of a different answer. It'll go deeper.
So I've seen that kind of be a, a, a hiccup.
The other thing I've seen is like, it's like putting the
puzzle pieces together is still difficult and it's kind of like
you have got AI now, so you should be able to figure it all
out. But a lot of the time it's strip
feed, right? You're like, OK, I need an
answer to this now. I need an answer to this now I
need an answer to this. And you kind of have this these
conversations, but it's not always as easy to zoom out and
understand the 50,000 foot view of like how all these things fit
together and seeing the bigger picture.
And then therefore being a better project leader because
you kind of understand what's going on.
Not just, you know, walking through the fog, seeing an inch
ahead of you every time is to be able to kind of like, OK, I
still need to. It's still my responsibility as
someone who has a project that I'm meant to deliver.
It's still my responsibility to kind of zoom out, understand how
everything fits together. And in a lot of cases, I mean,
AI, we can do that for you. But I think the way we use it to
kind of prompt and then prompt and then prompt and like walk
down this path, prompt by prompt won't give you that.
It won't just deliver this. By the way, you've asked me
these 17 things. I think you're here.
You need to consider this phase, your next stage is going to be
this. It might not have, it might not
give all that. It might know it could.
But the way we prompt doesn't always give us a, the sort of
context and that bigger picture. Sure, sure.
And then what do you think about like I could easily see APM or
sorry, even a non PM at some point who's managing some
projects. You said like 17 prompts so it
made me think about this. I found myself doing this as
well. I don't think you can
necessarily manipulate what the AI, you know, chat is going to
give you back. And do you think in that
scenario where you're describing, you've vetted the
prompt of multiple times it in some ways, do you think that
that person is looking for something very specific and
they're just waiting for the AI to tell them that?
And then the other, the other piece that I I'm wondering about
that you've seen is in non PM. So as they're using AI, what,
what is that limit? Like at what point have you
said, OK, I put this prompt in 17 times, I'm not quite getting
what I need. I need to just go ask somebody
about how to do XY and Z because it's AI is not helping me.
Like, have you seen any of that happening as well?
Yeah. And I mean, you know, coming
back to that 17 prompt thing and like kind of not getting what
you wanted and maybe not even knowing how to ask for it kind
of thing is like, you know, I, I think when you get to that point
where like every action you're taking on your project is
preceded by, you know, going to ChatGPT or going to Gemini or
going to cloud or whatever. And like, so in other words,
you're like, do a thing, OK, ask AI, do a thing, ask AI do a
thing. Like that maybe shouldn't
precede every action you take. It also shouldn't dictate every
action you take, right? Again, like taking this with a
grain of salt. And there will be these sort of
moments of like, OK, I'm not getting, you know, what I need
from it. But also maybe I just don't know
what to ask. And maybe I shouldn't be like,
if it's not saving you time anymore because you're like, I'm
like 17 prompts in and the meeting's almost over.
Yeah, right. They're like, OK, well, I
haven't figured this out yet. It's still.
It's a powerful tool, but it's kind of like being told to,
like, build a car from scratch every day, right?
It's like, at a certain point, you're going to be like, I
cannot build an engine from scratch just by asking
questions. And when you get that feeling
and it's, you know, the tool's no longer helping you keep
things on track, and there's more ambiguity than there was
before. Yeah.
I think that's a great time to sort of raise your hand, ask for
help, but also, like, start setting expectations of, like,
what you're capable of doing when you're doing it, like, your
main thing, right? You're not a dedicated project
manager in this scenario that you know, what is actually
feasible and realistic for your organization to expect from you
and not just be like, OK, well, yeah, I, you know, I should be
able to do this because I have AI, but be able to also manage
expectations with your leaders to be like, I got this far.
But like, if I, if I keep going this way, like I don't think
this is actually helping the organization achieve it's goals.
I don't think my project is being helped by it.
You know, now might be a great time to either get me trained or
bring in some extra firepower to deliver this project.
And I think that's the main thing for me is it's not.
They're not mutually exclusive. You can get help from AI and you
can get help from humans at the same time, right?
It's like neither one of those should be dictating what actions
you're taking. They're all inputs into what you
decide to do. And, you know, I think there's
some, some huge pillars there that, you know, I'll do a
shameless plug as well. But like, you know, AI is great
at understanding what we've done already in the past and like,
best practices from that. Yeah.
But humans, I think are still better about, you know,
understanding the context and using that to envision a future
for sure. And I think that's really
important. You know, AI doesn't know all of
those stories in your head or all of those experiences that,
that, that you had, you know, throughout grade school that
made you, you know, who you are or that, you know, that one
project where that like that thing, that really unique thing
happened. And you know, it's not anywhere
on the Internet. It's just in here.
There's a lot of that in people's brains.
And so, you know, that's why we're so huge on on on community
and sharing information and supporting one another because
it's really these conversations. I think it's the knowledge
exchange. It's a storytelling, it's, you
know, helping each other build skills based on those
experiences that I think helps fill in that gap.
AI can get you this far. That's fine.
But you know, if we're relying on that for all of human
knowledge now, it's just going to loop.
Like it'll learn very, you know, incrementally.
The thing that's always made us great as humans is our
creativity, our ability to communicate with one another,
our ability to build on one another's ideas, try a thing,
decide whether or not it worked and like keep going from there.
So, you know, I think, you know, my big thing is the support you
need as a non PM to, to, to do projects or even as a project
manager running projects. Like your support comes from two
places now. It's comes from your AI tools
and it comes from like leaning on real people to kind of, you
know, develop an understanding of what the future might be and
how you should proceed with the information that you have.
Gosh, I love that. It's just a different
perspective, a different way of learning and application.
I think, Galen, I'm going to throw one more curveball at you
before we round out this conversation because I think you
and I, before we started off mic, both said we could easily
talk about this topic for hours. So my curveball is this.
Are we having this same type of conversation in the context of
PM and non PM and AI? If we were to do this podcast
about, I don't know, three years from now, five years from now,
what is that conversation look like?
That's a great question. I told you it was a curveball.
It was, it was about a decade ago when we kind of started
talking about the advancement of technology and how it's going to
look specifically from a UX lens.
And we kind of talking about the idea that like, you know, doing
a wireframe isn't going to be the in demand skill because at
some point AI is going to be able to do that.
And we started talking about not just UX as a user experience,
but like like MX or like RX, like robot experience.
It's like, what about this world where we're interfacing more
readily with technology and a world where technology is
interfacing with one another in itself, right?
And, and what does that collaboration look like?
And three years, I know it doesn't seem like a long time,
but you've seen the speed at which these things are
advancing. And it's not hard to imagine a
world where you've got an AI, you know, humanoid robot on your
team or shows up on Zoom, or, you know, it's already kind of
happening, right? But you're actually.
Like interfacing and interacting.
And you know, I, I just said support comes from two places
now, right? Yeah, your tools and your
people. Imagine you're on the Zoom call,
right? And you're like, like, OK, you
know, like, hey, you know, like, you know, what do you think
about this to your human colleague?
And then turning and going, OK, you know, like ChatGPT Zoom
attendee bot, like, what do you think?
And they're like, well, I think this and you're like, OK, that's
great. Let's put those two things
together and here's how we're gonna move forward.
I think that is like a feasible reality.
It seems very, you know, sci-fi right now for sure.
But you know, it's gonna be sci non fi pretty quickly because
that's just the way we're wired. You know, we take these
cautionaries very tales from very bright creative people who
have warned us about technology, and we just do it anyways.
So that's my predictor. But at the same time, I think it
can be productive and I think it will embody that whole cohesion
between the two things. And then it will create a whole
bunch of other problems that don't get me too deep into the
iRobot or. Hey, the sci-fi movies always
said by the year 2000, we'd all have our own robots with
artificial intelligence living in our houses.
So I mean, who knows? But I, I love the insight.
I love kind of the forward thinking, the future of what we
can expect from from Galen Lowe and the digital project manager.
I think that your perspective highly relevant for the everyday
PM as well, or what we were calling during this
conversation, the non traditional or even the non PMS
that are listening in on this conversation.
So Galen, this has been fantastic.
Honestly an honor to have you as a guest on the podcast.
Your insights are are highly relevant to the space that we're
living in right now as the project management community.
So if people want to continue the conversation with you, where
can they follow you online? Oh yeah.
I mean, come check out the digital project manager.
We are at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.
We run a community, we've got the podcast and honestly, we're
just like, we just publish really like as much value and
knowledge as we can for free on our site.
So definitely check that out. We're always talking about this
sort of thing. My podcast as well, the digital
project management podcast. And actually like we're quite
active on like Instagram and we've got our YouTube channel.
We are the digital PM on both of those channels.
That's where we try and have a lot more fun with things because
there's a lot of serious topics and there's a lot of complexity
that we're dealing with. But at the end of the day, you
know, it's it's not, it's not sort of as life or death as some
other professions. So we don't mind having a bit of
fun just to bring that levity. So if that's kind of you and,
you know, you're looking for that sort of mental break that
doesn't necessarily take you out of your work.
Yeah, we're good for that too. I absolutely do.
So I will be hopping on to the Digital Project Manager YouTube
channel after we end this conversation For folks that want
to, you can follow the everyday PM.
We're on Spotify, any of your podcasting platforms as well,
and you can follow me. I'm on LinkedIn and Campia.
I'm also on all the other social media platforms too.
So for Galen and I and this conversation around digital
space, non PMS, PMS and AI look forward to catching up.
Up with you maybe in three years to talk about this same topic
and we'll see how different this conversation is, but that will
do it for Galen and I and this installment of the Everyday PM
podcast. Thank you all so much for
joining us. And until next time, take care.