AI & Work
AI Chatbot Checkbox
An AI chatbot can become a purchasing checkbox rather than a differentiator. Sean discusses the distinction between a common feature and a distinctive customer capability.
TranscriptEVERGENCES / IDEAS IN MOTION
Videos
Short videos from Sean Everett on AI, customer discovery, product design and growth. Watch a clip, explore its ideas and read the transcript.
47 videos
AI & Work
Tools Change, Outcomes Remain
A house-building analogy separates changing tools from the outcome a customer still needs. AI is considered as a tool for delivering that outcome.
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Product & Design
Give Customers a Superpower
What useful new capability could make a customer’s life faster, better, easier or cheaper? Sean asks how a product could create meaningful customer value.
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Growth & Value
Pay for Outcomes
A service buyer may value closed-won customers over leads at the top of a funnel. Sean distinguishes an outcome from an intermediate activity.
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Customer Discovery
Discovery Is Not a Pitch
Customer discovery is a listening exercise. Start with understanding rather than selling.
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Product & Design
Let the Technology Disappear
Technology should support the human experience. Adding a feature is only useful when the experience gets better.
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Product & Design
What Can Only You Build Together
A useful partnership question: what can we create together that neither of us could create alone?
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AI & Work
Choose Execute Review
Choose the task, check that the tool can do it, then review the result. Execution is only part of the workflow.
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Growth & Value
Purpose Meets Customer Value
Start with work that matters to you, then ask what value someone else would pay for.
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AI & Work
Learn Where the Potholes Are
Trying, failing and learning can improve the next attempt. Experience matters when tools change quickly.
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Customer Discovery
Follow the Thread
Ask about a real problem. Listen to the answer. Then follow the thread with a useful question.
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Customer Discovery
How Are Decisions Made
How are decisions made? Who decides, how long does it take, and what evidence matters?
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Growth & Value
Can You Do It Again
The test of a capability: can you deliver it again, consistently, over time?
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AI & Work
Internal and Customer Facing AI
Separate internal workflow improvements from the experience your customer sees. Both deserve a deliberate decision.
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Growth & Value
Your Combination of Skills
Individual skills can look ordinary. The useful combination you build over time can be much more distinctive.
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AI & Work
AI as a Creative Partner
There are only so many hours in a day. Think about the help that would actually support what you are trying to create.
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Product & Design
Imagine the Useful Thing
A design exercise: put the constraints aside briefly and imagine one useful thing that would make daily life easier.
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Product & Design
Different Layers Different Speeds
A house is a useful way to picture pace layers: the frame, the walls, the furniture and daily life change on different schedules.
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Product & Design
Values Include Consequences
Building something helpful also means thinking about its second- and third-order consequences.
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Customer Discovery
Separate Opinion and Evidence
Separate the opinion from its underlying principles and evidence. Ask what another person could independently check.
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Growth & Value
Grow the Pie
An ecosystem can create value beyond a fight over the same customer. What could grow the pie?
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AI & Work
Put the Decision in the Middle
Put the decision in the middle. Test the idea together rather than treating disagreement as a personal attack.
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Customer Discovery
Ask Why They Choose
Ask what customers keep choosing, then ask why. The reasoning behind a preference can be more useful than the preference alone.
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Product & Design
Ideas You Can Move
A design thought experiment: what if ideas and AI architectures could be manipulated like physical objects?
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Growth & Value
The Work Between Wanting and Getting
An outcome often depends on more than one tool: people, communication, purchases and coordination. Where can you reduce that work?
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Product & Design
Some Layers Should Change Slowly
Before rebuilding a system, distinguish its durable structure from its faster-changing layers.
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AI & Work
Tools Are Not the Mission
AI, robotics and other technologies are tools. Which mission are they serving?
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Growth & Value
Fascination Sustains the Work
If you will work on a problem for years, what keeps you drawn to it? Start with a fascination that can sustain the work.
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Product & Design
Escape the Feature Copying Loop
Once baseline requirements are met, avoid an endless feature-copying loop. What is the larger strategic choice?
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AI & Work
The Decisions Your AI Inherits
When decision principles are encoded into software, their effects reach customers. Be deliberate about what you encode.
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AI & Work
Map the Use Case Before the Code
An AI use case needs more than code: define the behaviour you want, then check the result.
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Customer Discovery
Ask for the Reasoning
Ask which principles support a claim, then ask for the evidence.
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Growth & Value
Growth Needs More Than Maintenance
Keeping the business running and improving it are different jobs. Growth asks for investment in product, service and customer experience.
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Customer Discovery
Questions That Reveal the Choice
Try asking how two options feel different, why someone would choose one, and what feels expensive. Listen to the answer.
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Growth & Value
Learning Speed Changes the Gap
A learning advantage depends on the pace of improvement, not just where you started. What helps your team learn faster?
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Product & Design
Find Your Own Taste
A quiet starting point for taste: remove the noise and ask what genuinely draws your attention.
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Product & Design
Build From Lived Experience
Your experiences, interactions and ways of seeing the world can become material for new products and services.
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Growth & Value
Strategy Is a Set of Choices
Sean describes strategy through decisions about the market, team, brand, product, service and resources.
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Product & Design
The Product Serves the Outcome
Describe the outcome your customer needs, then work back to the product that helps deliver it. Make the market message match what you can actually do.
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AI & Work
A Wishlist for a Helpful AI Guide
A hypothetical wishlist for an AI guide that could research, remember and help with everyday tasks; not a claim about an available product.
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Product & Design
Follow an Idea to Its Source
Look beyond the visible influencer or big brand: ask where the idea came from, then follow the chain back. What source would you study more closely?
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Customer Discovery
What Customer Interviews Uncover
Listen for the values, decision patterns and purchase criteria beneath the answer. What would change your next product decision?
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Growth & Value
Give Your Strategy Deck a Point
Charts need a through line: what customer frustration or value does the strategy address? Make the point clear.
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Product & Design
Design a Different System
New capabilities can start with a structural problem in the existing system. What would you change for customers and partners?
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AI & Work
Human Connection When Creation Gets Easy
Sean considers how human connection and shared values might matter as creating products becomes easier.
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Product & Design
Product Is More Than a Process
Sean argues that product work goes beyond delivery processes and passing along customer feedback, while explaining what he thinks a product discussion should address.
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AI Strategy
Budget for New Capabilities
Sean contrasts investing in new capabilities through discovery and creative thinking with automating the tasks already in a day-to-day workflow.
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