I hosted a webinar this week for CARMA on how communicators can use AI more effectively. (Watch the replay here.)
The idea was to help everyone think beyond the basic tasks like writing and researching.
I left the audience with the suggestion that they try something hard with AI that they might have been reluctant to attempt or might have believed they didn’t have the ability to do.
I’ll explain more a bit later in this week’s newsletter, but first let’s see what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
Here’s what caught my eye this week:
STOP ASKING WHO TYPED IT, ASK WHO’LL DEFEND IT — For Immediate Release breaks down Anthropic’s new text watermark and argues a better question is whether the writing actually served the reader. On That Solo Life, Karen and Michelle make a related point that the real trust problem isn’t AI-assisted writing, it’s AI images misrepresenting what you’re selling. Disclosure theater is a distraction from accountability either way.
THE SYSTEM IS THE STORY, NOT THE STUNT — At Spin Sucks this week, Gini’s Duolingo diagnostic finds a brand with a brilliant, disciplined shared media engine and almost no owned authority underneath it, which is exactly why AI answer engines undersell it. Alejandro Arango’s soccer piece makes the similar argument that the system wins, not the individual highlight.
AI-REFERRED LEADS — Blair Enns noticed AI-referred leads convert differently because a model vouched for you before the prospect ever engaged with your thinking, so the qualifying still has to happen somewhere. RSW/US’s survey found most agencies are optimizing client sites for AI search while neglecting their own. And their latest video digs into what holds up once AI rewrites your cold email before anyone reads the original.
THE BOTTLENECK IS STILL YOU — Karl Sakas tells us if every emergency routes through you, you’re still the bottleneck no matter how mature the business looks. On the Agency Outsight podcast, guest David Shriner-Cahn traces plateaus to underpricing dressed up as strategy and blind spots only a trusted peer group can surface. Brad Farris writes about a goals problem, borrowing a swim coach’s insistence on judging the performance, not the medal. And David C. Baker says not making enough decisions is far more dangerous than making wrong ones. Firms that last aren’t the ones with the best plan, they’re the ones muddling through one real decision at a time.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Try something hard with AI
What’s something that you think might be too difficult to do? Or would take too much time?
Could AI help you?
We all need to be pushing AI to help us in ways we may not have thought possible. We must be asking it to help us put activities and results within reach that we previously only dreamed about.
In a webinar I conducted this week, I focused on the importance of thinking about AI not as a time saver, but as a value creator.
With that critical mindset shift, you go from using it for the mundane to focusing on the meaningful.
But you won’t get the most from AI unless you are ready to ask it to help you with really challenging tasks.
So spend some time thinking about your “maybe someday” list. Or the ideas you dismissed because you didn’t feel they were achieveable at all.
Maybe it’s writing a book. Or rolling out a new service offering. Or learning a new skill.
Open up your AI assistant of choice and start a real conversation.
Explain your wish or idea along with what has been holding you back. Ask how the AI could help you turn the possibility into a reality.
You can use AI to help refine your idea, come up with a plan, and even start the implementation.
It might get you 90% of the way there, but even if it can’t make that much progress on its own, it can provide real support to make your ambitious goals happen.
But you won’t know if you don’t try — or at least ask.
Remember that the AI won’t judge you, so you can and should be honest about what you want and the obstacles that you see.
Let the AI poke and prod you to change your path.
Then ask for help in building out the plan and assist in implementing the action steps.
Treat your AI tool as a judgement-free thought partner, and ask it for help with something hard.
