How to Use AI in Internal Communications

SO many times I've wished I could talk to my Gmail and ask questions. But since Google hasn't set up those tools yet (get crackin' Alphabet!), I created a fairly easy AI workaround to make it possible. The idea with this is that you'll use a Google App Script (don't worry, you don't need to know code!) to analyze your messages. Here's how it works: 1. Put a Google label on any emails that you want to review. That might be all emails from a certain date range, or just the ones sent to a certain person or company. This is an important first step, because AI can't read your entire inbox at once. 2. Ask ChatGPT to create a Google App Script for you using this exact prompt: “Can you create a Google Apps Script that pulls all Gmail messages with the label ‘[Your Label Name]’ into a spreadsheet with columns for Date, To, From, Subject, and Body?” You’ll get a clean, copy-paste-able script that you can drop into https://script.google.com. When you run the script, it’ll export every email with that label into a Google Sheet — no coding experience required. 3. Once your messages are in your Sheets (or an exported spreadsheet) you can ask ChatGPT to help you analyze them. You can say things like: How many times did I email this person in June?” OR “Summarize my back-and-forth with this client.” OR "Are there any pending to dos for this account?" This AI workflow is one of the most helpful ways I’ve found to review my own communication, whether I’m wrapping up a project, prepping for a meeting, or just making sure I didn’t forget to follow up. It's literally saved me half a day of analysis every months. Happy to share the exact script and prompts I've use if you want to try it!

AI didn't save their time. It magnified their chaos…. A SaaS founder reached out frustrated. They’d invested in multiple AI tools, but instead of streamlined workflows, they got: ↳ Confused team members ↳ Tasks lost between systems ↳ Missed follow-ups with clients They thought AI would be a shortcut. But it just accelerated what was already broken. Here’s what we did instead: 1. Mapped their actual workflows: We started with WHAT WAS ALREADY WORKING and flagged the friction points. 2. Identified repeatable tasks: These are the parts AI thrives in; SOPs, client onboarding sequences, follow-ups. 3. Integrated AI with intention: Instead of slapping tools everywhere, we matched tools to their process. not the other way around. Result? In 3 weeks: ✅ Client onboarding time was cut by 30% ✅ Internal communication improved dramatically ✅ Their ops lead finally said: “This is the first time it feels manageable.” AI didn’t fix their business But systems did. And AI helped scale them, once the foundation was in place. If you’re a small business owner trying to make AI work without making a mess… I created a free guide to help you Integrate AI into Your Operations the right way, with structure and intention. Link is in the comment section below. This is exactly what I help small business owners and operational leaders do, make AI work WITH their systems, not against them. #systems #leadership #business #strategy #ProcessImprovement 

Loudness. Chaos. Disorganized communication left our blue-collar business a mess. I'm sure it's done the same to yours. I've always wanted to help blue-collar businesses with new technology. We tried something new with AI to make talking between workers clearer and smoother. That's why I appreciate Amy Blaschka's post on the importance of communication. We brought in a system that uses AI to help organize tasks and tell workers what needs to be done first. Before this, it was hard for everyone to keep up because of all the noise and confusion in our workspace. With our new system, workers get updates right on their devices. They're notified immediately about what's important and what to do next. As we people adapted, we made fewer mistakes. We got more work done. Everyone understood each other better. The process showed me that even hands-on jobs can get better with a bit of technology help. This experience showed me that AI can really make a difference in how we work every day. It's made things smoother and keeping everyone on the same page.

When it comes to integrating AI into our projects, the key to success is clear: communication is everything. I often get asked, "How do you make AI understand and execute your vision effectively?" The answer? Over communicate as if you’re interacting with a highly intelligent engineer who's just a bit socially awkward. Here’s how I ensure our AI systems not only understand but excel in delivering precisely what we need: ✅ Clarify and Confirm: Always make your instructions clear and then verify understanding. Ask the AI, "Do you understand?" or "Does this make sense?" This step ensures you're both on the same page. ✅ Proactive Inquiries: Encourage the AI to ask you questions. This can be pivotal in defining the scope and specifics of your project. Ask, "What more do you need to know?" to help it gather all necessary details. ✅ Define the Audience and Objectives: Be explicit about who your message is targeting and what you want your audience to take away from it. Understanding the audience’s needs helps tailor the AI’s output effectively. ✅ Set Clear Expectations: Explain the ultimate goal of your communication. If your project is a multi-stage one, clarify this to the AI. Setting the context right from the start is crucial for continuity and relevance. ✅ Continual Onboarding: Think of AI as a new team member. Just like any employee, AI needs proper onboarding, training, and time to adjust. The more effort you put into this process, the more productive the AI will become. ✅ Generosity Leads to Gains: With AI, the more you put in, the more you get out. Overgive, overshare, and always seek the optimal way to provide instructions. This ensures the results you receive aren’t just good; they’re phenomenal. Integrating AI isn’t just about using a tool; it’s about fostering a relationship where clear, continuous communication opens the doors to unmatched efficiency and innovation. Are you ready to change how you interact with AI and see the difference it makes in your projects? #AICommunication #TeamIntegration #Innovation #BusinessStrategy #ZeevWexler #Leadership #ai #gpt #chatgpt

For our last session before graduation, I had the special honor of hosting Manik Gupta for a talk on building AI products at Stanford University Graduate School of Business! Manik was my CVP at Microsoft Teams. I'm proud to have brought him to Stanford to share the incredible innovation my former team is delivering and hear the excitement from students. With a track record of launching Google Maps in India, taking Uber public as its former CPO, and now leading MS Teams throughout the #AI era, Manik offers a unique perspective on building successful AI-enabled products. 🔀 As business leaders, we should plan how to integrate AI into internal operations: Identify use cases, measure, customize, and improve #productivity and #creativity. Manik uses AI to catch up on meetings he can't attend, and generate a weekly report on what he's been up to, to share with his org. It saves ~40% of the work, and he adds his unique perspective (as a human) and polish. ⏰ AI is reported to save 10+ hours per month at work! These productivity gains are especially critical in developing markets, where people spend a lot of time on basic setups, so every gain is significant. Additionally, these saved hours are applied to tedious and redundant tasks that AI is now helping with, increasing employee satisfaction. ⏩ People use products more if they are highly performant. Performance is one of the most critical KPIs we had in Teams as we built new experiences to fulfill the core value of instant communication. When launching new features, ensure they do not degrade overall product performance. 📱 Users have not yet developed a mental model for prompts, but that's temporary. Users also didn't know how to write queries in Google search until they adapted. Teams offers prompt libraries and the ability to share prompts internally to reduce the learning curve. In the long term, AI interfaces will become more multimodal and personalized, moving beyond fixed GUIs and chat-based UIs to dynamic, context-aware UIs. It will be interesting to see how humans adopt new interactions that are dynamic and less consistent. Lastly, Manik demoed the recent co-pilot launch in Teams chat, allowing users to collaborate on action items and notes inside the chat. When I was at Microsoft AI in 2017, we envisioned this exact scenario and developed the first AI model to extract action items from meeting transcripts. As I later moved to Teams chat and led work on the app side, I continued working on similar collaboration scenarios. I'm grateful to see the fruits of hard work! Thank you, Rachael Rhee, for helping organize the session with the GSB #Product Club!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be on everyone's lips these days. At reshift we are technology optimists and we're embracing AI to help us be better at our craft. I recommend these 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐈 to help you do better work: 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 - The easiest way to leverage AI is for researching a topic much in the way you are accustomed to researching with your favorite search engine. Instead of writing a few small keywords, 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞. The trick is learning how to enter your prompts in a way that efficiently gets you to your answer, it's actually amazing and entertaining how much more powerful and efficient your research can be. 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐈 - Have you ever gotten stuck getting started or somewhere in the middle of writing something? 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧 that you can ask the help you formulate your thoughts. This can be a huge time-saver by helping you either expand or condense your content. You can also amp up your own creativity by asking the AI to write with a specific emphasis or for a specific audience. 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 - There are many free AI tools you can use to automatically take meeting notes that do an excellent job recording, transcribing and summarizing your conversation. Getting consent from your meeting participants is important (very few people object). For me 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, knowing that my trusty AI note taker is catching every detail. These three examples are easy ways to get started using AI in your everyday work. The thing is, 𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. As Karim Lakhani of Harvard said, "𝐀𝐈 𝐖𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 — 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐈 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐀𝐈." Best to be one of those humans with AI! #AI #EverydayAI #Innovation Steven B., Manfred Gollent, Heather Stagl, Lisa G. Morris, Adam StJohn Lawrence, Arne van Oosterom