The synthesizing mind. How to hire and nurture talent in the era of AI.

AJ Josephson
Ex-Head of People @ Miro, Advising scale-ups on learning, engagement & performance

大发体育在线首页在增加劳动力、释放未开发的生产力和创新方面具有巨大潜力. But only if we have the right talent to question, understand, and embrace this technology. To do this, we need to hire and train people to have ‘synthesizing minds’.

I’m AJ Josephson我曾帮助包括Miro和Salesforce在内的公司在剧烈变革时期扩大规模. And I’ve found that understanding our synthesizing mind (SM) might be the red thread to guide us through this global upheaval.

The AI age needs synthesizing minds

The game has changed

AI is transforming the People Playbook in real time. As the cost of knowledge access drops radically在美国，大发体育在线首页增强的劳动力将把他们的技能从知识保留转向知识应用. 员工将从可重复的产出转向识别新问题，并提出解决这些挑战的跨领域想法. The cost of prototyping and experimentation will drop. Creating something entirely new becomes cheaper and easier.

How do we prepare our employees for this shift? Enter: the synthesizing mind.

Win by a mile

具有综合思维的人“有能力吸收大量信息”, reflect on it, 然后以一种对你有用的方式组织它，也证明对别人有用.” It’s a term coined by Harvard professor Prof. Howard Gardner. And it’s changed the way we can think about intelligence.

In other words, SM is all about taking diverse knowledge and creating new ideas, contrasts, and questions—generating something new and helpful for your world.

The process of synthesizing can be seen in three phases. When presented with a challenge, synthesizers are likely to:

1. Source knowledge from diverse disciplines and perspectives
2. Analyze contrasts and connections to create a new solution
3. Articulate this new perspective accurately and effectively

SM水平较高的人准备好在大发体育在线首页增强的环境中茁壮成长. They cherish the thrill of extracting knowledge, applying ideas across disciplines, and sharing their new ideas and learnings with their peers. They become engines for innovation. In the age of AI, where more repetitive tasks are open to automation, the SM skillset is a critical business advantage.

The AI advantage

AI has the potential to make organizations radically more productive and innovative. But only if employees know how to use the tools effectively and wisely. This is why employees with high SM are so valuable; they have the skills to both exploit and question the technology.

Mitigating AI-generated risk

One of the biggest risks for early AI-adopters come from AI hallucinations. 生成式大发体育在线首页的工作原理是对一个主题的数千个答案进行“模糊快照”, and packages them into a clear and confident-sounding answer. GPT-4的进展已经解决了一些问题，但幻觉仍然很常见. This is where skilled synthesizers can catch and work around these problematic outputs.

AI hallucinations are especially risky for legal teams. Take the example of crossing markets. 生成式大发体育在线首页可以创建基本的合同，但它们需要公平和合法. Failure to comply with regional legislation is an expensive risk.

A person with high levels of SM might take AI-generated contracts, review them, and quickly check for accuracy, understand where a junior needs to confirm or amend details, and where deeper research is needed. They’ll improve upon the content, organizing the information carefully for their colleagues, and ultimately de-risk the final output.

Take the example of product innovation. 一个熟练的合成器有能力使用大发体育在线首页工具从更广泛的来源进行研究, consolidate product scoping, screen ideas, and evolve concepts faster. 但它们的建立也是为了加速存在于设计核心的人际关系. 能够从不同的角度和学科中汲取灵感，会激发发现的活力, idea generation, and testing phases with diverse customers and colleagues across departments.

Uncovering the talent within

看着熟练的合成器从信息中提取金块，感觉就像变魔术一样. But assessing, interpreting, 应用跨领域的复杂信息来发现新的见解是一种无限可学习的技能.

If you work in a scaleup, chances are you have plenty of synthesizing minds already in your organization. 识别这些人并授权他们指导其他人的SM技能从未如此重要. 在大发体育在线首页时代，高SM员工是您竞争优势的关键组成部分. Here are three steps to help.

1. Find your synthesizing superheros

You’re looking for the t-shaped problem-solvers. 能够自如地组合和分析各种数据和信息的人, regardless of their domain expertise. 产品和客户体验团队可能有SM技能，但不是唯一的. To shortcut the search, start by asking all team leaders for a list. 然后邀请几个人进行15分钟的聊天，了解更多让他们兴奋的原因. You want these employees to become your ambassadors.

2. Decentralize synthesizing training

Once you’ve identified your high SM employees, empower them to pass on their skills informally and formally. Ask them to host a Lunch and Learn; help them create a course. Here, a platform like Sana is powerful because you don’t need to be an L&D expert to produce an effective workshop or course. The editor is intuitive and the AI assistant supports with writing, editing, even generating relevant interactive polls and quizzes. Whatever approach you take, make sure the C-Suite is behind you. 他们需要支持这一倡议，并庆祝高SM员工传播他们的知识.

3. Unlock company knowledge

SMs are at their best when analyzing information. But, most organizations are struggling to harness their knowledge. From Google to Notion, Slack to Teams, insights and ideas are being lost. The result? Slowing your SMs down and hindering their productivity.

Sana AI solves this by integrating with all your companies apps, 使员工能够准确地找到他们需要的东西，并更快地获得更相关的见解. Think ChatGPT for all your company’s knowledge. Make sure your employees aren’t some of the 46% 谁在未经雇主同意的情况下使用大发体育在线首页，并在其中粘贴专有信息 risking data leaks.

Hiring AI-enabled A players

如果你在你的组织中培养SM，你也应该招聘这样的人. 根据我的经验，有三个关键的行为是你应该面试的. And when you assess these behaviors within a standardized process, you increase your chances of success.

Testing for SM behaviors

Structured interviews with evidence-based assessments are the gold standard of hiring. But in the rush of startup life, the work of making time to write questions, understand the answers needed, and briefing the interview panel can feel like wasted time.

评估这些行为的最好方法之一是通过一个假设的工作挑战或案例. Imagine you're trying to hire a new department lead. To test for SM, you could give all candidates the following challenge:

在以结构化的方式评估他们之前，你会给候选人大约20分钟的时间来准备这个挑战.

Identifying the 3 SM behaviors

寻找优秀SM员工的面试小组应该寻找表现出以下行为的候选人. They’re key to Gardner’s thesis:

Asking motivated questions“综合主要取决于所问问题的质量和被问问题的原因."

Building analogies across contexts: "Seeing parallels, drawing connections, noting contrasts, making comparisons in a relatively discipline-free or pre disciplinary way."

Engaging with criticism: "Go deeper, provide more details, handle challenges, 意识到什么时候批评是有效的，而不是无关紧要或基于根本的误解."

Scoring the 3 SM behaviors

To make it easier to uncover synthesizing minds, I’ve created a rubric. 该标题包含一个可定制的挑战场景，并映射出这三种行为在不同技能水平下的表现.

Get the rubric

Below the bar: Does not ask sufficient basic scoping questions, 无法识别看似不相关的事物之间的相似或对比, and, when the panel challenges their answers, the candidate doesn’t go deeper or provide more details.

At the bar: Asks sufficient basic scoping questions for the task, makes comparisons, noting similarities and contrasts, and, when the panel challenges their answers, the candidate goes deeper, provides more details, handling challenges effectively.

Above the bar: In addition to the behaviors ‘at the bar’, 应试者提出的问题表现出对解决方案的早期思考和对假设的检验. They adapt concepts or insights from one context to another, showing awareness of differences and similarities. Finally, SM水平高的候选人能识别批评是否有效，而不是无关紧要或基于根本的误解, and are able to articulate why a criticism is valid or not.

With a standardized process across all interviewers, 这样你就有更多的机会雇佣到最优秀的员工来推动你的公司向前发展.

Synthesizing for good

In the middle of the 20th Century, 我们开始了从工业社会到以信息技术为中心的经济的集体转变. 几十年来，随着技术的发展，工作性质和公司结构发生了彻底的变化. We are in the early hours of a similar shift, but one that will occur at the speed of the information age we are now closing.

正如信息技术扫除了某些工作，并赋予了其他人更多的权力, so will this AI age. 利用它的个人和组织将被赋予更多的权力, bigger, and—I hope—better than our forebears. 利用这种变革性技术不仅是为了创新和效率, but also for the greater good, would be a truly worthwhile synthesis.

Next up:

The L&D leader’s guide to AI in the digital workplace

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