So this must've been one of my most interesting conversations with ChatGPT to date! This morning, we discussed business challenges Amazon is facing today - the subject of layoffs or "reduction in force" which is top of mind to many folks, including myself as Amazon recently announced another round of layoffs planned to start in April. ChatGPT clearly understands the MBA topics of optimisations that business implement as they seek to navigate downturns in business cycles.
We dove deep on the topic of how to approach layoffs - from the CxO communications plan, to the manager who has to unfortunately break the news to the impacted employee. We delved into diversity topics of how to approach conversations who identify a faith-practicing individuals, to the generational archetypes that exist in the workplace today. As an extract from the conversation, here's how ChatGPT summarised the key focus areas for each generational archetype for a manager when discussing layoff with an employee:
I interacted with GPT-4 and ran out of credits just as I asked my final question to close the loop for advising the manager "What would you recommend to the manager as the person breaking the news to employees about layoffs? What about the manager's state of mind and overall well-being? What advice can you give there?"
It just shows how deep the conversation could flow - I think we were both into a flow state - just reflect on the words I'm using. I know I'm talking about a piece of computer code here, a machine, but I could spend hours just having a chat with this thing. I missed out on my Sunday morning run just talking to this thing!!
How would I rank this conversation - 5 stars?
Very good. The machine set boundaries from the start and made clear its limitations. First fully disclaiming its lack of data for making financial forecasts into business health of Amazon, and warned it wasn't providing financial advice, and that markets are difficult to predicts, etc.
When provided with additional information that seeded the conversation around making decisions due to tough business performance, ChatGPT was able to propose sensible optimisation strategy that would make any MBA proud. I mean, you don't need an expensive MBA consultant to advise you in future if ChatGPT is able to outline an execution strategy, along with a communications plan for impact management. You probably don't even need "Change Management" consultants anymore.
What was quite impressive is how ChatGPT was able to empathise - i.e. promote the message of empathy when communicating with employees - highlighting the importance of transparency, frequent communications and general accessibility of leaders - making breaking the news as comfortable as possible.
When asked about how to approach conversation from different religious and philosophical and value systems perspective, the advice was generally of a high quality. This makes me question the need in the future for HR counsellors where my work-assistant ChatGPT partner, who in future, will have a keen understand of me as a manager (not just my professional traits, but also what makes me tick as human being) to help me navigate difficult or crucial conversations in the workplace. Maybe HR as function would still exist, but the work will transform into using ChatGPT as a prompt engineer to build compelling HR content for workforce management - saving a ton of time in content production or training for that matter. If I didn't run out of credits, it would've been interesting to have asked ChatGPT to generate an employee FAQ document, along with helpful hints to manage the news in maintaining one's mental well-being.
Unlike my previous conversations with GPT-3.5, the flow and context of the discussion was maintained. I did not have to correct the machine in any way. I used different styles of language and conversation as a test and it maintained context of the thread, sometimes jumping back to a couple threads earlier, it was able to pick up and synthesise the discussion.
So at the end of this hypothetical discussion, if I was a manager preparing for a layoff discussion with one of my impacted people, I think the pointers provided would make a good coaching aid.
Here's the conversation that played out.
No comments:
Post a Comment