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Episode: Essential Skills for AI-Driven Project Managers: Interview with Jay Kiew [AI Today Podcast]

Author: AI & Data Today
Duration: 00:25:15

Episode Shownotes

AI tools have been proving valuable to help handle a variety of different tasks. And, project managers are seeing the value AI tools provide. In this episode of AI Today we interview Jay Kiew who is a Founder at Citizen Centric. He discusses the essentials skills for AI-Driven project managers.

Jay discusses the critical abilities project managers need to succeed in the AI landscape. Continue reading Essential Skills for AI-Driven Project Managers: Interview with Jay Kiew [AI Today Podcast] at Cognilytica.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_02
The AI Today podcast, powered by PMI, cuts through the hype and noise to identify what is really happening now in the world of artificial intelligence.

00:00:09 Speaker_02
Learn about emerging AI trends, best practices, and use cases on making AI work for you today with PMI hosts and expert guests.

00:00:21 Speaker_03
Hello and welcome to the AI Today podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Mulch.

00:00:25 Speaker_01
And I'm your host, Ron Schmelzer. And you probably heard from the intro, if this is news to you, that we are part of PMI, both the AI Today as a podcast, as well as Kathleen and myself.

00:00:35 Speaker_01
We're part of the PMI team and family and Cognolitica, all the various research and topics and things that we've been working on for the past seven plus years as part of the PMI

00:00:46 Speaker_01
Thought leadership and part of the PMI library of content and all the things that we are doing to help advance the use of AI by project managers as well as management and running of AI projects.

00:00:57 Speaker_01
And the reason why I bring that up is because we're also using our connections with PMI to reach out more to the audience.

00:01:04 Speaker_01
of project professionals who are out there delivering projects every day delivering critical things not just for a technology but across the board and construction and healthcare and pharmaceuticals and manufacturing i can go into every industry where there's a project there's a project manager and a project professional so,

00:01:24 Speaker_01
One of the things we're going to be doing more of, and you may hear about this, so definitely stay subscribed to the AI Today podcast, is spending more time talking to these professionals.

00:01:32 Speaker_01
One, as they're interacting and doing their jobs as project professionals, using AI, and of course, management of projects that are increasingly involving more and more of AI in those projects itself. So stay tuned for more on that.

00:01:47 Speaker_03
Exactly. And so we always love to have interviews with folks from the community. So for today, we're so excited to have with us Jay Q, who is founder at CitizenCentric. So welcome, Jay, and thanks so much for joining us.

00:01:59 Speaker_00
Kathleen, Ron, thanks so much for having me. Really, really excited to be here. And congratulations for joining the PMI family.

00:02:06 Speaker_03
Thanks so much. So we'd like to start by having you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell them a little bit about your background and now your current role.

00:02:15 Speaker_00
Yeah, my name is JQ. Only person you'll ever meet who can pronounce his full name in just two letters. J Q, kind of like Jay-Z, but a few letters short of marrying Beyonce. Founder at Citizen Centric. I'm an innovation strategist by trade.

00:02:31 Speaker_00
What does that mean? I help organizations and executives navigate change and digital disruption. The main digital disruption this year, of course, in the last few years has been artificial intelligence, gen AI projects, that kind of thing.

00:02:46 Speaker_01
Well, that's fantastic. Well, AI is definitely transforming organizations. It is an area of innovation across the board. Those who are innovating AI technologies themselves, seems like every day a new AI innovation.

00:02:58 Speaker_01
But then of course, also those applying AI to whatever it is that they're doing, that in and of itself is a big innovation and changes to organizations.

00:03:07 Speaker_01
I'm sure the topic of change management in particular comes up quite a bit, but let's actually get into it a little bit. This may actually, be part of the answer that we're asking you here.

00:03:16 Speaker_01
And that's like, you know, what are you seeing as the skills, these specific skills that project managers and project professionals need to develop to really effectively lead AI driven projects as more and more of these projects involve AI over these next few years?

00:03:33 Speaker_00
You know, a lot of it will come down to evolving the definition of what a project manager does, right? And that all boils down to how to think differently.

00:03:44 Speaker_00
When it comes to both people leaders and project managers alike, we'll all need three key skill sets, right? Number one, critical thinking. Number two, strategic storytelling to influence. And number three, iterative imagination.

00:03:59 Speaker_00
So for example, critical thinking, when it comes to reviewing work, the ability to coach AI systems, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves, you know, what will advance the thinking here? What will make this better?

00:04:10 Speaker_00
Number two is strategic storytelling to influence. I think most great ideas, most projects are actually lost and fail. with the project manager's ability to influence correctly.

00:04:21 Speaker_00
And as I've seen the wave of design thinking, user-centered design rise over the past decade, one of the most underused skills that employees need to develop is strategic storytelling.

00:04:31 Speaker_00
And that's the soft skill of being able to tell captivating stories that not only get your point across, but where you're able to bring your teams, your leaders along the journey.

00:04:41 Speaker_00
And then is it okay if I head into an iterative imagination for a brief sec? Yeah, I'm getting the nod.

00:04:47 Speaker_03
Yeah, of course. Keep going.

00:04:49 Speaker_00
We're listening. Let's do it. Perfect. You know, my daughter is two and a half years old. And one of the skills that I've had to relearn in the last six months is the ability to iteratively reimagine.

00:05:01 Speaker_00
So when we play with Duplo, those are like the big Lego blocks or when we play with magnetic tiles, I build like the most beautifully architected structures the world has ever seen. Right.

00:05:12 Speaker_00
And about two seconds later, my daughter comes along and Godzilla's it just destroys it. And in that moment, I'm stuck in what was previously built. And I'm so stuck in that, that I can't imagine something new, right?

00:05:26 Speaker_00
So I immediately try to rebuild the same structure that I just did. And then the lesson comes, I say, well, wait a minute, what if I try building something different? And I fight to unstructure the structure, right?

00:05:38 Speaker_00
I start to piece together something totally different. And we've come up with some really beautiful, unique pieces from that. That's iterative imagination. And then she destroys it again.

00:05:49 Speaker_00
But I would love your take, Ron, Kathleen, you know, what do you think about those three skill sets? Agree? Disagree? What do you feel?

00:05:57 Speaker_03
Obviously, we very much agree. We're big proponents of soft skills. I think especially when it comes to technology, when it comes to AI, when it comes to project management, maybe life in general. How do you apply critical thinking?

00:06:12 Speaker_03
How do you apply communication skills? How do you apply collaboration skills? Which, I mean, in some sense is what you talked about, where it's like you have to learn how to collaborate with teammates maybe who are not going to be A team player, right?

00:06:27 Speaker_03
You know, your daughter knocks over your Duplo blocks and you're like, okay, thank you for that. And I could react one of a few ways. One is anger. One is maybe let's, let's regroup and move forward. And so I, so it's funny.

00:06:41 Speaker_03
I find my children teach me a lot of life skills too.

00:06:44 Speaker_00
Yeah yeah and hopefully your team members in your org aren't godzillaing your project either so you know there's that too. That does happen.

00:06:53 Speaker_01
Yeah I think that's kind of funny because you know project managers and project professionals have to work and there's no option for project professionals to not collaborate. I mean

00:07:04 Speaker_01
It's hard, I mean if you're working on your own project all by yourself, you're basically just self-managing. You're not managing yourself and your time. But of course, where project professionals are needed is when you have a lot of moving pieces.

00:07:15 Speaker_01
You've got a lot of people, a lot of processes, a lot of technology and things to coordinate. This is where the Godzilla comes in because we do see, unfortunately, organizations that, in many ways, actually do behave like toddlers.

00:07:29 Speaker_01
They're destroying other people's projects, they're not respecting boundaries, there's no understanding, there's lots of silos. You're talking about castles, I'll tell you castles, we got silos, right? And there are little fiefdoms.

00:07:40 Speaker_01
So, I mean, maybe perhaps, you know, from your perspective, you know, how do you relate to organizations that may have quite a bit of, you know, dysfunction, you know, as those organizations have grown and protection and people maybe behaving in toddler-like ways?

00:07:56 Speaker_00
Yeah, I think that comes down to the distinction between shared interests versus competing interests.

00:08:04 Speaker_00
And more often than not, when you think about most functional scorecards, what executives are scored on and rewarded on, a lot of times those scorecards don't match up, right?

00:08:15 Speaker_00
So when transformations are accelerating, and you're asked to do twice what you did last year, but so is Bob over in marketing, He also has to do twice of what he did last year, whose two acts are refocusing on this year.

00:08:30 Speaker_00
And so there's a natural tension in that.

00:08:33 Speaker_00
And so I think a lot of that does boil down to A, the ability to articulate shared interests just a little bit better, which is a key part of how do you drive change effectively, especially if what you're articulating in terms of where you want to go with the changes is pulling everyone in different directions.

00:08:50 Speaker_00
And so Just a few thoughts there. But yeah, competing interests versus shared interests would be the key.

00:08:57 Speaker_03
Yeah. And we could probably talk about soft skills all day, but maybe specifically as it comes into managing AI projects, what role do you see different soft skills like communication, collaboration, critical thinking?

00:09:09 Speaker_03
What role do you see these soft skills playing when it comes to running and managing AI projects?

00:09:16 Speaker_00
Yeah, I think first, like defining what those AI driven projects will look like. So when you think about, I get brought into building a strategy quite a bit for organizations, and it normally splits up into two factors, right?

00:09:27 Speaker_00
How do we operationalize AI platforms or data? And then how do we productize it for our employees. And so when you think about figuring out what operationalizing it looks like, which is,

00:09:40 Speaker_00
All about how we serve our employees and answering the question, how do we support our employees in leveraging AI powered platforms and tools to power their productivity? The soft skills that are related to that really tie into how do I tinker with?

00:09:56 Speaker_00
So I come back to the iteratively imagining, right? How do I tinker with the platforms in a way that will help me gain traction? And how do I look across the rest of the yard to say, Oh, what's marketing doing? What's finance doing?

00:10:08 Speaker_00
What's HR doing when it comes to AI powered platforms? Drawing on those use cases actually help. And so I think the ability to create community is a soft skill that we haven't brought up yet, but it

00:10:21 Speaker_00
is huge when it comes to developing and exchanging knowledge, right?

00:10:25 Speaker_00
So as you think about setting up communities of practice, which we do for a lot of organizations, it's like, how do we set up a community of practice for AI and automation, where there's knowledge exchanging, right?

00:10:37 Speaker_00
There's use cases, people are working through their problems live and getting coaching that actually builds and lifts up organizational capability. And so community would probably be the biggest one when it comes to operationalizing AI.

00:10:51 Speaker_01
That's important communities are important i think the part of reason why we spending so much time talking about soft skills.

00:10:57 Speaker_01
Is because machines are increasingly doing more and more they're doing sort of a lot more of those hard skills it is leaving the soft skills for humans machines are still not good at a lot of them but ironically it's also.

00:11:09 Speaker_01
Calling a lot of these things into into much urgent more urgency now like before you know when we were spending our time.

00:11:16 Speaker_01
Turning through you know you work like that was just like just taking all of our time we could say well with you know maybe we don't have time for the critical thing we don't have time for creativity we don't time for. Communication collaboration.

00:11:27 Speaker_01
Well, those excuses are kind of going away now. And so I think it's putting a lot of these things into much more focus.

00:11:33 Speaker_01
And I think it's important because in order for us to make the most of these technologies out there, we have to be better at making the most of our human skills. So this is really critical.

00:11:44 Speaker_00
And I think, you know, well, there's, there's another thing that came up is, is yes, a hundred percent soft skills are totally important, but I also think there's this mindset shift that needs to happen. from moving from certainty to curiosity.

00:11:59 Speaker_00
So for example, over the last decade, if you think about predictive data driven analytics, right? A lot of organizations have said, Hey, how do we act with precision?

00:12:09 Speaker_00
How do we act based on the data that we have all of the data driven decision making, right? That's become such a theme.

00:12:17 Speaker_00
Actually where a lot of the games are happening now in general today i is not from operating in certainty of what you think the model will produce.

00:12:26 Speaker_00
It's actually almost rolling the dice a few times and sometimes you're gonna get ones and twos and threes on a dice and you're not really hoping for those because you're hoping for six is.

00:12:35 Speaker_00
And then every once in a while you hit the slam dunk and the model creates something totally new that you didn't expect.

00:12:41 Speaker_00
And so by shifting and adopting that mindset from certainty to curiosity, that actually creates a lot of the value that we've seen.

00:12:50 Speaker_01
Yeah, that's really interesting. I like that. You know, for me, it kind of ties also to the creativity aspect, which I always bring up because they're not good at that. They're really good at repeating patterns. They're not good at.

00:13:00 Speaker_01
Ideating patterns, right? This is really very helpful. I love this idea.

00:13:04 Speaker_01
So, um, let's talk a little more about that because in related to these ideas of what humans are good at, machines are not, are these areas of being responsible and trustworthy and ethical with the technology we use?

00:13:15 Speaker_01
Because certainly AI solutions don't get us away from. Ethical traps, anything they've heightened the problems and they accentuate many of the ethical and responsible and trustworthy traps that are that we're facing. Right.

00:13:31 Speaker_01
So, so how do you see kind of all this kind of coming together, especially what you were sharing earlier, playing a role with an AI and maybe sort of ways that we can bring some of our curiosity and the creativity and other things to this idea of keeping things above board.

00:13:47 Speaker_00
Yeah, there are so many different ways I can answer that. One is simply if I'm just like on the procurement side or the purchasing side, right?

00:13:55 Speaker_00
Having a few gates or gating criteria when it comes to what are the disclaimers when it comes to data and privacy? Are my models being trained on this? What am I doing there, right? So what is the product that you're buying, right?

00:14:09 Speaker_00
What is their stance on ethics? That's what that's like the standard response. I think what's more interesting is the value driven response. And what I mean by that is right now we're seeing patents being applied for in the cybersecurity space.

00:14:26 Speaker_00
for AI models. So whoever is able to productize almost the ethical, the responsible AI model and deliver that to market is going to be the trusted one. Right? You think about a year ago, by the way, let me ask you a question.

00:14:42 Speaker_00
Do you two pay for verified badges on X or IG or Meta or any of those?

00:14:48 Speaker_01
We're not that cool.

00:14:50 Speaker_00
You're not that cool. So about a year ago, X and meta, they launched verified badges, right and verified profiles, and the entire world laughed. Right, though the entire world thought to themselves, why would I pay 20 bucks for badges, right?

00:15:06 Speaker_00
Like those don't serve any value. People know who I am. And yet over the past year and a half, we've seen models like cling AI, runway, all of these different Generative video tools get really, really good. I have an AI twin, right?

00:15:24 Speaker_00
I've actually recreated myself now and I can create video. This is me right now. Just just a full disclaimer, but I can create from script to me producing a video. I don't actually have to record myself anymore.

00:15:38 Speaker_00
And that's kind of wild, like the quality has actually gotten there and it's getting quite good. And in lieu of that, how do we ensure that what I'm seeing is true? Right? And so it's really come down to this notion of verify everything.

00:15:52 Speaker_00
And I think whoever is able to capitalize on that, maybe that's a new business idea for everyone, right? Whoever is able to capitalize on verifying everything and moving ahead with zero trust in the AI world. market maker right there. Right.

00:16:06 Speaker_00
And so when you think about the innovation space, a lot of lot of opportunity.

00:16:10 Speaker_01
Hard problem i mean i would say also that you know part of the reason why x was able to monetize those badges is because. Bad actors were pretending to be people and the only real.

00:16:23 Speaker_01
Counterweight the only real solution to that is to have the real people get themselves a badge so no one else can but at the same time. Big people could get the badge it's it's it's it's an ongoing war right.

00:16:35 Speaker_00
Constantly. Constantly. And, you know, I think a lot of moves have been made from even looking back at 2018, right? We were setting up consortiums of how are we building these AI models, all of that.

00:16:47 Speaker_00
And so as those have evolved and players have entered and exited, right, it's been really fascinating. I think it'll continue to evolve moving forward.

00:16:57 Speaker_03
Yeah and it's interesting too because you brought up 2018 and our podcast started in 2017 so we've been covering this space for quite some time and we've gotten to see how the industry is evolving and moving and you know back back in 2017 2018 there was a lot of discussions just around what can I do right how can I use AI for my organization what problem am I trying to solve with AI and once people realized okay we can solve a problem all right let's move forward

00:17:24 Speaker_03
Then it became, how do I build it in a trustworthy way?

00:17:27 Speaker_03
Or, you know, how do I make sure that whatever it is that I'm building, the users, the stakeholders, everybody involved wants to actually use it because you can build a really great solution, but if people don't trust it, they're not going to use it.

00:17:41 Speaker_03
And so this, I mean, we've said for a long time, it's getting to the point where you can no longer believe what you hear, read or say. And so, yeah, there's ways you can combat that, right. With a badge, but then like Ron said, but then fake

00:17:54 Speaker_03
Fake people can create badges. And so it's like well And so it's just this ongoing discussion one time one time.

00:18:02 Speaker_03
I was at an event I was speaking at and somebody asked well, how can you verify these things just like that and it's like good luck right with deep fakes, especially around times of election or if there's Influencers that are saying things that aren't true, especially with with actors and actresses right now So it really is a very difficult problem

00:18:24 Speaker_00
Yeah, and then you will see platforms rise up where they're like, check if this is AI, right? And you know, they're trying to work backwards and try to assess that too. And so, yeah, it's a bit of a mess right now, even from a legal standpoint, right?

00:18:40 Speaker_00
As people battle for copyright and, you know, rights over their creative content. We're seeing a big shift with a move towards AI-powered movies, right?

00:18:50 Speaker_00
And as you think about Runway and Lionsgate partnering up to create now, what they feel like, actually, the quality is so good, we can create a movie from the models that we have. They just recently launched Act One, Runway did.

00:19:03 Speaker_00
And what that does is I can record a video kind of like with both of you here on Zoom,

00:19:09 Speaker_00
And as I'm animating or gesticulating, Runway can now animate me into whatever type of character I want, whether it's Pixar style, Dora the Explorer, you know, you name it. If you ever wanted to see me as Dora, that's out there now.

00:19:23 Speaker_00
So really, really cool to see where the tech will go.

00:19:27 Speaker_03
Yeah, I mean, we'd love to have these discussions. We could talk about it all day. Now, we like to always ask our guests the same final question no matter how many times we ask. We always get such varied responses. Some people go philosophical.

00:19:39 Speaker_03
Some people are very practical or take it from a personal standpoint. So as a final note, what do you believe the future of AI is in general and its application to organizations and beyond?

00:19:50 Speaker_00
Ooh, I love it. Bring it, bring on the heat with the last question. You know, I think where we're going is pretty clear and feel like I piss a lot of people off when I say this, but we will see a future pretty soon.

00:20:04 Speaker_00
I'd say over the next five years where we have entirely AI powered organizations with a minority being human focused. You see this a lot as. different functions get better and better at what they do.

00:20:20 Speaker_00
So for example, I'll give you two and then we'll close. The first one is customer success, right? Like level one customer success has now been replaced with chatbots and voice, right? We used to offshore that. We don't need to do that anymore.

00:20:36 Speaker_00
Product, on a separate note, is also starting to shift, right? So one platform that I really love I don't get sponsored by them, but I'll just shout them out.

00:20:46 Speaker_00
Ignition, product and go-to-market teams are using Ignition because what it does is it pulls on competitor battle cards based on information online.

00:20:56 Speaker_00
It'll pull out an AI voice of customer based on interactions that the team is having with people and how people are using the product.

00:21:03 Speaker_00
And then it'll update the product roadmap accordingly, based on the demand of what customers are needing or their biggest pain points.

00:21:11 Speaker_00
And so previously when I was working with product teams and delivering, you know, apps with millions of monthly active users, we would be like obsessing constantly about how do we shift our product.

00:21:23 Speaker_00
And now we actually have recommendations about what's the best pathway forward and why. So there's tons of rationale that it's being built on. I don't think realtors... Here's another example.

00:21:36 Speaker_00
There might be an AI-powered realtor brokerage in the future because you can automate when you want to sell. I can get pings on my valuation of my properties. I can get notifications about my property appraisal and what

00:21:50 Speaker_00
what's in the market in the area and suggestions based on what i'm searching on right and so a lot of what realtors would have done in the past now can be automated and curated based on my liking as a either owner or someone looking to buy a home and so long story short ai-powered organizations i think they're on their way as soon as we cross the boundary from chatbots to reasoners to

00:22:15 Speaker_00
agents, right? Beyond that, we're heading insane AI powered organizations. So here we go. Get ready. Rollercoaster.

00:22:24 Speaker_01
It's exciting and scary and interesting and curious and mind changing and everything at the same time. It's kind of cool. I don't think people have much option though. This is kind of the world we're living in.

00:22:37 Speaker_01
And I really like kind of where you're going because we because it's kind of interesting. It brings in the idea of like agentic AI where that's going on with AI.

00:22:43 Speaker_01
Things are the old idea of augmented in as in autonomous systems and organizations and you even had conversations people who might believe that this thing the notion of the company as a whole.

00:22:56 Speaker_01
Employment that might start to see some radical changes i know that i'm definitely a big believer of self employment and a i might give everybody the superpowers they need.

00:23:06 Speaker_01
To run sizable organization still work in progress in terms of what's actually happening out there but the. technology framework and foundations are there. So I would say, Jay, this has been an awesome, fantastic interview.

00:23:20 Speaker_01
Thank you for sharing your perspectives, both from a technology perspective or project management perspective, soft skills. We got a little bit of it all here. So I just want to thank you so much for sharing all those great insights with our listeners.

00:23:32 Speaker_01
And hey, feel free to shout. We're going to put some things in our show notes. But if you want to shout out anything you think our listeners should be listening to, should be reading, should be following up on,

00:23:41 Speaker_01
that you're doing happy just to go ahead and let folks know here. As mentioned, we'll put these as well in our show notes for folks who can't type quickly.

00:23:48 Speaker_00
Yeah, no worries. Thank you for the opportunity. You can find me on LinkedIn at J-A-Y-K-I-E-W.

00:23:56 Speaker_00
What I normally do is I actually post a lot of the walkthroughs and videos of me tinkering with different tools and platforms and sharing use cases about the organizations that we partner with on our AI-driven projects.

00:24:08 Speaker_00
And so that's the fastest way to get the latest up-to-date information on what I'm up to.

00:24:14 Speaker_03
Awesome. Well, we'll definitely link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. So this has been such a great discussion. Thanks so much for joining us.

00:24:24 Speaker_00
Thanks for having me.

00:24:25 Speaker_03
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00:24:35 Speaker_03
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00:24:48 Speaker_03
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00:25:00 Speaker_03
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