Swimming With Sharks: Enterprise GenAI Unplugged - S3 Episode 3: Amelia Jones

In this insightful episode of Swimming with Sharks, Kevin Dean, CEO of ManoByte, sits down with Amelia Jones, Principal Customer Success Manager at Mural, to discuss the role of AI in enterprise environments and how visual collaboration can enhance business processes. Amelia shares her experiences from Mural, highlighting the impact of human-centered design and agile methodologies in fostering better decision-making and collaboration.

Introduction: Kevin introduces Amelia, who brings nearly a decade of experience in customer success and a passion for human-centered design. They dive into Mural’s visual collaboration platform and how it reshapes traditional workflows.

Interview Highlights:

• Visual Collaboration for Better Decision-Making: Amelia explains how Mural transforms linear tasks, like spreadsheets and to-do lists, into more engaging and collaborative visual experiences. She emphasizes how visual tools can foster better communication and alignment, especially when mapping out workflows.
• AI in the Enterprise: The conversation explores how AI can assist in ideation and decision-making processes, with Amelia stressing that AI should enhance human creativity, not replace it. She discusses real-world use cases where Mural helps enterprises document, plan, and evaluate AI initiatives.
• Human-Centered Design & Agile in AI Projects: Amelia shares her expertise on how organizations can leverage human-centered design and agile workflows to better implement and scale AI initiatives. She discusses techniques like abstraction laddering and the five whys, which Mural facilitates to help businesses identify and solve the right problems.

Key Takeaways:

• AI as a Collaborative Tool: AI should act as a collaborator, assistant, and coach, helping teams to innovate while keeping creativity and problem-solving at the forefront.
• Documenting AI Processes: Mural plays a vital role in helping organizations document and map out their AI processes, ensuring that initiatives are well-planned and stakeholder engagement is prioritized.
• Balancing AI Excitement with Practicality: While AI can be a powerful tool, Amelia advises businesses to be deliberate in its implementation, ensuring that it adds tangible value to workflows.

Transcript

0:01

Hey there and welcome to Swimming with Sharks, a deep dive into the world of AI for the enterprise. I'm your host, Kevin Dean, CEO of ManoByte, and I am thrilled to have you join us on this exciting journey through the dynamic world of AI use cases, platforms, tools, and best practices. Today, I am super excited to have with me Amelia Jones from Mural. We're gonna have a great conversation today and we're glad that all of you can sit in. Amelia, hey, nice to see you today. so excited to be here, Kevin. Thanks for having me. my goodness, I've been waiting for this for a little bit. So for our guests, why don't you share a little bit about yourself? Yeah, so I am a principal customer success manager at Mural. If you're unfamiliar, we are a visual collaboration platform. I've been here for almost, gosh, it'll be four years in November, which has been a crazy and exciting journey. Prior to Mural, I've spent the last eight plus years in customer success. I love it, it is my passion. have a strong background in human centered design and actually prior to joining customer success, human resources of all things. So I've got a little bit of a varied background, but I think it's brought me on a really interesting career path. And other than that, I'm headquartered in the beautiful park city, Utah area. I'm an avid skier and I've got two little interns at home. that is cool. Thanks for sharing. you mentioned you're at Mural. Give us a little bit more about Mural. Tell us about it. Tell us about the platform, what it does, and why people should think about it. Yeah, so Mural is a visual work platform. And for those who may not be familiar with the concept of visual work, what it is is really taking the concepts of and putting them into a visual structure. I personally, prior to joining Mural, I was a spreadsheet junkie. I lived my whole life on to -do lists and checking things off and like long linear lists. Mural and visual collaboration are kind of the opposite of that. The goal of visual collaboration is really to leverage images, diagrams, charts, visual elements to convey ideas, share information, and most importantly, facilitate decisions and collaboration. And mural fits into that is that we are the background or the canvas where that incredible work can take place. Well, that's interesting to me because when I think about mural and visual platforms, I think about like flow charting and that's all like I think about. But you mentioned something different. Like you mentioned like how it can help you with your workflow and your work. And you mentioned it kind of replacing some of the things you used to do in Excel. Like how does, how to, how, help me understand like the differences in my mind. So flowcharts is a great use case for a visual collaboration tool like Mural. Think about the flow chart journey, right? You've got a process that you're trying to map out. That's cool. You start by documenting your process as many of us do, but then where do you go from there? Chances are you've got this process. You've probably got stakeholders who are involved in this process. Those stakeholders are going to have opinions about what you've documented. Maybe you missed a step or maybe there's extra steps or maybe you need to rearrange some of your steps. So by bringing your flow chart into a tool like Mural, you can actually interact with those stakeholders to get to a better outcome and get, you know, in this case, a more accurate documentation of what that flow chart is. Mural generally, we're very anchored in sort of two methodologies, human centered design and agile workflows. So human centered design, more or less invented by IBM and the basic concepts are making sure you're solving the right. through exploration, interviewing, research, and collaborative discussions, you get to the right questions so that you can get to solving the right problems. On the other side, Agile, which again is another great neural use case, is really anchored in product design and engineering workflows. And it's this concept of having a squad that forms and performs different types of ceremonies. things like sprint planning, daily standups, PI planning for those who want to nerd out on agile. And all of those can be done in Mural because you've got that backdrop of that collaboration framework that you can use and see what other people are doing and how they're interacting so that you again get to that better outcome that has everybody's voice included so that you know that you're solving those right problems. I like that. think that's super helpful to kind of put things in context. So as you know, our audience knows at ManoByte we're into AI and automation. And so one of the things that you mentioned is using Mural to solve, to know what are the right problems that you need to be solving and thinking about that human design perspective. So. Help me put into perspective how might we use a tool like Merle as we're thinking about planning, designing, implementing, and scaling an AI initiative. Where would that tool fit and how do you see that fitting in? Because one of the other questions I have is does an AI solve for problems like that? Hmm, you would think, but maybe not. So I love this question, because this is something we talk a lot about here at Mural. And I actually, I had the pleasure of working on a couple of webinars earlier this year where we talked about where AI actually enhances creativity and problem solving. So that's a rabbit hole. I could totally go down. But to answer your question around like, where does AI or where does Mural fit in like an AI rollout program? there's a couple of different ways. So mural, you can use again, just to like, to document the process, right? I know a lot of the clients that I work with, AI is a hot topic. Everybody wants it. And almost all of them have an AI review board and a really big security questionnaire that go with utilizing AI. a lot of my clients are using mural just to map out the process of even getting AI approved within their organization. The next step then is once you're trying to figure out how to get it approved, figuring out what are the appropriate use cases? I think when we first saw AI launch in various capacities, everybody wanted it, right? Everybody had an AI component added to their tool stack, but there was a lot of, so what, who cares? Where does this fit? How do I use this? And I think this is one of the big challenges with AI that we're still struggling with as a workforce is AI is really cool, but what do I do with it? and so where I've seen that mural be part of that conversation is running those ideation and brainstorming sessions to figure out where does AI fit in my job? You know, in customer success, I use it for personalization. use it to help me write better email copies. So people actually respond to me. but I also use it in concept exploration. I sometimes use AI as a collaborator in sessions that I'm facilitating just to get another voice in the room. So you can start to bring AI into the processes to build out your AI process. And then I think the last piece of it is just figuring out, getting it documented, right? And getting it documented and get people educated and up to speed on what the AI processes are, where they fit within their own day to day, and then, and how to leverage them. There's an education component that you can use Mural for, for just like documentation and concept sharing too. So one of the things that I'm hearing you say is that if you're going to take on an AI initiative, you need to have a planning process. You need to document it. You need to map it out before you get started and just say, hey, developers, or not quote unquote anybody who can do a prompt goes out and does something. Is that what I'm hearing you say? I put the words into your mouth. No, that is my opinion though. And this is what I see. Like I work with really large enterprise clients and I think everybody's so excited about AI, but there's some huge risk with it, right? Like there's security risks, there's data, there's privacy, there's, you know, potential abuse of it. Like there's a laundry list of things that AI can do, both good and bad. And so, you know, at Mural, we've subscribed to kind of the Microsoft responsible AI. framework. Not everybody is going down that path. A lot are creating their own. So yeah, I think the first step in creating, you know, before bringing AI into your organization, or even to your impersonal workflows, is figure out what value is going to add. Because I think we've all seen this, especially post COVID. Like, I did the math the other day, and I'm not going to tell you the exact number, because it's almost embarrassing. But I ran through like the tech stack that I use as a CSM. Holy moly, like the amount of products that I use every single day, it's huge. And there's context switching and there's logins and there's like, data fatigue of like, where did I put something? So adding AI for AI's sake might not be the best option. So I love the idea of using Mural as a backdrop for a collaborative session where you ideate on, you know, where is AI gonna be impactful? How can I use it in my job? And you know, where, what are the paths or? tools or apps that I can use to actually get to something that's useful instead of just having AI for AI's sake. Yeah, I like that. And then as you go into this planning process and session, you can use elements of GEN AI to help through the IDA evaluation process even, right? So it's not like you only have to at one point, but even like with Miro, like you opened my eyes. I don't just use it for flow chart and I can use it throughout the whole documentation process, right? So I like it a lot. Let's dive into the next thing that you said about, and that was Identify the right use cases So so talk to me about what you're seeing as far as how people are using your platform to identify the right use cases That's a big topic and a very important one Yeah. So this is something that I actually love using some of the human centered design methods on. There's a couple that come to mind that I've actually run in sessions with clients when we're trying to figure out where do you put AI into your flow? one of my favorite to start with is something called abstraction laddering and abstraction laddering. It's a really simple concept. You basically figure out, okay, what's the core question that I'm asking in this case? What's the point of AI or why do I want to use AI? Where do I want to integrate it? And then you go through all of the reasons that it's going to work and you go through all the reasons where it's going to fail. And then you start to narrow it down and expand it from there. Another technique that I love to use is called five why's it's another human centered design technique. I also call it the toddler game because literally the whole point is you just keep asking why, why do I want to add AI into my day to day? Well, cause it'll make things faster. Why is it going to make things faster? because it's going to help me get to this information in a more direct route. Why is it going to do that? Because I'm going to work on crafting really great prompts to get me to the information that I'm trying to do that. Why are you going to craft great prompts? Because I've been trained on how to effectively create prompts in AI so I get the information I need. So you can start to extrapolate out and get to what's the core thing you're trying to solve for by adding AI into your workflow. That is a very nice process to think about. So we've learned a couple of things today, right? So. Human centered design is a nice methodology for people to think about as they're planning for use cases on how they might use AI in their workforce. Mural is a great tool to help throughout the process for documenting and planning out what they're going to do, how they're going to do it and getting buy -in from the right stakeholders and making sure that you're handling everything that you need from a security and governance perspective. I think those are some really cool tips. So let me ask you this. There's a lot of excitement. About Jedi and there's a lot of trepidation, so we got two camps to camp. Ask which camp that you're in, but I'm going to ask this. Give me something that excites you and then something that makes you say, hmm, I don't know. Yeah, so I will out myself. I started in the kind of the myth category. I also felt like this about virtual reality. was like, nah, it's no, it won't really catch on. And if I'm being honest, AI has been around a while, right? we've, AI has been baked into a lot of things that we use every day, but it wasn't, I think, until the last two years where AI became like a big deal. What I'm excited about with AI is that I think in a lot of ways it can enhance creativity. And I think that's actually really positive. Where I think people get a little nervous about it is that if it can enhance creativity, it's going to replace me. And I fundamentally don't believe that's true. I was working with Jim Kolbach, who's our chief evangelist here at Mural, brilliant thinker. And we got into this really interesting conversation about where AI is going. And we kind of came to the conclusion that we, AI and humans, are dance partners. And you have to, and like to take the analogy further, like somebody has to lead in a dance, right? Like if you both lead, it's a disaster. You're stepping on each other's feet. People get elbows in the wrong place. Like things go wrong. And so where I get excited about AI is that as I can lead, I can bring the AI to places where my brain's probably never going to get to that are going to enhance my ability to be innovative, to be creative, to find a different solution. So that really excites me. What doesn't excite me or what gives me pause is that I think we're going to see people probably use it way more often than they should and use and start to use it as a crutch. And my husband makes fun of me. I am a horrible speller. I have been a horrible speller most of my life. And I think it's because I grew up with word processing with spell check. And I just, my brain didn't register the red squiggly line. I was like, it's spelled wrong. Click, click. now it's spelled right, I can move on with my day. I worry that AI is going to start to lead into similar behaviors for, you know, me as a professional in the workforce, but also like the future generations of professionals in the workforce, they're going to get a little lazier when it comes to crafting their emails because they can just hit AI and it'll fix it for them. Or I saw recently that LinkedIn has added, you know, fix your post with AI. Like I think it could, if used in the wrong ways, could lead us to being a little lazy. So that's where I have some hesitation. I never thought of it that way, I guess that is an interesting point. And I might counter, because I thought a little bit about the lazy factor. I think that communication and the way that we do things will change. I think over time in history, the way that we communicate and the tools that we use and spelling and grammar has changed. I think there's going to be a different language that's maybe a lot more Interactive and and different and maybe we get away from those skills because we won't need them anymore And we're just using a different part of our brain and thinking capabilities in a different way. I don't know It's interesting to me. I think what excites me is that I don't know what we don't know Kind of cool, right? I think we've been able to plot some paths over the past decades pretty nicely but I don't know if anybody knows what is going to happen next. And that's of cool. And at the same time, that is the same thing that gives me little bit of pause is that we don't know what we don't know. I think there's both factors there for me. So. Yeah, I would agree. think where I get so excited though is because we don't know what we don't know, we can kind of push the limits a little bit of exploration. And when Mural talks about AI, and I really love this philosophy, we sort of look at it as three pillars. We see it AI as a collaborator. AI is an assistant and AI is a coach. so like AI is an assistant. We have all mastered that, right? Like AI fixes my grammar. can, AI will even help me find time on my calendar when I feel like I've got too many meetings stacked. AI will come in and suggest like, Hey, if you move these two, you've got time to work. Great. That's amazing. but where I find AI to be really interesting, and I think this is where like the sky's the limit. I'm really excited to see where it goes is AI as a collaborator and AI as a coach. mural is beta testing right now. It's open in private beta. I don't know when this airs, if you're listening. but we've recently launched our AI hub and something that you can do in our AI hub is you can actually say, Hey, I'm running a workshop with this many people. need an icebreaker. I need an activity to do blah, blah, blah. And I need some how to close it. And so our AI is trained to say, here's an icebreaker for 10 people. And here's a method that you can try, whether it's human centered sign, whether it's agile, whether it's something else, here's a method you can try to run your workshop. And so what that does is it helps test a facilitator something new and maybe get them to try a method that they hadn't tried before. Cause now they have training wheels. Now they have AI has given them the template, AI has given them the recommendation. And so now it kind of pushes the limit a little bit further and maybe gets you to try leading a discussion in a way that you hadn't done it before. So I think that's really exciting. That is pretty cool. I like that concept and I like the direction that you guys are heading with the facilitation of workshops and how that all works. I wonder if, I'll give this as a bug for you guys, doing the same thing with like common. Workflow processes that businesses have that are just like they need to automate these process You need to map out these process and here's what you know Do you guys have those types of rules like with from a like a business process perspective? Do you have tools like that already built out on the platform? We don't currently, but I think that could be a really interesting path. There are a few things that we can use in platform today that I think would help with something like that. Like we have AI generated clustering and summarization. And so you can organize your data in really, in a really quick fashion. So if I think about the facilitation journey, let's say you're running a brainstorm with a team, right? You've got a team of 10 people. I'm going to do some quick back of the napkin math here. Average sort of ideation is like, we'll call it two sticky notes a minute. So you run a five minute brainstorm. Everybody's adding two sticky notes a minute. Cross 10 participants. All of a sudden you've got a ton of content in there and old version of facilitating and trying to document a session where you're trying to map out all the key processes. Somebody has to sit down and say, okay. this one and this one are similar, let's move them over here. This one and this one are similar, let's move them over here. With AI clustering, you can do that in a snap. And then all of sudden you're like, okay, the buckets of my process are step A, step B, step C, steps D. Now we can spend our time as a team discussing, is step A accurate? Do we need to make adjustments? Is this really step A or should this maybe be step A too? Or should we move this to B and should B be A? Then you can start to really get into the discussion piece. So while we can't do the process mapping for you, we can really help facilitate the discussion and get you to faster consensus when you're trying to get all that information together. That's cool, and I think that that does make the processes go faster. And if you can get them faster, then you can get to better results quicker. So I love that. So tell me, what advice would you give our audience as they're thinking through what they should be doing from a AI perspective and how they should be looking at it? What words of advice would you give them? Yeah, I think, A, don't be scared to try it, right? Like I put off diving into the chat GPT pool for a long time, because I was like, I don't really see what the point is, and I don't want to get too reliant on it. Just try it. Give it a shot. I think that's step one. But step two is do it deliberately. Figure out of those use cases that are going to be relevant to you, your role, the things you're trying to accomplish so that you make the most out of the time that you're spending trying to learn a new technology. I think that's really, really the best way to get started is try small, try something small, right? Like when I first was getting started with AI, was like, okay, I don't love it. Let me see if chat GBT can make it better. I then had a little bit of fun and I'm like, write this in the style of Ted Lasso or write this in the style of a Valley girl, cause I'm a Valley girl. Have a little fun with it. And so then once you start to flex that muscle and get comfortable with it, then you can figure out where, it's value add and where maybe you don't need to go down that path. I love that. Start small, be deliberate, and have a little fun. Yeah. that's great. That's great. So we get up having fun, I know you ski, but when you're not working, what else do you like to do for fun? Yes. so skiing is probably number one. Well, skiing slash snowboarding is probably number one. I, I spend a ton of time with my kids. We love being outdoors. Living here in Utah is absolutely magical. so if the mountains aren't open, which they will be soon, we're probably hiking and getting out on our bikes or just wreaking havoc in the neighborhood as we do. I'm blessed to live in a tiny little community that has more cows than people. So we spend a lot of time exploring the farm, petting the animals and doing all the things outside that we can. that is awesome. That's so cool. And that's a nice diversion from being the son of a computer, being tech heads all day long, then you get to go out and enjoy the rest of the universe. I think that is so great. people who listen to the show, they know that I love music. I'm a big music buff. So give me one song that after this show I need to go and listen to. I am the worst person to ask this question because I have a five and a two year old at home. And most of our playlists involve Bluey. Ha ha ha! So I, okay, beyond the Bluey and Disney playlist, often in our house, we go for more of the classic rock and classic country. I would say one of my absolute hands down favorite songs, and I'll give this shout out to my husband if he's listening, is Lyle Lovett's, If I Had a Boat. That is one of like, our absolute favorites. It was playing when my son was born. It's a magical one. If you don't know it, it's an oldie but a goodie. So that's, that would probably be my go -to. I love that one. If I had a boat, that one's going to be on the playlist this afternoon. I'm a big country fan too and classic rock. So love it, love it, love it. This has been so much fun. I have enjoyed our conversation. It has been great. So if people want to get in touch with you after the show, how do they do it? Find me on LinkedIn. I'm very easy to find. I'm Amelia Jones. I'm sure there are a lot of us, but I have an obnoxiously colorful LinkedIn profile. So that'll be the one to look for, but definitely feel free. Send me an in -mail, send me a message. I'm always down to chat, AI, visual collaboration, human centered design, or skiing. skiing and I love it. All right, I have had a great time and this will wrap up another exciting episode of Swimming with Sharks. I hope you have learned some things to the listening audience that will kind of inspire you, that will be great from an insight perspective that will help you with your next AI project. And if you need more help or inspiration, please feel free to check us out at manelvite.com. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next episode of Swimming with Sharks, Deep Diving. Take care everybody. Thanks Amelia. Thanks for having me, Kevin.