Why Your Team's Brain Fights AI Change, with Melina Palmer

How this transcript was made

Transcribed by machine from the published audio, then corrected by hand. It is not a verbatim record: the changes below were made, and are counted.

This episode

61 speaker turns, 103 changes.

• opening voiceover attributed to Max but left as transcribed - the approved script text was revised in 2026-08 and never re-rendered, so the document no longer describes this audio and the transcript is the better record
• closing CTA identified as CTA 3 - Resources (match 100%), replaced with the authored script and attributed to Max
• diarisation crosses the two speakers in the opening minute; the words are right, some attributions in the first minute are not

What was changed in these transcripts, and what was not

Generated: 2026-09-20 from 2026-09-20-named/, itself transcribed from the audio that is live on the feed. Every change below is mechanical and counted. No sentence was reworded, no claim altered, nothing removed for being awkward.

The editorial decision

Owner's choice, 2026-09-20: light clean. "Um", "uh" and stammered word repeats ("and, and") are removed, because nobody intends to say them. "You know", "I mean", "kind of" and "sort of" are KEPT - they run to roughly 2,300 instances across the catalogue and stripping them would make the page read as somebody else.

Counts across the whole set

Change	Count
stammered repeat removed	667
um / uh removed	654
space before punctuation	241
split contraction	132
guest turn named (Joe Casabona)	101
organization -> organisation	71
diarisation fragment returned to the host	62
ai -> AI	57
empty turn dropped (was filler only)	36
synthetic outro restored from script	21
organizations -> organisations	18
hyphen followed by space	14
realize -> realise	14
A.I. -> AI	10
recognized -> recognised	9
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behavior -> behaviour	8
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analyze -> analyse	7
behavioral -> behavioural	7
recognize -> recognise	6
percent -> %	5
personalized -> personalised	5
skeptical -> sceptical	5
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optimization -> optimisation	4
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customized -> customised	3
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honor -> honour	2
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What was deliberately left alone

• "Program". A computer program keeps that spelling in UK English; only a broadcast or a scheme is a "programme", and only a reader can tell which was meant.
• "License" and "practice". Both have a noun/verb spelling split in UK English that a rule cannot decide.
• Capitalised words mid-sentence that would otherwise have been respelled: 4 of them, most often part of a name. Left as spoken.
• Retired show and brand names. Spoken by the host and guests. A transcript that removes what was said is not a transcript.
• "Co-pilot". Sometimes Microsoft's product, sometimes the metaphor. A rule would corrupt the honest ones.

The synthetic segments

The opening voiceover on the archive episodes and the closing call to action are read by Max, the show's AI narrator, from a script written in advance. Transcribing them means guessing at words already on file, and the guesses were wrong in places - one opener came back as "an AI that boned him up" where the script says "phoned him up". Those passages carry the authored text instead, and are attributed to Max rather than to the guest: the diariser groups Max with the non-host speaker, which would otherwise put a real person's name on words they never said.

MaxYou're listening to "Something About AI." Melina Palmer's most useful idea here is that most rollouts fail at the moment somebody tells the team not of the technology.

She has a test for that, involving burnt popcorn, and she suggests taking AI practice out of people's job descriptions entirely, and turning it into a competition with a trophy or a day off.

Near the end, Alastair mentions a book he was finishing. That book was published as "Use AI , Stay Human." Here's the conversation.

Alastair McDermottBoyies secretly resisting AI adoption. So, we're going to discover how understanding the quirks of psychology can transform the approach to integrating AI in your business.

That's why I'm going to talk today with a behavioural economist, Melina Palmer. And Melina, you're very welcome

Melina PalmerTo the show. Melina Palmer: Oh, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Alastair McDermottSo, and I can see all of your books behind you on the book shelf. You've written three books about behavioural economics

Melina PalmerRight?

Alastair McDermottMelina Palmer: Yes, I have. Melina Palmer: Well, I'm really interested to chat about how that applies to AI and how teams are integrating or implementing AI.

Because what we talked about before was, we're seeing that a lot of people are kind of resisting it. And I'd like to just dig into that and understand that a bit more.

Can you tell me how you think about that?

Melina PalmerSure. Well, just first a little bit about the brain and how it works, because that is the core of where behavioural economics comes from.

So our brains are actually kind of working in two systems all the time. I just refer to them as conscious and subconscious because that's easiest for people.

And what research shows is that we humans make up to 35,000 decisions each every single day.

So our brains are constantly going through all of these choices, but it can't be done on a conscious level, right? So we hear that number.

And then if I say, you know, how many decisions do you remember making yesterday? It's probably far less than, you know, that 35,000.

Often when I'm doing a talk, you know, I'll hear people say two or 10, right?

Like we don't remember many of those decisions because they have to be done on a subconscious level for us to actually be able to function and get through the day.

So the way that the subconscious is doing that, it needs to be using habits and predictability and rules of thumb to be making the bulk of those decisions.

That means we have a very strong affinity for the status quo. We have things like familiarity bias. We like things the way that they are.

So any change, including AI and technology is going to be against kind of that predictability and status quo, the way we've always done things.

And you layer in then this fear of, well, what's that going to mean about my job and all these other aspects of stress that's putting additional cognitive pressure.

People are even more likely to be fearful and be rooted into that status quo. Yeah, that's fascinating. I never heard that number before,

Alastair McDermott35,000 decisions, but that makes sense. And many of those are going to be tiny decisions.

I know that I read before about, I think it was President Obama, where he spoke about having two colours of suits and he would just choose,

you know, grey suits one day and navy suits another day. if anybody has watched the videos of me podcasting over the last 200 or so episodes, they may think that I only

Melina PalmerActually have two t-shirts.

Alastair McDermottI actually have, I've got a whole bunch of different colours of different colours of the same shirt. I even tried to be

Melina PalmerOn brand with the colours. but just for convenience and just to have something there. and it was, it was kind of in that same way. Okay.

I don't really need to worry about what I'm wearing on the podcast. So I'm just always going to, you know, go with one of those, tech polish shirts that I have.

that's a, that's, that's kind of, thinking about that consciously.

Alastair McDermottSo consciously thinking about a decision so that it then becomes, like I put a framework on where I'm going

Melina PalmerTo go.

Alastair McDermottHave something there. and it was, it was kind of in that same way. Okay. I don't really need to worry about what I'm wearing on the podcast.

So I'm just always going to, you know, go with one of those, tech polish shirts that I have. that's a, that's, that's kind of, thinking about that consciously, I guess.

So consciously thinking about a decision so that it then becomes, like I put a framework in place to bypass that decision in future.

Melina PalmerRight. Yeah. So thinking about those things in advance, you know, you have that habit and something you don't have to think about.

Like you say, Steve jobs, in addition to Obama, you know, someone who we know wore the same, you know, turtleneck and whatnot everywhere.

so that wasn't a thing that had to be bogging down his brain in those processes. And you have more space to, look at creative things.

I love the big bang theory and there's an episode where Sheldon decides to let the dice decide, you know, what he's going to eat.

And when he's going to get up and go to the bathroom, like he takes it way too far, as always happens.

but truly, you know, in that way, when you remove a lot of those extra decisions, it does free up cognitive space. So you can be more open to things. Things like change.

Alastair McDermottYeah. So interesting. 35,000 decisions that we're making every day. we can hack it a little bit, like we just talked about, but this is why we're finding a lot of resistance to change.

And there always has been resistance to change in every generation. There's been a new technology and new developments.

one of the interesting things though, is the sheer pace of disruption that we're seeing with the AI. you know, with this, with all of this new technology.

It's, it's very disruptive on the pace it's changing.

And even the tools themselves are increasing in, you know, the chain, the pace of change has increased and they're changing rapidly all the time.

Even people who work in AI find it difficult to keep up with all the changes.

So how then does that map back to when we're trying to say, get AI adoption across the board to help people be more productive and,

you know, spend less time on tedious work, mundane work that we don't even like doing, but they're resisting that. which is, which is kind of weird

Melina PalmerBecause. Right.

When you can actually take a step back and you're looking at this objectively when it's other people's roles and jobs and opportunities, it's so easy to see where the value is. Right.

And this is part of the problem that comes from the, you know, the hiring or the manager who is communicating down to people to explain to them why this is good.

And only looking at all of the positive stuff.

So they're talking about that and not realising the other person is absolutely freaking out at the idea that their jobs going away or where's the threat or what does this mean to me? Right.

So the first concept from behavioural economics that I would tie in here is one of framing, which is that how you say something matters more than what you actually say.

And so being thoughtful to how the other person is going to be receiving this information and knowing that you want to present it in a way that is going to be the most likely to get them to

want to buy in on that idea. That is where the bulk of your focus should be.

And too often when we look at communication and change initiatives inside of organisations, it's just, you know, tell the team is one checkbox and you just let everybody say this however

they want. But that is where most things go wrong. So investing in that messaging is so important.

And an example of an example of this from a different space here would be in, you know, the grocery store, say you're needing to buy some hamburger and you get there and they have two stacks

that are almost identical, but one is listed as being 90% fat free and the other as 10% fat. Now, most people laugh when they hear this, right? And when we say, which one do you want to buy?

Almost everybody around the world says they want the 90% fat free, right? 10 % fat sounds terrible. And we're reminded about how we haven't been to the gym in a while and all this, right?

So logically, we know it's exactly the same, but our brain doesn't necessarily hear it in the same way. And it can impact how we feel about that.

So in a business context, I once got an email from a boss on a Thursday morning at 10am. I'd only been at this company for a couple of months. So I was still in a probationary period.

And I got an email from her that said, we need to talk, be in my office at two. Now, this is a terrifying email to receive, right?

And I, of course, spent four hours stressing about everything that was going to be happening and looking at every project I was working on every person I had been talking to,

and like getting ready for whatever fight was ahead of me when I go into this meeting. And so two o'clock comes and she gestures for me to sit down.

And she says, Hey, I'm going to be out of the office tomorrow and wanted to let you know that yours is the email I'm putting on my out of office responder. Yeah, that's it.

She went for the nuclear phrase of we need

Alastair McDermottTo talk.

Melina PalmerRight? Yes. For something pretty minor. Yeah. And I mean, so much stress on me. So one, imagine if she did want to tell me about any sort of change, right? Maybe it's saying great news.

We have this new system and AI that's going to help take over a bunch of responsibilities that you don't want to be dealing with. So this is good. Right?

I am not ready to hear that in that moment, right? My fight, flight, freeze is on high alert and my brain is way too stressed to be able to hear what's there.

If that would have been slightly reframed, you know, if that email, if she would have spent maybe two more minutes working on it and it would have said, I'm going to be out tomorrow.

Do you have some time to talk about it at two o' clock? I'm ready to go. Right? That's super easy.

And so that time to be more thoughtful about the communication we're putting out into the world is so important. And for her, I know she was a great boss. I enjoyed working with her.

I came to learn there was a specific meeting on Thursday mornings where this type of communication would come up. I was always feeling like, what if, right?

There's always this question there of if I actually did do something wrong, right? It's very stressful.

And so when we think about how we're communicating, that's really key and how much stress our teams are under when there's too many meetings and too many to-dos and tasks and projects and

things. We're in a state of time pressure. It's like we're continually living in a space of that T icketmaster countdown clock when you're going to buy tickets, right?

And, you know, it's never taking you 20 minutes to type in your credit card number, but it feels so stressful in the moment because of that time pressure.

And when we have too many meetings and emails and points of stress, you're doing the same for your employees. So focusing on giving them some cognitive bandwidth is going to make it.

So then when you frame and think about what would make them excited, where the value is for them in this opportunity and having them be part of a conversation about AI,

you can actually make it that they're more likely to be receptive to the conversation.

Alastair McDermottYeah, and I think about this. So I go in and speak with teams. And so I'm talking to a managing director about coming in and talking to his team.

And he's like, oh, yeah, I just let everybody know. And I said, oh, okay, what did you tell them? Did you say I'm bringing in an AI consultant to look at what you're doing?

That could really freak people out. And we need to be very careful about this.

And I know some people, I know some, you know, managing directors or CEOs who have brilliant communication skills.

But I also know some who have come, like, they might, they might have a tech background like me, I'm a software engineer by trade.

We don't, you know, stereotypically, we're not great communicators. And, you know, so it can, it can be a bit clunky.

Typically, I know, I know, a lot of my peers who I went to college with, and who, you know, I worked with that corporate software engineering roles,

they wouldn't have been very comfortable talking to other human beings ever.

That's, you know, so I just imagine people having these conversations and not really being aware of how what they're saying could be perceived. I think what you said is really interesting.

And I think it actually may be rejected by some people, that how you say it is more important than what you say. Because surely, like, that's not logical.

Like, what you're saying is the most important thing. But this is, I mean, this is human psychology, right?

Melina PalmerYes, yeah. And that's really the basis of all of behavioural economics. And I've got three books for you to read. Here's some more about some of that.

But I mean, even in that case, like I said, with the email from my boss, right, where you can feel the stress of and thinking about if you got that email, what that would mean for you.

And knowing that all she really wanted to say was actually what she thought was a good thing, right? A positive to say that she was trusting for me to be the receiver of those emails.

That was actually, she wanted to talk to me about it, because it was, you know, this very small sort of like honour in the workplace,

right, that I was being trusted to be the person while she was out of the office. But it was totally lost in the way that that email was sent and just a couple of words.

And now I know too, like you're, you know, many in the audience and that we're talking about, it's easy to say, well, those things shouldn't matter. People know what we're trying to say.

And logically, they should be able to read through the lines. They should just know they'll figure it out. That's on them. And I'm here to tell you, that's just not how it works, right?

We are because of those 35,000 daily decisions, the way we're constantly taking in a stream of information, the way you communicate is impacting the way people are going to be interacting

with you constantly. It absolutely is. And even if you don't think it should matter, because it does, it's worth putting a little bit of thought into.

Even, you know, the way that you put things on a list for choices for people will impact which one they're most likely to choose.

And so if you don't think about it, and you just throw them out alphabetically or reverse alphabetically or whatnot,

people may choose a thing that you know is not the best option because of how you presented that to them.

And so being a little bit more thoughtful in how you frame that, taking just a couple of extra minutes can make a huge difference into whether people are naturally buying in on ideas or

they're ruffling feathers all over the place and not interested in what it is that you're sharing.

So as you look to communicate about something like AI, I highly recommend having a more open-ended conversation and as early as you can in the process.

So instead of like telling people this is happening, get on board, right, which seldom goes over very well.

We can instead say, hey, like, I know we've all been feeling stressed and, you know, overworked. There's a lot of stuff happening all the time.

When you look at your role, what are the things that you're most excited, that you love doing? And what are some of the things that you kind of wish you could delegate away?

Like what's some of the extra stuff that feels a bit like mundane and that you don't love, like maybe responding to these types of emails?

Or, you know, you can kind of nudge in the direction of where you're hoping that AI is going to go to give them some ideas.

And then if people say, oh, yeah, I hate responding to this first pass on things or I really wish I didn't have to do this thing in my scheduling or it would be great if I didn't have to

write the first draft of something because I hate doing that.

You can say, well, you know, there's actually a tool we've been looking at that might be able to fix this solution for you and free up your time to do more of this other thing that you said

that you love. Would you like that? Right. So it's them being a part of it. That's the IKEA effect in action.

And they have this opportunity to build out what that how their role can be more enjoyable. They have more time and freedom.

And because we framed it in a way that they're helping to shape it and how to use it, then it just opens the door a little bit to try and to test and have some space because they see a

benefit that's there. And then once they get comfortable, then you can try the next thing and the next thing.

Alastair McDermottHow would you speak with people about the fears around their job? Because I know that that's one that people it's the first place people go with that fight or flight reflex.

Melina PalmerYeah.

Well, I think in that way of kind of asking the question about the space that you might have and the opportunities that exist to alleviate some of the stuff that you aren't enjoying doing

right now anyway. But that you can have space for the things that you really love.

And if you're able to talk with people about the making space for the things that human brains should be working on, right?

We want our human brains to be creative, to be able to have space to think more broadly about projects and to do something that you uniquely can be working on for us.

And when you have the space, this is an opportunity to really leverage why you're here and to showcase your talents.

And so I think if you talk to someone in that way about the value that they create and knowing that this is going to help them be their best selves here for the organisation and have more

capacity and things, that can alleviate some of the fears. Whereas if you come in and say, hey, I know you guys are thinking probably like, what about my job?

And I get, I get you're worried about that. And, you know, maybe we've seen over here, people are losing jobs and over there, but, you know, we're going to do what we can so that,

you know, hopefully that won't be an issue around here. So let's talk about AI, right? Like, nobody wants to have that conversation. So that's framing again, right?

Of how we say it really mattering. And when I think about internal communication, especially, I like to think about this scent of popcorn, right?

So when we have freshly popped, delicious popcorn, you know, you walk by a movie theatre or something, you can, it's, it's all over, it's pulling you in, you're excited, right?

It's getting us set up that we want to be a part of this. We've all been in the office when someone burns a bag of popcorn and it's like all anyone can talk about for the rest of the day.

And maybe even like a week later, that smell is just lingering, right? And you go, oh, is that Melina again? She reheated salmon and broccoli last week. Like, she's the worst, right?

It just, all we can think and talk about is this smell, right? Of that burnt popcorn, it's impacting everything. So with your communication, you can read the email.

You can think about what you plan to say and say, hey, is this going to come off like burnt popcorn? Because it's really hard to unburn the bag of popcorn, right?

And it's going to be there for a long time. If we instead say, how can I make this a little bit more enticing?

How can I be more drawing people in than repelling them with that burnt popcorn? You know, that's something that you can be keeping top of mind to help have more thoughtful communication.

Alastair McDermottYeah, I like that analogy. That's very visceral. I think everybody knows what that's like.

Melina PalmerYes.

Alastair McDermottOne other thing that I encounter, and it's when I'm talking to people, you know, employees about AI, one of the things that,

like, everybody who's dealing with AI is dealing with right now is the fact that we don't know exactly how we can use it. We haven't figured out all the use cases.

We don't know what all the capabilities are, even of the systems. Even the people building these AI systems don't know what all the capabilities are, how they work exactly.

Even, you know, there's all sorts of strange foibles. Like, if you tell it to take a deep breath and pause before it starts doing something, you can get better results.

And they don't really understand why that is. You know, there's just some crazy stuff about, like, little things that you can learn as you go along with this.

But it's really important to encourage testing and experimentation. And that's one thing I get a bit of pushback on because it's like, can you just tell me how to use it?

Melina PalmerOkay, I see. I see. I need to use this.

Alastair McDermottCan you just tell me how to use it? I don't really want to waste my time experimenting. I don't want to be experimenting.

Can you just talk about the psychology of that a little bit and how we might be able to encourage people to experiment and test a little bit more?

There are always people who do want to do that, the tinker ers, the people who are happy to play with things. But there are many people who don't want to do that.

Melina PalmerYeah. So I love the, you know, take a deep breath piece. That's really fascinating. That's bizarre in all the ways.

Alastair McDermottAnd that's based on research, by the way. This has been shown to be the case. This is peer-approved research. That's not just... It's cool and surprising.

It's very cool, but also very strange.

Melina PalmerRight. Yes. And we can see why, I mean, it's kind of even rooted in our own brains, right?

And so take that same advice and think about how we might have the conversation with someone if we're saying, hey, you know, going to the human side of research here, too.

You know, there was some work that I know someone did with a call centre where people, it was a banking call centre and people needed to know their passcode,

which is not, it's like a weird phrase or a word or something that isn't the same as like whatever your four-digit pin is that you usually use.

And so when the, in the call centre, they were telling people, well, and you better, you know, you better get it right because if you don't,

we're going to, it's going to lock your account for five days or something.

And people would then get it wrong and you have to go, because they're so stressed, their brains like over flooded with, you know, these emotions and fears and chemicals and things going on.

And it actually created a lot of extra work for the financial institution because then you're having to refer to different departments and do all of this.

So the project was about reducing call centre times. And what they ended up doing is when people would ask for this, they would tell them to slow down, like, take a minute.

I've got all the time that you need. Like, don't worry, just, you know, take your time. Let us know what that is when you have something.

And more people, when you gave them that little moment of just slow down, think about it, you know, they gave better responses and call times actually went down when you told people to take

longer when they worked on stuff, right? That's so counterintuitive.

Alastair McDermottI love it.

Melina PalmerRight. And it's, I mean, it's the same as you think about those teams and the stress and things that we're feeling as you're looking to have some opportunity for them.

So, I mean, to me, as a, you know, I can see both sides of this, right, where we want to just know how it will work. But context is so important, right?

And so, I think for one, you could say, and I think there's some nuance to this again, but, you know, on the one side of like, but the human part of this is you, right?

Like, your role is different than everything that exists. And so, we need your input to help this to be the best value for what your area of expertise is, right?

So, if the AI could just do it all, that would be a problem, right? I think when we get to, that's getting a little bit close to causing people to fear for a job.

But if someone's really rebelling and like, maybe we want to test in that sort of space with the right person in the right context and all of those aspects.

But I think truly, you know, finding if there's a right kind of a metaphor or the opportunity that works as you're thinking for someone to be able to play around with it.

And to know, I use in my books, I talk about a framework of behavioural baking, right? To where, you know, we're going to follow a recipe at some point.

And like, the first thing you're going to bake, you're probably using like a box cake mix because you want to be as simple as possible.

So, there's probably something you want to start with to get people to where they can do something real easy. That's the like toe in the water.

As we're just starting to learn and we're making those first cakes, we're using the box with the least amount of stuff as possible.

And then as they get comfortable, then they could start to experiment with some stuff.

But to jump in and say, and I need you to figure this out and think what you could test and what are all the options and everything we can do.

Our brains get so overwhelmed with that we can't jump in. We have a paradox of choice problem that happens here too. When we feel too much stress, we don't want to make any sort of decision.

So, if instead you were to limit and say, you know, as a first step into using AI, we've found that most people like to use it for A or B as a starting point.

And here are some prompts that can get you started. Which one would you feel like would be the most helpful for you in your day-to-day to free you up for other more important work? Yeah.

Oh, okay. I can make a choice.

Alastair McDermottThere is actually a process that I go through. So, I see three different types of prompts that people can

Melina PalmerUse typically.

Alastair McDermottOne is a simple prompt. And a simple prompt is something really straightforward, like what is the capital of France? So, it's something really straightforward.

Next step would be conversational prompting. And this is where you have a conversation and give

Melina PalmerInformation.

Alastair McDermottAnd actually, I like doing this with dictation. Some people don't like dictation, but I use dictation a lot for these.

Because basically, what you can do is you can do a, like you can just do a monologue for a minute or two about the situation, about the problem that you're trying to solve.

And tell the AI, here's all the things that you might need. And that's conversational prompting. And then the third type of prompting is structured prompt

Melina PalmerIng.

Alastair McDermottAnd that's where it's, like those are the prompts where you see people say, oh, you know, we're selling a pack of 10, 000 different prompts that will do all these things.

They're typically very formulaic structured prompts. And so, that's kind of like the next level. Again, structured prompts are really useful because you can get repeated.

You can get, you can use them over and over again and get the same types of output, which you don't tend to with the other types of prompts. But it's kind of like the more advanced version.

So, that's the way I approach this when I'm talking to people is trying to say, look, start out with really simple stuff.

Once you get the hang of simple stuff, just go into convers ational mode and just chat with it, either through text typing, like a chat bot, or you can actually speak to it.

And, you know, I demo the voice app, you know, you can actually have a conversation, like a back and forth conversation, which is a little bit weird. But you can do that, too.

But I don't like doing that one. I just have where I monologue into the voice recording for two minutes and explain a situation. And then it gives me back a pretty decent answer.

And then for those who want to go into, you know, we want to process this type of input and always get this type of

Melina PalmerOutput.

Alastair McDermottThat's where you might want to use a structured prompt. And that's where that's really useful. So, that's how I would approach this.

So, I think, you know, based on what you said there, if we can get people to, you know, through those first two stages,

then when we get to stage three, that's when we can start to talk about experimenting and learning and playing around a bit more with what they're doing.

Melina PalmerYeah, well, I think, too, as we were just kind of talking through this, I had the thought that, I mean, really, if we take a step back and we think about what drives human behaviour,

there's a lot of research, of course, in human motivation, intrinsic, extrinsic, as we look at being, you know, we're competitive,

we like to master things, we're trying to defend ourselves and our teams, we want to bond with other people, we're looking to achieve different areas.

And so, with that, if we were to take a step back and say, what if we get out of their typical role?

Because really, if the problem is not about specifically them just doing this for their job, per se, but we want them to be thinking about and just having some exposure to what sort of cool

things they can be doing with AI and test in a really safe space that has nothing to do with their actual job, right?

So, if you were going to put together some sort of competition of who could get the AI to write the best short story or if you want to use it to create the best subject line of something or

you're going to use it to do the most interesting blog post or whatever, right?

So, if you were going to do something that was separate from whatever is in their actual role and make it into a game,

whether they're going to be competing individually or otherwise, and then it turns it into something fun and you get to play around with it that everybody's got,

you know, an hour to do the best whatever it is. And they get to try that out and they get to try that out and then the winner gets something, right?

And the prize won, everybody loves PTO, right? So, being able to say somebody gets a day off if they have the best one or something is a thing that people are very much motivated by.

But it could be, you know, even the simple, like, pizza parties or whatever else you want to give people. There are things or just bragging, right?

So, you get the trophy and then you do one each week and it moves around the office and people get to have it in their,

or it's like a special background you get to use in all the meetings to show that you were the best one, right?

So, being able to have that prestige amongst others that you're the best at this thing and then everyone wants to get better at using the tool and they're able to then start incorporating

that into their job. So, when we think about that human behavioural aspect of anything in work and life, if we take a step back and think about what drives us,

what motivates us, how we're getting those actions and thinking about small little things that may feel unrelated but can actually get us really excited about things.

And even if we would never admit that we care about the cool Zoom background or the little tiny trophy behind us, we do.

And it may get people to try something because I don't have time to be worried about learning the thing because I'm too excited about winning the bragging rights. I love it.

Alastair McDermottAnd you just reminded me, like, the whole thing about gam

Melina PalmerIfication.

Alastair McDermottLike, we could get into too dark. I don't think we have time to talk about that. But I do want to touch on it a little bit because I think it's really interesting.

But I want to just see, can I summarise or encapsulate what

Melina PalmerYou've said?

Alastair McDermottI think that if I listen to everything that you've said so far, really what you're saying is reduce stress. And that's kind of what it all boils down to.

The email example that you gave earlier on, the way that we approach talking to people about AI, communicating around that, it's all about removing the potential stress from the

Melina PalmerSituation. For sure. Well, and a lot of the benefit that we're looking to get from AI is to reduce stress from people as well.

But we may need to do a little bit of work up front to help create the space for them to be open to this.

Some of the stats I like to give that are in my book, What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You, are that because I know people are going to say,

like, hey, I get that it's only two minutes or five minutes on an email. But when I have so many of them and I'm already working long hours, I don't have the time, right?

So research has found that 50% of emails are misunderstood, for one, right? So we're going too fast. We're trying to just throw something out.

And half of the time, people don't know what you're talking about, right?

So that then makes it to where actually 17 hours per person per week is said to be spent clarifying something that was previously said.

17 hours per person per week clarifying something that was previously said. So we're coming by with a quick, like, do you have five minutes? That is nuts. Send the Slack chat.

And, oh, are you sending the agenda or am I? And did you want that in this time zone or in theirs? So much junk because we weren't thoughtful enough on the front end.

And because of that, then somewhere between 62%, 68% of emails are unimportant, which many of us feel that burden all the time, right?

So if you think about sending, not every email has to be the greatest thing that's ever been sent, right?

But if we think about if you could only reach out to people once a day, how might your communication change?

How would you be more thoughtful in the way that you were going to connect with them?

If you were going to try to just do one email better today and see what happens or reduce one meeting and get rid of it and freeing up a little bit of space,

very quickly, you could be saving, we'll just say, like, two hours per person per week. That's huge, right? When we think about it.

So a little bit of thoughtfulness can go a long way in creating that cognitive space. And then, you know, AI can help as we go to make even more room for people. Yeah.

Alastair McDermottAnd that's one of the real powers is taking away a lot of the mundane, tedious stuff, because that's what I like to do is set these systems up so they can do that.

Because then people have more free time to work on stuff they actually like doing, which is what we're really trying

Melina PalmerTo get to here.

Alastair McDermottIs there anything that I didn't ask you about that we should explore a bit more in the few minutes that we have

Melina PalmerLeft? I think the last concept that really clearly comes to mind for me here is to remember that we humans are a herding species like sheep and cows and guppies.

And so knowing that other people like us like this and are seeing value is something where we can be leveraging social proof.

So that's, you know, testimonials and star ratings and reviews and things like that are in that category of social proof.

But if a friend or a trusted colleague really likes the thing or we're able to say, hey, over here, people in this same role have said that it helped using AI helped them to X, Y or Z.

And they're available to talk with you or, you know, something that helps people to feel safe because other people like them have done it before and given it a stamp of approval is really

valuable in getting that buy in and for people feeling OK about taking that next step. And so sometimes those testimonials, you know, can even say, I was really worried at first.

I was kind of sceptical. I was concerned about my own job. But once I jumped in, I saw how great and amazing this was.

And I was able to get through my work faster and I have better work life balance. And I even got a promotion or whatever. Right. Like those stories exist, I'm sure.

And so if we're able to show where someone says, hey, I feel worried, I want a promotion, I want more time, maybe I should try it. Right.

Because Susie Q over at this other department got this value and maybe I could see that benefit as well.

So making sure that you're lining up the herd of what to what you want people to do is really key.

So we don't want to say things like, I know most of you probably hate the idea of AI and are feeling really scared about what this can do. That, right.

So, like, we've totally lumped in a herd of like, OK, I should be scared and hate this thing. Right.

Versus if we can look to, you know, 90% of people that have embraced and started using AI have said that it's helped them to bop. And we want that for you, too. So let's join the group.

Right. Everyone's doing this. So you should, too. You don't want to fall behind. You know, people have a fear of missing out to that loss a version is there.

So, yeah, that herding and social proof is is key, too.

Alastair McDermottI love that. And I did open a loop about gamification. So I'm going to close that as well. Can I can I just ask you to briefly explain why gam ification works?

Because, like, I've seen it, you know, in apps that I'm using and in various different places. And like you talked about earlier about having a prize for for people doing stuff.

Why does gamification work so well?

Melina PalmerYes. Well, there are many things that go into different aspects of gamification. Some of it, like I was saying, in our own motive motivation.

But one thing that I'll point out here is like the brain chemical dopamine being a really key one, which ties in with anticipation and whether or not we're going to get the thing in time.

If we might be able to that, like, oh, maybe. Right. We're so excited to see if it's going to work out and we can get the thing in the right number of moves or or or whatnot. Right.

And that anticipation of will it or will it not work out? And I want to be able to try is a really key piece to things like gamification.

Also, in that hurting aspect and that social proof, there is some prestige that can come when you're able to see that you're beating other people or when you can see that you're just under a

threshold of being able to pass somebody else. And get into a top 10 or whatever that happens to be. So there are a lot of different aspects that come into play there.

But when we think about any any time you look at these sorts of things and you wonder, like, why do I want why do I even care about the getting this,

you know, Duolingo is a real master of gamification on things.

So being able to see all the things they're doing of the where things are falling on a chart and you're just below the line and more people like people like you are doing this and you got

the badge for doing this in the morning. You get the special app icon, which, again, go, OK, right. No one sees that but me. But I know it. I want to keep my streak going. Right.

We don't want to miss out on that streak. And we'll, you know, wake up almost like middle of the night and go, oh, no, I need to do this before it goes away. Right. So scarcity.

There's a lot of cool stuff going on within that. But those are just a couple of the pieces of why gam ification can work.

Alastair McDermottYeah, Strava is another example of that where you're competing with people and, you know, you do your cycle and it puts it in and tells you know,

you're one of the local leaders or local legends or one of these things. So, OK, we're at time. So I just want to say thank you so much.

Melina, you're well, you have three books, the truth about pricing, what your customer wants and can't tell you and what your employees need and can't tell you.

I think that everybody who is listening to this or watching this should go check that out straight away. You can find Melina on thebrainybusiness.com.

And I just want to mention I got today or yesterday, actually, in the post, a copy of the author proof of my new book,

which is the AI Powered Thought Leader, How to Become an Indispensable Voice in a World of Intelligent Machines.

So that's going to be for sale on Amazon, hopefully around the start of August. So if you're interested, go check that out.

So, Melina, thank you so much for taking the time and chatting to me about all of these really interesting kind of psychological hacks and things to think about for us as we kind of try and

figure out this whole world of AI.

Melina PalmerOf course. Thanks for having me. It was really fun.

Alastair McDermottIs there is there anywhere else people should check you out?

Melina PalmerI know you've got a podcast. Yeah, so the podcast is also The Brainy Business and you can find that and the books and things about consulting or speaking at thebrainybusiness.com.

And you can find me on all the socials as The Brainy Biz, B -I-Z, as well as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. Awesome.

Alastair McDermottMelina, thank you so much.

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