Experience Strategy Podcast: Redefining CX in Education with Craig Langlois

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Tune in to this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast, featuring Craig Langlois, Equity of Learning District Data Coordinator for Berkshire Public Schools, to peek at the challenges and opportunities our public school systems face when creating experiences. Alongside guest host Mary Putman we look at how a well crafted experience strategy can make all the difference in bridging the gaps between creativity, innovation, and education.

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now, here are your hosts, experienced nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas.

Aransas: Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast. I'm Aransas Savas, who, if you've ever listened to our show, you've heard my voice before.

That said, we have a surprise in store for you today because our usual co host Dave Norton is off getting hit today. And we have the great joy of bringing in a guest host, Mary Putman. She's the chief consultancy officer of Stone Mantle, the agency that supports and funds the experience strategy podcast.

And she's joining me today to meet with Craig Langlois, the. Equity of Learning District Data Coordinator for Pittsfield Public Schools. Pittsfield, as some of you may know, [00:01:00] is a town in the beautiful Berkshires of Massachusetts. But Craig, welcome and tell us to start off, what does this title mean and entail.

Craig: So it's, it's one of my requirements for any job I take is that it has the complicated esoteric titles behind it, Chief Experience Officers or, or Equity of Learning. If I was to sum it up really quickly. Right. One of the goals here in Pittsfield is to really make sure that we're looking at learning from all angles and making sure that we're meeting the needs of all of our students and the various ways that public schools need to kind of hit those goals.

So when we think about equity, we mirror what's happening in the classroom, what's happening at district level through the lens of data and using all of our various data points, whether that's what we'll refer to as sort of a formative or subliminal assessment, teacher input, student input, student counsel, some all of those things.

And then my goal is to formulate that into something that. Can be shared back to teachers, be shared with students and be shared with the community at large to make sure all those voices are represented and heard. And we're all working towards the [00:02:00] same goal of making sure we're providing the best possible public education for the students here in Pittsfield.

And a little bit of, of sort of modeling that too, right? How do, how do smaller districts take what we're doing here? And what I'll say is a larger district in the, in the region and take what pieces of it they can and implement them in their schools as well. So I spent a lot of time in the weeds, right, with individual schools, but then also kind of focusing on the sort of bigger picture, district, state, and federal level in terms of moving education in the right direction.

Aransas: Craig, that's so exciting and so valuable and important. And you know, while we're introducing ourselves, I think we should have Mary share what it means to be a chief consultancy officer. Oh, well. Demystify the title time here on Experian Strategy Podcast. 

Mary: There's really two parts to it, you know, one part, which is my favorite part is working with clients to solve problems.

Like how do we leverage, and this is Craig, one of the questions I kind of have for you as you came from experience into this new role, but how do you leverage the kind of tools that experienced [00:03:00] strategy strategists use along with data to improve the value and the experience? experiences that customers or employees have.

So we get to, I get to help a wide variety of clients with lots of different problems, which is really fun. And then the other part is to, to lead a great team that does that as well. So that's the other hat that I wear, but I think there's some great tools that experienced strategists use. And Craig, I'm really curious as you moved from your previous work that was about amazing spaces and the experiences that people have in spaces to improving the education system.

Aransas: Yeah. Great. Great launch pad there. So Craig, what, what do you bring with you? You were a former chief experience officer at Berkshire Museum and elsewhere, huge background in museum and nonprofit spaces. What tools are you bringing now into the education system in this role that have then impactful in education?

Craig: Sure. It's, it's, it's a really interesting question. And one, I don't struggle with it in terms of trying to define it succinctly, but I think one of the biggest learning curves [00:04:00] for me was that you can't run a school like a business and you can't run a business like a school, right? Like they both have similarities, but at the same time, the model for how to run a museum effectively doesn't necessarily directly apply to schools, right? They have, they have a different issue altogether. I think if you think about a school as a business, it's kind of a failed model, right? Like, I can't imagine another business model where you spend an entire year training. Let's let's say students is like staff and then you're you send them off.

To be trained again by someone else and then send them off to be trained again, right? Like there's no continuity and sort of a product production there. The flip side thinking about the museum and the nonprofit world is you're trying to attract an audience to come in through the door where those two sort of intersect is really in the world of research and development.

And how at the museum, we really kind of focused on the concept of sort of intellectual property and how we move beyond our four walls. So one of the things that attracted me to moving to the Berkshires to work with the Berkshire Museum is their [00:05:00] approach to what it means to be a museum. And this concept that we can exist out in the community, we can do things that others might say, well, that's not what a museum does, right?

Like a museum needs to be more than just a repository for objects that people come in and look at and occasionally go around and dust them off, right? Like those objects have no power unless they're being interacted with and questions are being asked and we're constantly striving and pushing ourselves to think differently about how we use those objects and we gather people.

Around the stories that those objects tell, we spent a lot of time really sort of developing new systems and models for what it means to be a museum and then sort of outsourcing those, right? Like taking them to the next level. How do we teach others how to do what we're doing? And it's that type of thinking that I am working on sort of instilling here, more so in terms of education.

I think museums and nonprofits, to a certain extent, have the ability to be sort of proactive in their approach. Right. Like you can take a little bit more risk and failure is kind of a built in factor into, into what you're doing. If you kind of model your business correctly, education tends to be a little [00:06:00] bit more reactive where we respond to the stimuli on the outside and the changing demographics or research versus looking for opportunities to kind of lead the way.

So I've been using our, our we'll call them just data points for simplicity to sort of change the mindset and change the thinking, right? Like, how do we start thinking about being more proactive versus How do we start to lead instead of follow in terms of meeting the needs of the students who are sitting, sitting in front of us?

And that's a new mindset and a new skill set for a lot of educators, right? Like if for the last 150 years, we've been, we've been educating in the same, in the same way for, for better, for worse, right? Like attempting to create a stable workforce here in America through, through public education and the nature of what.

It means to be a productive member of society in the next 10 to 15 years is definitely going to change, right? It's, it's looking very different, very fast. So I think it's time for us to sort of invest in a little bit more of that sort of R& D approach to developing new [00:07:00] tools and strategies here in public education.

Aransas: We've interestingly been working with a number of different organizations recently that are focused on bringing experience strategy into the educational system. And so much of it is about Bringing meaning and purpose into that journey and as a parent of two current public education students here in New York City, I get to hear firsthand all the complaints about the education system every night at dinner.

So I feel like I am deep in that research. IRL. 

Craig: I can probably tell you the number one, you know, it's, why are we learning this?

Aransas: Right? There's a ton of why are we learning this? And I actually think my kids are so much smarter about this, right? Like their advocacy is for, why aren't we learning the things we really need to learn?

Why did my kids never take a typing class? Why did they never tell them how to use a keyboard? But they also didn't teach them cursive. I find that baffling, but mostly I think they're, they're complaints to your point or about why are we learning higher mathematics that [00:08:00] one one thousandth of the population will use and not how to balance our finances and how to really, and so economics has been the most popular class yet because it's the most relevant and applicable.

Craig: Relevant. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, yeah. Like if, like, I think that's where it's like public education is right now, right? Like, I tend to think of things in sort of like long product cycle or short product cycle. And I think what happens in the classroom is something I'll refer to as sort of like a short product cycle, right?

Like you have this unit, you have this lesson, and we Teach this lesson. We teach them, let's just say fractions, right. And then they master fractions, but there's no connection to that longer product cycle of like at some point in the future. And I think a lot of that has to come back to sort of educated training and educated teaching.

And the preparatory programs are starting to see that shift a little bit more where the relevancy of skill is, is more tied back to like everyday happenings and a shift and the pedagogical approach where the experience for the students is more of them sort of guiding the conversation and being able to ask, well, like, why do I need to learn this?

[00:09:00] And the teacher not feeling like that, that's an affront to their skill set. It's curiosity. Exactly. It's curiosity. It's not challenge. And teaching teachers to understand that, like you're doing a good job. If they're asking you that question, your job now is to show them that relevancy because the thing we carry on in our pocket, like it has more knowledge than you ever will.

Right. And like, how do we value the ability to sort of call and respond versus asking that deeper question?

Mary: Craig, I'm also really interested in, as you're looking at the data and equity and you know, the kinds of data that's helping you, I think about, so I have two daughters that both went to public school.

They, um, my youngest just graduated from college last. Last week, a couple weeks ago, but I'll never forget my older daughter when she came home from a field trip in ninth grade, they went on a field trip to one of the local hospitals and they got to see a da Vinci machine and work. And she said, I want to go into biomedical engineering.

I said, what is that? I have no clue what that is, but she ended up doing that, but was sparked by that ninth grade field trip. And [00:10:00] so when you talk about the short term product and the longterm product and that mix of what's right in education, I'm really curious, as you think about experiences if there's data that's helping you think about the short term and the long term?

Or what helps you think about the product that eventually leads to people being inspired for what they want to do for life?

Craig: So I think that's where my museum world and my education world kind of like a co existent desire to create that moment in time for students, right? Like one of the biggest thrills I would have.

And sort of the museum field is when they would walk in like a group of students would walk through the door and be like, that's really cool. I never thought of something that way and sort of instilling that as much as I possibly could, even if it meant really kind of thinking outside the box. The problem is.

And I don't know if I have a, I have a really clean answer to yet. It's, it's the same problem for education as, as it was in the nonprofit field is I don't know if it's going to work until it works. Right. So like the data and the research in terms of like, okay, we're going to start thinking about how do we make a connection between what we're [00:11:00] learning in this 15 minute lesson to how this is going to impact your life.

For the next 20 years, that type of thinking requires a repetitory nature of it happening over and over and over again, beyond that moment of like inspiration, like your daughter going to the hospital and experiencing the Da Vinci machine and being like, I want to, I want to be a. Biomedical technician, I think those are the, that was the terminology used or engineer, right?

And having that moment of inspiration, but then it, then it's the follow up, right? Like, I think the real job of educators is to recognize that in your daughter and be like, okay, I now have a hook, right? Like, I now have a way that I can communicate and build trust between what I have to teach them and what they need to be successful.

Like, going on further. So it was kind of the same in the museum world where like, I would pitch a crazy idea and they'd be like, well, how do you know what's going to work? I'm like, well, I don't know what's going to work until 700 people come through the door. Right. Or like, I don't know if it's going to work until we get our 30 mobile museum units kind of out in the community.

And they're, they're interacting with those. I think it's more of sort of a web, [00:12:00] right. Of, of data, right. There's no one data point that I can point to to say, like, I know that if I do this with this student, right, I will have this long term effect and I will get them on this right path. More that I can pull from these various data points and then build a pretty cohesive narrative.

So what works for Johnny Smith might not work for Johnny Apple, right? Like it's like they, they're not synchronous, they're, they're more asynchronous, but it's more of the mindset of knowing like what to look for and like what those small key indicators are. Right. Like, are we seeing an increase in attendance?

Are we seeing an increase in engagement? Are we seeing an increase in their formative and summative testing? And like, How do you then build a narrative with those educators and the principal to understand that those things are happening? Like a real quick cheat that I've started to play with is a lot of times when you walk into a classroom, there'll be a teacher will put up, here are learning objectives for the day.

There's no connection in those learning objectives. What I, what I've started to think about [00:13:00] and start to ask teachers to sort of implement is like, okay, make that larger long cycle connection. for them. We are learning this because it's going to get you this or it's going to teach you this. And like when you're an adult or when you're in high school, when you're in college, like this is not even like a knowledge base you need, but it's a skill.

I think that's the other part of it. It's like you need to understand the skill. And a lot of that is like thinking critically and being able to just not just take information regurgitate it back out, but apply your own kind of spin to it. And I think a lot of that gray zone between what I'll call like a short cycle lesson and sort of a long cycle approach is, is building that simple tools like like that right now. That's kind of what I've been playing with.

Aransas: Very cool. What would you say is your primary experience goal in this system? It's a new role for you. Presumably you've spent some time getting to know the system and understand what's working and what isn't, but what has emerged as the most important objective?

Craig: So I think right now it is [00:14:00] district wide clarity on The goal of public education, right? So lots of districts have this issue, right? You have, let's say here in Pittsfield, we have, we have 14 different programs. We have 12 different schools and two alternative programs running a system like New York city, right?

You have, I'm not even going to try to count the number of schools and the system and each one of those physical plants has its own culture. Right. And that culture is set by years of experience. It's set by the principal, it's set by the staff that work there. And I'm a huge believer in the concept of, of culture, each strategy, right?

Like as a district, we can put out whatever strategy we want to improve student performance or, or teacher performance, however, but if it doesn't match the culture of those individual schools, it's dead in the water before it even starts. So I think what I've been focusing on is there'll be a directive.

And a goal set by the district, whether that's coming from school committee or the superintendent or my supervisor, and then thinking about how do I use data and engagement strategies [00:15:00] to make that relevant to each one of those 14 different programs? And how do I communicate that effectively with the principal?

How do I communicate that effectively with their staff so that they understand this? This is what the language says in the goal. This is how you're going to accomplish that goal, given your culture and given your, your challenges. So that's, that's a lot of what my, my work has been as of late and hopefully in time, those goals are initiated quicker, right?

Like we're, we're able to move the needle faster because we're able to operate within each one of those cultures successfully.

Aransas: And since I have the great gift of having Mary on this conversation with us, I'm curious, Mary, as somebody who leads project work with such a diverse group of clients, when you hear goal, Similar to this one or objective similar to this one.

What are some of the most important follow up questions you asked to do deep discovery in the product life cycle? Well, project life. 

Mary: First of all, Craig, I mean, I love that you're thinking about culture [00:16:00] because if you've got to understand where people at today and how does this feel valuable to them, what would make it really feel like time well spent and you talked about different.

The engagement strategies, and so thinking about what kind of, what do they know, what do they believe, and then trying to, what do they think will make the most impact and testing those things. So those are all things, Craig, that I hear you talking about. I wonder as well if there are different, and I think, you know, Johnny Smith and Johnny Apple are going to have different things that spark them different.

Jobs that they're wanting to get done where they may want to have. And so how do you think about some of the different types of people that are in the school? And how do you think about that? Because even if it's with the culture, then how are you really thinking about the different audiences and the different jobs that they have?

And what sparked and meaningful for them because so much of the success, as you know, comes from ensuring that the communication is something that people feel is relevant and meaningful to them.

Craig: That's a, that's a great question. And I'm trying not to go [00:17:00] global. like really sort of like 30, 000 foot, but I'm probably going to do it anyway, because I really struggle with the goal of education in general, being you're 17 years old and you're supposed to know what you want to do for the rest of your life, right?

Like, I, I really struggle with it. I don't know what the answer is.

Aransas: Maybe we're  biased because we didn't know until we were in our 30s. 

Craig: Right. I'm the same, right? Like I started in medicine, right? Ended up getting a degree in ceramics and then I worked at museums and now I'm back in public education. Um, like I think we need to reinforce the message that that's okay.

Right? Like, and I think, I think to answer your question, that would be my answer is that your life path is going to go all these different ways. The goal of education is to give you the skills to navigate that life path that like you can find points of inspiration. In various points and like explore that and that's okay, right?

Like you don't have to be locked into one thing for your entire life. Now, there are people like my brother who like from the age of five knew he wanted to be a veterinarian and like he's a [00:18:00] vet and he's happy and like the linear system of education totally worked for him. And there are people like me who started in one thing and went to something else and something else and something else.

But those experiences and skills all have a relationship to creativity and innovation and sort of like pushing things. I'm like my education gave me the training to understand how to put. those things together and like, look at the world through a different lens and understand the relationship to how that other people might look at the same thing that I'm looking at and how to communicate effectively around whether it's an object or a school goal or something along those lines.

And I think that's where we need to kind of start taking education more. And that's a very scary thing. You think about a lot of the educators that I had, right. They were. Extremely based in, or I'm sure you all as well, like knowledge base, right? Like that factual knowledge was what was really important.

And it's not that it's not, it's just, we need to take it to the next level, right? Like, and reinforce that.  

Mary: Well, and Craig, I think that's even more important now because. AI is going to do so many of the mundane, rote things that people do [00:19:00] today. And so people's lives, I mean, we've seen a lot of change happen in our lives.

Our kids are going to see even more change happen in their lives. And the value of memorization is not the same as it was with all the tools that are there. I mean, they're having a lot of conversations in medical schools about how should medicine really be taught. So if they're having the conversations there, those conversations are valid in all types of education.

What makes for success. and what's the right model. So you're in a very exciting time to be looking at how do we think about the jobs to be done for education and delivering more value for students and parents in the community because we're thinking about education differently.

Craig: Yeah, I think AI is a fascinating tool.

Right. And we have started to dabble more in it than public education. One, I think the learning curve for individuals who didn't grow up with it is, is higher than let's say, digital natives who understand it can manipulate that tool faster, but it's still very much for lack of a better terminology, sort of garbage in garbage out, right?

Like if you're asking AI to do very simple tasks [00:20:00] for you. Like you're not fully utilizing that tool and what it's, what it's capable of. And this is, this is my learning curve with AI and getting it to really go deeper and make things that would take me a long time to do a lot easier. But I have to know how to manipulate that tool.

Right. Like I have to know how to unlock its creativity and its innovation so that it's not necessarily a control thing, but like I am utilizing that tool to the supposed extent and not just asking it to write me five page paper on why Napoleon was not successful in his, you know, European conquest, like longterm, like that is not education hasn't caught up to what that tool could actually mean for.

For education, I have a slight tangential question, right? As AI has become more prevalent, one of the things that I find myself thinking about is, do I need to start being nicer to my AI friends, right? Like, do I need to start saying, please? And thank you. Do I need to start saying thank you to Alexa? One, because it remembers all those things.

And if like AI does go rogue, like, do I want to be on the good side of AI and to training or not training, but [00:21:00] teaching. Like my son, like he's going to grow up in a world where he's not going to know if he's talking to a machine or if he's talking to a person, right? Like if he's interacting through some sort of digital portal and like, do we need to start training, like teaching those skills and reinforcing those skills so that like, they don't know if it's just an AI bot or if there actually is a person like behind there.

And how do you, how do you interact successfully? Not knowing when that line is blurred, right? Like, should we be teaching manners to our. Students when they use an AI tool. I think the answer is yes, right? Like I, I just, yeah. 

Aransas: Well, and it even models niceties. So in its, uh, suggested prompts, it includes, please, and thank you.

And to your point, I think that's been the most fascinating thing about our collective acculturation to chat GPT. specifically, is the nature of pomp sharing and how much of the work that has been shared is not about what is ChattGPT giving back, but how do we give to it in order to get what we want.

And that is [00:22:00] so interesting and so unique to this moment in our lives. So I want to. Turn the conversation slightly because you are in a unique role in a unique field and category that doesn't frankly get the experience strategy investment that many other categories get. Budgets for experience strategy and education are vastly different than those for financial institutions or health care.

So I'm curious, what questions you have for Mary? Maybe something you've been struggling with that you feel like, oh, other categories that have a lot more money to research this and understand this probably have some answers that we're not getting in education.

Mary: Well, first I wanted to go to the, you know, should we, It'd be nice for AI.

And I think that, you know, absolutely yes. And not because, not for the AI, because the AI can't feel, right? I mean, we want, we humanize everything and we, we believe it can feel and its reaction to us can help [00:23:00] us have better days. It's just data.

Aransas: Which, let's be honest, our feelings are the result of data as well.

It is collected inputs. So it's not that different in truth.

Craig: So can we, can we stop there for a second though? Have you guys ever looked into like epigenetics, right? Have you, have you like, yeah, like that is like super fat. You can talk about like data inputs. It's very terrifying and fascinating, right?

Like how the gene expression of our parents affects our inputs and how if we, if we think of data in a new way, right? Like you have to kind of factor that in as well. Like we have these inputs and how you experience something and how I experienced something are going to be completely different based on our genetic expression.

Mary: Yeah. No, but I just could say. I do think over half our, half of our interactions are going to be with AI. And if we're mean there, it's hard not to be mean in other places. So it's, I think it helps us as humans to be kind to AI, to help ourselves. So Craig, are there particular, and I know we talked about this a little bit, but I am really curious if there are, if there are [00:24:00] particular ways of thinking outside of the R and D that you've have.

Brought from your experience, strategy, perhaps your CX expertise, because a lot of schools don't have that, right? They just don't have that kind of expertise that is helping the schools think differently as you're trying to change some of the culture and mindset. 

Craig: Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a good question.

I think another one is sort of team development and what members of a team you want to kind of have sitting around the table. So when in the museum field, we, we try to look a little bit more. Holistically, right? So if we're developing a new product or developing a new experience, it's like, what does that mean for, let's say the facilities team, right?

Like, what does that mean for the, the object installers? What does it mean for the educators? What does it mean for the people working at the front desk? And really kind of thinking about it from all those various angles. And then even test group, right? Like we'll bring in community members or museum members and then kind of think about what did they bring to the table?

I think in education, that doesn't happen as frequently as it should. Okay. If we're, if we're thinking about [00:25:00] classroom management and classroom design, right? There are a ton of companies out there that'll tell us this is the best way to set up your classroom, or This is what you wanna do for small group instruction.

However, does it really bring in those other factors like, well, that's great, but like we have to clean this space every day after school. Like, that's not gonna work. Or, this doesn't allow for flexibility in terms of like the number of students who are, are moving in and outta the space. And that knowledge base is, is sort of locked in with the people who are working.

In the school on a day to day basis. So trying to get more collective buy in in terms of the decisions that are being made, right. And it kind of ties back to that, that culture piece when people feel that they're connected in that way, it sort of definitely helps ease those gaps in terms of change, but that actually, like it, it's like the question.

So I guess like if I was to flip it back, like. Mary, in your world, like what, what are some of the cutting edge approaches to sort of team development or things that you've seen in other fields that maybe have more resources than public education, the medical field, like how are they thinking about team development or, or, and then interdepartmental [00:26:00] communication strategies?

Mary: And I'm positive for a moment on that, Craig, just because, you know, there, there's diverse sets of clients and how do they, so I'm trying to think about, and, and the leaning it, because often some of it is. It's more tried and true that helps from the communication perspective when you look at the ability to disseminate data better.

That's always an issue, right?

Aransas: You've got things get locked in PowerPoint slides and you can't find it when you need it.

Mary: And so using internets as a way of kind of being able to disseminate and find information teams has added a lot. And how do you think about team channels and the communication through teams, which, you know, or, or slack.

So it's, I don't know that it's. Cutting cutting edge, but those kinds of things to get to instant communication, ask questions, find things. There are some, you know, knowledge sharing tools that some organizations are using that allow you to get to that exact kind of video clip or that exact insight. So there are some, there are some [00:27:00] knowledge sharing tools.

That the companies are using to help ensure that they're sharing things out. We've looked at how do you just do journey maps differently, right? If you're trying to improve things, how does the journey map become a tool of alignment, but including things in it that are different than just the, here are the phases and here are the steps of the phases and here are the emotions that people might be feeling, but what makes it meaningful, what makes it feel genius?

What are the key types of data that help to know there? So it's going a little deeper on the journey map that that's a place. that can, can truly help align and, and help people see things differently. And thinking differently, sometimes groups are using personas and just thinking differently about personas that it's not a person, that it's really about a group of people who are trying to achieve that.

And here's the needs and showing the diversity of the people, which I think is particularly important in equity because that can be a real challenge if you say, Hey, our young affluence. are, you see a white woman or a white man as a young affluent showing that diversity of young [00:28:00] affluents because there's certainly a great diversity there as well.

So I think those are some of the kind of cutting edge tools that can be used. 

Aransas: Well, the other thing I think is that we, we really hit the nail on the head when we were talking about the education system, which is that we have lost touch with the true motivators and drivers of meaning. For many of our audiences, and this is what we're seeing with many of our biggest clients is that ultimately people weren't listening to their communications and weren't acculturating to strategies because they didn't care.

It wasn't well aligned with their true why. And so what we're saying with. so many of those companies is they're coming back to, okay, in this newly dispersed work environment with an infinitely more diverse workforce than we've ever had, thankfully, how do we really understand what people care about? How do we align our messages and our missions with what matters instead of just assuming that.

There's a [00:29:00] one size fits all answer to that. So we're taking more of a meaningful motivation model instead of a one size fits all. Absolutely. 

Craig: Mary, can I, I want to ask a follow up question. And I was just thinking of your conversation around sort of intranets and how information is disseminated faster through Slack and Teams and those types of areas.

And I secretly have this goal that I never want to answer another email again, right? I'm sure I'm not alone in that. The nonprofit world and education are very email heavy, right? Like, I think. The museum level, we use a lot more of those tools than we are in public education at this moment. And like thinking of AI, right?

Like, how have you seen companies sort of embrace AI to reduce the email burden, right? From a sorting tool to responses to, I once read this article about the guys who run the life is good company 10, 15 years ago. And I thought it was brilliant that at that point they were using physical assistance, but they didn't have email.

Anything that was important was disseminated to them through. their [00:30:00] assistance. And then they would respond when they felt it was worthy. Like they just focus more on that sort of creative endeavor part of the business because that's what they valued. Have you, have you seen AI play that role in terms of like making that workflow less cumbersome?

Mary: I think for the, I think it's coming. Absolutely. I think it's coming. I don't know that it's doing it a ton today outside of a lot of the larger corporations really leverage Microsoft and for the security piece of it. And so the filters that are in place that Microsoft uses to say this is primary and this is not making the focus part that that's AI and it's filtering out a lot of emails and a lot of people never look at what doesn't hit their primary email.

And so there's There's a ton of emails that companies may feel are getting delivered to organizations that never get delivered because AI does filter it out. But I don't think there's necessarily tools that are being leveraged outside of that yet, but I do think that's absolutely coming.

Aransas: So many opportunities to keep understanding that potential, as you said.

And, and I think there [00:31:00] are some tools out there that. I've seen some clients using, but nothing that is really leading the market yet. This is so interesting. And for us, it's always so exciting to look at these questions across categories. And so for our listeners, whether you are part of the education system or you work in healthcare or banking, our hope is that you see the interconnection correctness of these different categories because the truth is Craig and his team are raising the customers of tomorrow, and they will ultimately be who we are all trying to serve and deliver the jobs to be done for. And understanding those. customer mindsets, as well as the folks who are providing that service, that education, I think is an invaluable insight really for all of us across all categories.

So Craig, thank you for taking time out of your important work to be here. Mary, awesome job co hosting. You're a pro. Uh, for all of you listening, join us over at [00:32:00] stonemantle.co where you'll find more articles, blogs, resources for all of the ideas and frameworks that were discussed. Today shared freely and widely aligned with our mission to help raise the tide of experience strategy for all companies across all categories underlying this deep belief that we all rise higher together.

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