Someone, somewhere on the Internet, said “Change is the only constant. Well, that and the speed of light. And taxes. But mostly change.” For some of us, change means discomfort and for others it means opportunity. What we can generally agree on is that because of access to information and technology, our world is changing at a rapid pace.
As a result, Learning & Development teams have to move away from traditional methods of development and, instead, find new approaches to move toward greater agility and speed. For example, content creation can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. The emergence of generative AI platforms, such as ChatGPT for text and Leonardo for imagery, provide L&D teams and their partners with powerful tools to unlock new levels of efficiency. There are even applications using AI that streamline presentations, podcasts, and others, but we’ll save that for another time. For today, let’s explore how an organization can use generative AI platforms to improve production time.
The Scenario:
Imagine that Sarah is the Head of Learning and Development at a global retail corporation. The company is undergoing a major rebranding initiative and needs to train its employees on new customer service protocols, product lines, and brand messaging.
Sarah’s team started off relying solely on traditional content creation methods, spending hours researching, writing, and editing training materials for each aspect of the rebranding initiative. This process resulted in bottlenecks and delays in course development, putting pressure on the team to meet the tight deadlines.
As the deadline loomed closer, Sarah realized that they needed a more efficient approach to accelerate content creation and ensure that all employees were adequately trained. That’s when she considered using a learning partner and generative AI.
Generative AI as a Team Member
Let’s consider AI from a unique perspective, one that makes it less intimidating – AI as a member of your team. With that perspective in mind, how can Sarah’s team use generative AI platforms to build simple prompts to streamline content creation? For example, instead of crafting individual training modules for each product line, they could input a prompt into a program like ChatGPT, then let it generate a first draft of the content. Instead of finding stock photography that only partially represents the story, they create their own graphics in a graphic-driven AI program like Leonardo or Midjourney.
Let’s look at an example prompt that Sarah and team might use in ChatGPT:
“Create a comprehensive training module for our company’s rebranded product line. The module should cover key product features, updated customer service protocols, and brand messaging, tailored for global employees in sales, customer service, and product management. Use a mix of text, visuals, and interactive elements, considering cultural sensitivity and accessibility. Evaluate effectiveness based on learner feedback and real-world application.”
Once AI has gotten the first instruction and understands Sarah’s plan, she would then, in the same chat window, enter the specifics of the product line, its features, the new customer service protocols, and the brand messaging. Finally, she would prompt it to build the module and receive the output.
With the AI-generated content in hand, the rest of the L&D team or their L&D partner reviews and further refines the content, elevating the result to better suit their specific needs and preferences. They add real-life examples, personalized anecdotes, and interactive elements to make the training materials more engaging and relevant to their audience.
This collaborative effort between AI-generated content and human creativity resulted in outputs that not only met the company’s goals but improved turnaround time. By integrating AI results with their own work effort, L&D team members at this global retailer were able to work with their AI teammate to increase the turnaround on building programs and materials that resonated with their peers and contributed to the success of the rebranding initiative.
Conclusion:
Remember, generative AI does not replace the need for expertise and strong human talent. Instead, if we work with it, it allows us to thrive by offering our teams opportunities to throw around ideas with an impartial third party, consider areas of development we might not have before, and create the foundations of content that we can then take and apply to it our expertise and unique voice.
