Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E57 - Elizabeth Harrin - AI Friday Special: Elizabeth Harrin's Guide to Smart Project Management Automation

As artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize project management, many professionals feel caught between excitement and overwhelm. In this AI Friday finale of their three-part series, Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon explore with Elizabeth Harrin how to harness AI's power without losing the human touch. From security concerns to practical applications, Elizabeth delivers a refreshingly pragmatic approach to integrating AI into your project management toolkit without adding complexity to your already full plate.

Detailed Analysis

The episode begins with a reality check that resonates across industries: despite AI's massive potential, most project managers aren't using it – primarily due to security protocols and corporate restrictions. Elizabeth's survey findings reveal a gap between AI's promises and its practical adoption, setting the stage for a conversation about realistic implementation.

Rather than pushing for revolutionary changes, Elizabeth advocates for evolution. Her advice? Start with AI functionality already embedded in your existing tools. Microsoft Copilot for meeting summaries, automated task suggestions, and workflow automation represent low-hanging fruit that sidesteps security concerns while delivering immediate value.

Roman's observation about the basics strikes a chord – while early adopters race toward advanced AI applications, many professionals haven't even discovered time-saving fundamentals like automated meeting transcriptions. This highlights a crucial insight: successful AI adoption isn't about chasing the latest technology; it's about finding tools that solve real problems without creating new ones.

Elizabeth's vision for AI focuses on eliminating repetitive work to create space for high-value activities like relationship building and strategic thinking. She paints a picture of AI as an assistant that handles data collection and analysis, freeing project managers to focus on what computers can't do – engage with people and build trust.

The conversation takes a practical turn with specific examples. Imagine uploading a year's worth of monthly reports and asking AI to generate an annual summary – transforming hours of manual compilation into minutes of review. Or consider tools like ClickUp generating task lists from project ideas, or Tom's Planner and Nimble surfacing potential actions from historical data.

Elizabeth's forward-looking perspective is particularly intriguing. She envisions AI analyzing historical performance data to predict deadline reliability – "Kevin has hit his deadlines 3% of the time" becomes actionable intelligence for better planning. While the percentage might sting, the insight enables smarter project management.

The episode concludes with a powerful reminder: AI should support your work, not create more of it. For customer success professionals managing multiple projects, this means choosing tools that genuinely reduce cognitive load rather than adding another layer of complexity to master.

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Transcript

Kevin Metzger: 0:05

Customer success.

Roman Trebon: 0:10

Welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast. I'm Roman Reaugh here with my co-host, Kevin Metzker, and today we're wrapping up our insightful three-part series with author Elizabeth Herron. Kev, I know you're excited for AI Friday. You ready to go?

Kevin Metzger: 0:26

Yeah, let's go. Um, over the past two episodes, Elizabeth has shared tips on staying sane while managing projects and aligning stakeholders. Today we explore how AI fits into the equation without making project management impersonal or overwhelming. I. AI tools offer huge promises, automated scheduling, conflict prediction, and reducing repetitive work. But Elizabeth, how can project managers embrace these tools while maintaining the flexibility that a human in that human touch basically,

Elizabeth Harrin: 1:00

I think it's actually really quite challenging at the moment, and one of the surveys. Survey questions that I did for the, my managing multiple projects book asked how project managers are using ai. And most people said they're not because it's too many limits with what you can and can't do within the, the confines of your security protocols at work. So I think it's important for us to. To look at what AI functionality is already in the tools that we have, and think about how you can tap into what you have got access to. So we can at least take advantage of that. So maybe that's Microsoft, uh, copilot for meeting summaries. Maybe, um, there might be some task suggestions that are, that autopopulated when you put your data into to apps. So. It's, it's looking at what you've got access to and then thinking about how you can use it. But it's a, it's a tool, right? It should support your work, not be, not be more work or more draining for you. So I'm personally thinking that we should use it for getting rid of some of the repetitive work, a automating workflows. Automating as much data collection and data analysis as possible so that we can have more time to do the value added stuff, like all the engagement and relationship building that, that the computers aren't that good at.

Roman Trebon: 2:14

And you touched on something Elizabeth, I think, which is, which is key, right? But I think it, obviously when we talk, we talk about AI a lot on this show, Elizabeth, and. And again, there's an amazing tools out there and, and the, and, and the advancement's really incredible. But you know, Kevin, I know Kevin and I have been using like, uh, the, the copilot meeting notes, summaries or chat GPT meeting notes for a while now. So I, you know, I sometimes think everyone's using it because, you know, for me it's such a time saver. But I, I was just with a group of folks who they're, they're not even using it for that yet. Right. And I think they feel overwhelmed with ai. And I'm like, start, start simple. Just, you know, again, have co-pilot running on record a meeting, have the transcript running in the background, right. The amount of time AI can save, just bouncing from project to project and just summarizing the, the key summary of what that meeting, you know, what happened in that meeting. The next steps, even if it gets you 80% of the way there. That is such a time saver in my opinion. Right. But I don't even think a lot of people were even using it for the basic stuff yet. Right.

Elizabeth Harrin: 3:12

I think you're right. Um, I'm certainly not seeing people use it partly because of the security concerns and other worries that people have about uploading their corporate data. And perhaps you don't want your very sensitive client. Secret projects out there in chat GPT when you're not exactly sure what it's gonna be used for. Um, but if you think about, you know, when you're doing like an end of year report for a client or what you've achieved throughout the year, if you could just upload all of the different monthly reports or project board summaries or dashboards that you've created and then say to, to your tool, give me a summary that's. A great time saver than having to try to think through, oh, I can't remember what we did nine months ago. I'm sure it was something good, but you know, going back through all the emails to try and work out what, what happened. So it's definitely something that's, that's growing. We've just gotta find ways to, if we can't use it within the tools that we've already got, lobby for better access to software so that we can really take advantage of the new options that are out there.

Kevin Metzger: 4:11

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's important. And, um, you know, it, just, just a note on chat, GPT, because I know it, it's always got kind of a little bit of a, from a corporate standpoint, a little bit of a bad name, but really they do have. Policies and settings where you can ask it not to train on your data. Um, from a corporate level there, if you are engaging with corporate, you can actually set it up, but even the free version, you can ask it not to train on your data as there is a setting in chat, GPT for that. So they've come a long way from where they initially kinda started with that. Not that I'm encouraging anybody to go against corporate policy and use it. That's not, not the point of the statement, but, um. If you

Roman Trebon: 4:56

do blame Kevin. Kevin said it on the show. We haven't even said, we haven't even recorded. This is fine. Kevin said, drop your customer data in chat. GPT, you won't get in trouble. So it, it's on record.

Elizabeth Harrin: 5:06

But you can use those policies and that, those updates and those settings to talk to clients and say, this is, it's not as bad as you think it is. How can we, you know, we would like to use it. Do we have your permission? And then you can just, yeah. You know, go from there.

Kevin Metzger: 5:19

And it's worth reexamining. Regularly with your corporate compliance as to what, what you should be doing, because these policies, things are changing so fast in the industry. Uh, you want to stay current with what's happening, make sure your policies are updated. I think we actually booked a guest for later in the year, the other day to actually talk about some guidelines for policies around ai. So kind of excited about that as a future. One, one of the things really with, um, with the AI. Project management tools. One of the other things that I think is fascinating and really, uh, uh, uh, a neat, especially if you have authorization to use something like clickup, which can generate tasks based out of ideas where you're like, Hey, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Can you help me generate tasks? That's a fantastic one. Or, you know, Roman was talking about the meeting meetings and generating meeting notes, but there are tools even that go further than just meeting notes that identify all the tasks and who they were assigned to and what the dates were, if they were discussed or suggesting that it's, if they weren't discussed in through these, through these tools. So you can really start. Taking it to the next level. You gotta validate everything that comes out, make sure it's, it's what was agreed on, but you're, you're, you're actually really enabling your project manager to really start facilitating the task accomplishment as opposed to the task of documenting the tasks, which is. Yeah,

Elizabeth Harrin: 6:53

the more you can get away from the admin, Tom's planner does the same or something similar. Nimble work will surface. Um. Potential actions as well from past projects. So there's it. The project management tools are coming on a long way, and the bigger the data set, the more you put into it. Now in six months time, two years time, you'll have loads of information and you'll be able to surface all the lessons learned, all the risks. Um, what I'm looking forward to is things like where we've put estimates in and it will be. You know, I'll be able to say, oh, tell me the likelihood of Kevin hitting his deadlines. Oh, in the last 10 projects, Kevin has hit his deadlines 3% of the time or something, you know, something like that. So we'll know to add an extra padding or to be able to challenge back 3%. That was a, sorry.

Kevin Metzger: 7:40

I was gonna say, man, really?

Roman Trebon: 7:42

I say, how do you know Kevin so well? It's unbelievable. She on the show's amazing. That's alright. No, Elizabeth, this is awesome stuff and really appreciate you joining us all week. So, uh, our audience, you can check out elizabeth@elizabethheron.com, right? That's your website. You can check out all the books you have. Customer centric, project management, project manager, engaging stakeholders on projects. Any other new books coming? Elizabeth, we should be on the lookout for.

Elizabeth Harrin: 8:10

Managing multiple projects. Second edition is out in July. Out

Roman Trebon: 8:14

in July. Awesome. So, uh, check out the website and check out Elizabeth on LinkedIn. You're on LinkedIn as well, so, so check her out on there. Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining us for this three part series. We appreciate you joining us all week, and I know our, our audience will get a lot of value out of this conversation. So thank you.

Elizabeth Harrin: 8:31

Thank you for having me. It's been great.

Roman Trebon: 8:33

To our audience. If you enjoyed this episode, our series of episodes, please subscribe. Rate the show, share it with your friends and colleagues. That helps us grow our audience and help more people manage their customer success strategies. We'll see you next week with more on how you can drive customer success within your organizations. Kevin, great week. Until next time, keep on playing.