Fiona Young on AI and the Future of the EA Role

Fiona · 0:00

Hi, I am Fiona Young. I'm the founder of CARVE, and today's leadership quote comes from Clayton Christensen. If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you'll never become that person.

Speaker 3 · 0:23

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:38

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Fiona · 1:53

Thank you for having me. I am joining from London, England, and West London, specifically Notting Hill.

Jeremy · 2:02

And are you from that area?

Fiona · 2:05

No, originally from Northern California, from Sacramento and San Francisco Bay Area. But I've lived out here 12 years. I'm half English, half American. And I like to say I'm a Californian by birth, but a Londoner by choice.

Jeremy · 2:17

Nice. So yeah, I was going to ask what brought you across the pond?

Fiona · 2:22

Oh, I've always loved it here. I think just being half English, always had more of an affinity as well with my mom's side of the family compared to my two siblings. And kind of planned to move out here forever, really. Thought about coming out here for university and then decided like, who am I kidding? It'll be more fun to go to university in Southern California and do the whole big university thing. And yeah, then I just, when I graduated, I thought, okay, I'm just going to do whatever I can to save up and make this move. And yeah, when I moved out here 12 years ago, I had nowhere to live. I had no job. I didn't know what I was doing. I just was like, I have enough money to like tide me over for six months and I'm going to build my life here. And I did this best decision I ever made.

Jeremy · 3:05

That's great. That's great. So what is your favorite thing to do in London when you're not working?

Fiona · 3:14

I am a huge foodie. So I have to say definitely eating out, enjoying all the fine dining in London. But I also love cooking and I also love high intensity workouts to sort of work off some of the lovely eating that I do.

Jeremy · 3:30

Sounds like a good pair.

Fiona · 3:32

Balance, yeah.

Jeremy · 3:33

Balance it out. So tell us about your career then. Where did you start off your career after university? How did you get into the assistant role and then talk to us about your journey to where you're at now?

Fiona · 3:48

Yeah, I really fell into it like so many assistants I talked to. I graduated with a degree in economics. I thought I was going to go get a job in finance in San Francisco. Graduated at the worst point in the recession 2008 and quickly realized that wasn't on the cards. And I found a kind of randomly just came across a job as an assistant working in association management public policy in Sacramento, where government is really big business. And so I set off in that role, absolutely loved it. I love the variety of it. I just had so much opportunity to explore and dabble and do different things. So everything from joining in on board meetings, taking minutes, planning large scale events and conferences. I did a bunch of business development. I did some marketing work. I did all sorts of different stuff. And so then when I moved to London, I thought, OK, I'm going to try to find a job as an EA and ended up working for a venture capitalist. And interestingly enough, my mom was actually an EA to venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. So I'm a second generation EA in VC. And again, like just loved that role because I had this sort of front row seats to seeing how businesses are built, the messy, chaotic process of starting businesses, of funding businesses, trying to scale businesses as well. And just worked with some of the smartest people I've ever met there. And yeah, so pretty soon after I started working for the venture capitalist in London back in 2012, I picked up some learning and development stuff off the side of my desk. He basically said to me, listen, I have this vision for a learning program. I want you to help me build it and run it. And I said, right on, you know, I love learning. This is one of my biggest passions. And that started what ended up being a decade long career in learning development and learning design. And so it morphed into after working for him for a few years, it morphed into a full time role, leading learning and development for a venture group. Three thousand people, 25 ventures was literally the first time anyone had done that role. So I was writing the strategy from a blank sheet, which was a huge challenge. And then I ended up spending really the last five years before launching my business, Carve, working for a business called Hive Learning. And I was building, you know, kind of client facing, building digital learning programs for blue chip clients. So clients like the Olympics, Jaguar Land Rover, Barclays, which is the biggest bank in the UK. So really, really big clients and trying to do really cutting edge digital learning. So how do you bring together the best of face to face of kind of communities of practice with the best of digital learning, you know, making it more scalable, more affordable for companies. And that's something I'm really passionate about is taking a really high impact peer learning approach to everything in the learning space. So yeah, so that all led me really here because after years of working primarily in leadership development, so really the programs I was building for the last decade were about helping leaders and managers become better leaders and managers. I got a bit disenchanted just thinking about how much money corporates invest in their leaders and yet how little they invest in assistance and reflecting on my time as an assistant, I had no formal development. And that's something I hear from assistants all the time. And so it just got me thinking like maybe I'm the perfect person to go and build something in this space because of my unique experience and background and what I've been doing the last 10 years in the digital learning space. And so I set out to do that. I thought, you know, a year ago, I thought I was building something in EA career development space. And when ChatGPT came out and blew up the internet, you know, I became obsessed with it along with a lot of other people. And as I got really interested, I started to believe more and more, actually, this is a stepping stone. These AI tools are a stepping stone towards career development because they're going to fundamentally change this role. And if you can really wrap your arms around them and get all the benefit you can out of them to use these tools to shortcut admin, basically, you create capacity in order to take on more strategic work and carve out your own career progression. So that's where really it all came from. You know, I think that for me, helping EA learn about AI, which is what I'm doing through Carve, is really ultimately helping them further their careers in that larger goal and purpose that I feel like I have for myself in this space.

Jeremy · 8:31

That's great. So before we get into a little bit more on the AI and specifics on what you provide with Carve, what was maybe your number one learning, pun intended, when it came to learning and development for the corporate setting? So, you know, were there different things that throughout those both organizations, Hive and the other one, where it's like, hey, you know, maybe a practical learning was short, shorter than five minute videos once a week or is a really good way for corporate team members to learn and develop or it requires doing it together as a group or what was maybe some practical things as assistants listening or thinking, okay, I got to convince my executive to invest in our assistant team. And I've got to also convince them that and present a business case that, hey, this development not only is valuable, but this type of development is proven to work better than other types. So is there any general professional development styles or tips that you can share from your years in that world?

Fiona · 9:55

Yeah, that's a great question. And there's also there's a lot of evidence that corporate learning is really deeply broken. The rate of learning transfer, this is such a L&D speak, so sorry, bear with me. The rate of learning transfer, meaning how much do people actually take on from any course that they're doing? You know, does this lead to a change in knowledge? Does this lead to a change in skills? Does this lead to a change in behavior? When you look at online learning, that rate of learning transfer is about 12%. So only about 12% of learning that happens online leads to any sort of change. That's staggeringly bad. You know, in any part of business, you would expect, you know, you wouldn't just get a 12% hit rate on something, right? So yeah, I think it's a great question to think about what makes for great learning at work. And absolutely a few of the principles that I still follow and really deeply believe in. One is that we learn best together. This idea of peer learning, cohort-based learning in small groups where you actually get to know other people and you're on a shared journey together. I think that's really critical. You know, and I contrast that with a lot of online learning is what I like to call lonely learning. You know, you're sitting at your laptop, you're clicking through some stuff, you know, it's not engaging or inspiring and it doesn't actually push you to change. And that's what really matters. I would say as well, oftentimes it's just not practical. And what I mean by that is there's like a lot of, you know, content out in the world. And even like I would put Ted Talks in this category. Like I love a good Ted Talk. I've watched a lot of Ted Talks in my time. But they're not practical. They're very high level and very inspiring. And there's obviously there's some value and benefit in that. But when we're thinking about corporate learning, we always need to be thinking about how can we make this really, really practical, giving people the actual action steps that they can take to change. Practically, how can you use this in your day to day? What are the two things you could do today or the five things you could do this week? And I think that is missing in so much learning. It's just too theoretical. And then I think as well, like you need to have learning content and programs that are constantly evolving. Agility is something I'm sure from the business you're working in, like you work agile, I imagine. Like certainly from having grown up in entrepreneurial businesses and in the venture world, agility is such a key principle, the way that I've worked everywhere. And I think when you look at learning so often, stuff is just really stale and out of date. Someone recorded it once, like really high production value, talking head videos, for instance. And then they're sort of trapped with it because they spent like thousands and thousands of dollars producing it. Actually, you know, the production value making like slick stuff isn't that important. What's much more important is it for it to be highly relevant to the person you're delivering it to and to be totally up to date. So, you know, I think having that fresh kind of constantly evolving is a really important principle as well.

Jeremy · 13:07

Super great tips and it makes me feel better about my videos and my trainings that I've done because I generally don't focus on the high produced stuff and I just focus on trying to be helpful. So I'm glad that I'm doing the right thing.

Fiona · 13:23

And I think authenticity goes a long way too, right? I think if you're authentic, you're presenting practical tips. People don't mind if you've done a scrappy job of just filming yourself on a loom or whatever these days. You don't need to have perfection. And in some ways, I think in the age of AI, you know, maybe a little bit of the human authentic, like imperfect quality is actually better. And you'll realize, oh, this isn't that person's avatar talking at me. This is a real human who makes mistakes and says, um, and you know, and filler words like that, right?

Jeremy · 13:56

Cool. Well, let's dive in. That's super helpful. Thanks for sharing there. And let's dive into, um, you know, carve specifically, you know, a series of live digital courses for executive assistants to learn AI, create capacity and develop into a strategic assistant. So, you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, if I'm an assistant right now and I want to learn about AI, what's a good place to start?

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Fiona · 15:06

Yeah, I think absolutely the best place to start is actually in your personal life. So I know a lot of companies right now have, you know, policies or don't have policies and are sort of scrambling, trying to figure out what their policy around AI is. So when I talk to assistants, I oftentimes start by just saying, you know what, nothing is stopping you from downloading the Chat GPT app on your phone and starting to use this in your personal life. So don't put any personal details in there. You know, don't get yourself into any trouble on a data privacy perspective. But, you know, even for things like if you want to be healthier, if you want to be fitter, if you want to build a meditation habit, you know, Chat GPT is a powerful, powerful tool. These AI chatbots, large language models are incredibly powerful for personalized learning in particular. And so help it to help you. It also has some pretty incredible functionality for things like, you know, upload a picture of the contents of your refrigerator and ask it to give you some ideas of ways you can use up what you have to reduce food waste, which is something I think about a lot because I feel like I'm constantly throwing stuff away that I should have figured out a way to eat. Right. And so I always say, you know, like, start in your personal life because even if you think this has nothing to do with what I'm doing at work, you'll soon start to understand the real strength of these platforms and how they might begin to help you at work too. And they'll also help you make the case if you don't have permission to use them yet at work, you know, to be able to speak the language of AI to your boss or to your InfoSec team and say, hey, listen, I'm getting a lot of value out of this at home. And I think that this would be an incredible tool for me at work too. What can I do to get access to it or how can I make sure I'm using it safely here? So I think that's an ideal place to start. And, you know, and I suggest using an AI chatbot because they are just so, you know, the amount of different things you can do with them is just endless. And they're also very, very user friendly to get started with. And the skills that you'll learn as you use them around prompting, for instance, like how to get the best out of these tools will serve you across other AI tools, too. So for instance, if you have AI functionality within a calendar tool or within a project management tool, all the same principles are the same. And so it will help you moving forward regardless of what tools you end up taking on.

Jeremy · 17:33

Love it. Great tips. So what's your favorite one right now? Or maybe your favorite, you mentioned taking a picture of your fridge, stuff like that. What's maybe a recent prompt or recent task or use case that you've applied AI to?

Fiona · 17:48

Well, one that I love is cultural nuances. So so often we're working with folks in different geographies and you might be writing out an email, especially if it's on behalf of an executive and thinking, oh my gosh, am I going to offend someone? You know, this is to someone say in Japan. And I know that their cultural norms around communication are very different than they are in the West. So you can just copy paste that into ChatGPT and ask, how would this land with someone in Japan? Is this appropriate? Is there anything I should be worried about, concerned about, mindful of? And I would say you can also use this in your personal life. So you know, I'm based in London. I'm obviously American by birth. I have a friend here who is also from abroad and was expecting a baby last year. And I said to her, listen, I'll host your baby shower. And she sort of said to me, well, you know, our baby shower is really a thing here in the UK. You know, I don't really know the norms around gift giving. And I said to her, listen, they're definitely more of an American thing than a British thing. But I think it's really whatever goes, you know, then I thought to myself, you know, started asking around to friends, British friends of mine, what do you think about this? What are the norms around gift giving for expectant mothers? And, you know, I decided actually, I'm just going to ask ChatGPT because I didn't really get a straight answer from any of my friends. And I got such a better answer from ChatGPT. So, you know, sometimes these like weird little cultural nuances that even after like living, you know, basically my whole adulthood in the UK, I still can't really tell you some of these norms, right? So that's one that I think is really, you know, is helpful both at work and in your personal life. But another one I would say that EA's I'm talking to are loving as well is using a tool like ChatGPT as a concierge. So sometimes, you know, you have a really specific need for like a restaurant or a hotel for a fussy executive or very specific meeting, for instance, okay, you know, my boss is going to be traveling, they're going to be in New York City next week, and they have a business dinner, but it's on a Monday night. Can you give me some ideas for restaurants that are in Soho, New York City? You can even give it, you know, a specific geography within that specific streets that are appropriate for a work dinner and that are open on a Monday and that take reservations, for instance. So you're getting so specific where if you just look up Soho, New York City restaurants, I mean, I think you and I both know you can spend an hour sort of sifting through and trying to work out what is the best solution here was a tool like ChatGPT will present you with like three options that hit all the criteria that you give it. So that's pretty powerful.

Jeremy · 20:25

Wow, that is great. Yeah. Super helpful. So what about the the assistants listening that hear all of this like, Oh, you know, this ChatGPT did a better job than maybe even I could. What are your thoughts on the future of the assistant role in this age of artificial intelligence?

Fiona · 20:49

Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, what I'm hearing from assistants, I'm talking to assistants every week about AI, I've spoken to 150 assistants about AI in the last six months. And I'm hearing emotions are really all over the shop. And it's interesting, actually, a study just came out, the state of AI report from Deloitte just in January 2024, that tracked what the emotions are around AI at work. And it totally mirrored what I'm hearing. Mostly it's excitement, but it's also worry and apprehension, a bit of wariness, you know, it's like hopefulness. But you know, that sort of tinged with some more negative emotions, too. And I think there is this question of, what will this mean for my role? And it's totally understandable. Because if you think about it, with all the technological advances we've had over, you know, the last 50, 75 years, this role has been completely reshaped, right? It's evolved every step of its evolution has been down to tech advances. So in some sense, this is just the next, you know, evolution, I guess you could say the next chapter in that story. But in another sense, this is really the first time that AI has an automation really has threatened desk based workers, knowledge workers, you know, I mean, automation is like old news for frontline workers, you know, I mean, if you worked in a factory or you know, those jobs have been disappearing for decades. And so I think that's what makes this moment really different and really scary for folks. But I would say, you know, there's a great quote from the economist Richard Baldwin, AI won't take your job, someone using AI well. And I think that's great. And I think that's absolutely true that we must lean into this and get ahead on this and that it isn't going to replace us. It's really going to augment at least most of us. And I would add to that, actually, what I like to say is AI won't take your job, but it will fundamentally change it. It will absolutely change the tasks that you're doing on a daily and a weekly basis. And so, you know, my perspective on this is like AI plus human equals superhuman. You know, all of us have very deeply human skills that AI is not going to replace. But we can be even better at what we do and more efficient and more effective by wrapping our arms around these tools, understanding how they can help us, understanding where they can give us the most leverage in our workflow, and really running with them, getting ahead of the curve on all this stuff. So that's my personal view. I mean, I could carry on talking more about it, but for the sake of time, that's where I stand now, you know, winter 2024.

Jeremy · 23:34

Yeah, that's great. And I'm on I'm on board. I'm on the agree train with you there. And thanks for thanks for articulating that so well. What let's talk about a little bit about learning and unlearning. And so this part of this idea in my mind, thinking about the future of our role, thinking about embracing AI and using AI to help us be a be better assistance. There's obviously this like, oh, you know, always learning hashtag, always learning mindset. But then you mentioned when I asked for specific topics, you mentioned this idea of being open to constant learning plus unlearning. So tell us a little bit about what you mean by that. And you know, I don't know if reskilling is kind of a similar along the similar vein. I've heard that term too. But yeah, talk to us about the ability to be open to learning and unlearning.

Fiona · 24:38

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it is very closely tied to reskilling. And you know, my thought on this is that really all of us need to get curious. You know, I think it starts with mindset of that curiosity of how might this help me? And where is this going to give me leverage? By the way, where is it not going to help me? Because a lot of these tools are absolutely half-baked right now. So, you know, do take a critical eye and look at what's good out there and what isn't. But then when it comes to learning and unlearning, you know, we all need to commit to learning these new tools, learning how we can get the best out of them, and getting under the skin of where is this really going to add value in my day, in my week? And when it comes to unlearning, it's thinking about all of the things that you're currently doing that are going to fall away because a tool can help you with those. And I'll give you an example, you know, I oftentimes say to people, like, I think one of the best ways to view AI is as, you know, as a co-pilot, as a thought partner and as a tool to help fill in for some of your own deficiencies. So it really starts with self-awareness of what are things that I hate doing, or I'm just not that good at, or maybe slower than other people are doing. I hate creating slide decks. It's like, I didn't have that background of being like a managed consultant or a result of death by power, years just building PowerPoint, you know, and so I feel like I'm not that great at it. The first tool I went out there and tried for creating slide decks, because I thought, great, why not actually outsource this to AI? This is something I know I'm not the best at. And by the way, I don't want to be a master at, you know? And so I think the idea is learning how to let go, unlearning of I must do this by hand, the unlearning that, oh, using a tool like this is cheating and actually relearning that this is actually really valuable. And okay, it's not 100% out the gates. You know, you put in one prompt and you get it to spit out something that's not going to be perfect on the first go, you're going to have to reshape that you're going to polish it. It's an iterative process. You're going to have to take it over the finish line yourself using your own brain power. But I think that's what I mean by learning and unlearning is like really leaning into what are the things I need to learn how to do the tools I need to learn. And then also what are the things I need to let fall away and recognize are not going to be a big part of my role moving forward. And that's going to be a lot of repeatable admin. You know, I think in the next year or two, stuff like calendaring and emails, you know, will probably take half the time they take now. And if that's the majority of your role, then, you know, you need to be thinking now about how do I fill that time if literally 50% of my week vanishes and 50% of my workload in a week vanishes? What do I fill that with? You know, and I think we all need to be thinking proactively about how we rewrite our role.

Jeremy · 27:43

Yeah, that's great. And you cut out for just a second when you were talking about the example. I think you were talking about slide decks. And is that is that something that you you have used AI? Is that what you're saying? You have used AI to do to help with your slide decks?

Fiona · 27:59

Yeah, I have. I've used a few different tools so far. I've used so there is Copilot, which is Microsoft 365 products. So it's baked into PowerPoint. I've just been trialing that over the last couple of weeks. I'll tell you straight up, I'm not that impressed with it so far. But, you know, this is winter 2024. I'm sure like give it six months. It'll probably be a lot further along. I've also used Beautiful.AI, which is very, very good. And then I've also used Gamma. And I've used Canva, which is, of course, a broader design tool with a slide deck functionality built into it. And all of those are really excellent and have gotten me a lot further than I could get when it comes to the look and feel, the design of slides.

Jeremy · 28:45

That's great. Definitely have to check those out. And yeah, I really, really appreciate you sharing your journey and sharing some tips, some really practical tips as well. When it comes to AI and the future of our role. What's maybe the best way for people to reach out? And what are you excited about as far as your business carve? What are you excited about for the future?

Fiona · 29:15

Yeah, the best way to reach me is always through LinkedIn. I'm on there pretty much every day. So look up Fiona Young. I'm usually the first search result. And I am so excited to see where this wild journey will take me. I mean, the world of AI, things are moving so fast. I'm sure you know, Jeremy, from your role in your company. It's really a really, really, really interesting time to be working in this space. And there's endless amounts to learn and to help others learn as well. And that's really what drives me forward and excites me. It gets me out of bed every day is just the opportunity to help EAs out there be a better version of themselves. And I think that's what this age of AI presents us.

Jeremy · 29:58

Awesome. Well, I will put your LinkedIn URL as well as your website and everything else in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/263leaderassistant.com/ 263. And Fiona, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for your passion for helping assistants and helping them learn and grow and embrace AI. And yeah, hopefully we'll get to get some good food in London together someday.

Fiona · 30:29

Absolutely. And thank you so much for creating this platform as well and allowing people like me to share. Thank you, Jeremy.

Speaker 3 · 30:45

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Speaker 4 · 30:55

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