Stop Doing Tasks AI Can Handle: Shauna Sprague on Automation & Human Potential

And my message to my team would be everything that you're doing right now if you're not doing it tomorrow I will be thrilled it won't be a problem that you're no longer valuable anybody that can figure out how to eliminate a task or you know don't do it anymore cause it's no got no value or do it in some automated way cause now I can go tackle something else

Our guest today brings clarity to a conversation that's often anything but clear Shauna Sprague is an AI strategist an architect a Ted X speaker who spent more than 20 years leading technology innovation across Fortune 500 companies she specializes in helping organizations take that first confident step into AI not by selling hype but by translating complex concepts into practical accessible business action Shauna has built automation strategies across 49 business units designed intelligent workflows created AI personas and developed systems that save organizations thousands of hours and help teams work at the top of their skill set

where humans do their best work and AI handles the rest Shauna speaks across the country on AI automation and human centered innovation and she's a passionate advocate for women in technology inclusive design and lifelong STEM education her work sits at the intersection of possibility and practicality which is exactly where most leaders need help today's conversation gets real about what AI can actually do and what it can't why resistance is normal and how simple automations from sports calendars to email triage can unlock hours of life and work people did not know they could reclaim.

Let's get into it. And I am very passionate about automating things and making your life easier so you can use AI to do all the mundane things you don't really want to do and do the things that are that need a human and spend more time doing those important things that really matter hmm I love that I've I've heard conversations about AI and some of them are just inaccessible yeah quite frankly um but I heard someone say it so well that I want AI to wash the dishes and walk the dog so that I can write songs and poetry and the opposite seems to be happening a lot but where are some areas specifically and some of the things you're working on automation

that are the walking the dog the the the washing the dishes what are the mundane things that are that are getting done so that we can actually see application versus theory when it comes to this big AI conversation well I'm a parent of a 12 year old and so for any parent just trying to manage the schedules a challenge so I always one of the biggest things that I always show parents how to do is take a picture of that sports schedule also the school schedule the calendar with your phone load it into chat GPT tell it to turn it into a table and then load that into an RPA tool which will put all those events into your calendar in like seconds I used to spend hours like

coordinating all this stuff and making it all match up and then on top of that I also use it to you know make my you know it reminds me of things every day I get a daily digest that says here are the meetings you have today like here are the things you want to be looking out for if you're if I'm meeting with somebody new it gives me a little rundown from their LinkedIn profile of here's a little bit about that person you know has spent a few years in sales and I used to manually do all that where I try to Google people and figure out you know the most I could about them now AI does that for me and so it's another step I don't have to take as more time I can spend doing things I wanna do like

you know now I go for walks in the morning and listen to my audio books and spend more time with my family and walk the dog I actually enjoy walking the dog so but I do get I have not figured out a way for it to do my laundry and I would really like that do the dishes do the dishes or clean my house other than the Roomba you know like that I can you know program there but yeah we're getting there you know I don't know that we're anywhere near Judy Jetson style you know where she's gonna run around and do all that kind of stuff but baby steps you know I love the idea idea that you can just take a picture of something and load it into an interpreter that would then put it in your calendar

I have an EA for that and at the same time I keep working with my team to like you don't have to do that anymore let's do something fun let's do something more actually it's not that I outsource that as much as I want them to outsource that as well in their own life in my life elsewhere in the organization right wow and and yet sometimes there's this resistance to doing that totally yeah there's always you know resistance those are my favorite people to work with actually because once you automate something for them they're your champion like they are once you get them on board and people are like you got Karen on board like yeah like yeah I did like she's all about it like she's

then they want more and more and so I like the robotic process automation tools particularly for small businesses startups you know it's a very low entry point it's about $20 a month you know so they they can come in and they can you know I can show them how to build and so as I'm building up teams to do those things that's what I'm starting them out with and then as they graduate into needing a full blown agent we can build those in langchain and langraph and I can show them how to do that as well and then and my message to my team would be everything that you're doing right now if you're not doing it tomorrow I will be thrilled it won't be a problem that you're no longer valuable

anybody that can figure out how to eliminate a task or you know don't do it anymore cause it's no got no value or do it in some automated way cause now I can go tackle something else it's really just like eliminate, eliminate, eliminate, and keep elevating how does that set how does how how are people reacting to that in in real like everyday you know when you go into a consulting role most people you know the instant reaction is you know I guess they put their guard up you know but when you're teaching them something I think that they're a little more receptive but I like to think like I always tell people I'm like look we're trying to get everybody

to work at the top of their skill set you know we nobody's getting you know you're not making any money when you're done like doing data entry nobody is like sales people specifically I mean that's why they don't like to take notes I never liked to do it when I was in sales either you make money when you're talking to people so I wanna eliminate everything I can so that you can talk to people as much as possible and focus on other things and so you know being that human connection and that's what we really want is to get everybody working at the top of their skill level you know and then learning new skills and upskilling so I think that there's a big shift right now where I have a lot of people reaching out

wanting me to come and see if I can help upskill do a day or two or a week class and show them how to do better you know in where they're at you know we're not looking to eliminate jobs you know we were looking for that augmentation of all those things on your list that you just never got to let's see if we can shrink that list down you know I've I've heard a lot of conversations that folks around what what is AI and it's like well AI is changing every single day that that ship has not come to dock yet so one of the more empowering questions that I've heard asked related to AI is what where do I start so if someone were to ask you what's the first step

to get me down the path of AI what would you suggest as a first step I would say if they um if they're your first step they don't have any technology or programming experience I would say zappier it's a great tool it's very user friendly um you know it automatically you don't have to know how to connect to an API you don't have to you just connect to your Google click the Google button so it's very plug and play click and like get it all together and that's an RPA tool robotic process automation that will allow you to connect to your Google your Gmail account and have it answer your emails for you which I have it doing and it even categorizes

my emails so it says as somebody a salesperson if an email comes from a VIP like my daughter I automatically get a Slack message saying hey she just sent you an email or you know versus no offense to sales people but if I get a sales email I don't necessarily need the Slack message she pointed to me twice when she said that but with a nod of one wonder and awe yes yes and also I'll ignore your emails yes it's it's a love hate relationship with sales I get it of course I find uh that when when I do have more free time I am able to create more for other people to do and and really the only gating factor for my creativity is that my organization's not big

enough or I don't have enough resources here we've solved the resource issue for 20 bucks a month yeah I mean and and literally you could spend $500 a month and have a suite of the most powerful software tools in the world so resources aren't the issue anymore and creativity now probably is it's like oh I have to unlearn the things that I thought were valuable I've automated that now what I just feels like a a big gift for everybody um I think so I mean I think I think it's a you know wonderful opportunity I tell people all the time especially like if you're looking to um upskill or you know move into another role in your organization maybe you want to move into that technology role

here's your opportunity trust me you're gonna be the hero in your organization if you come in and you're like I used N8N and I you know built an agent for you and now it's gonna do these things and all these reports are gonna go automatically I guarantee you you're gonna get some attention there nobody's gonna lay that person off and I like to make myself very valuable my dad was a blue collar guy worked on the assembly line at General Motors and always said they never lay people off who are valuable they'll find something for you to do so make yourself valuable