AI note-takers are everywhere. They promise automatic transcripts, tidy meeting summaries, and searchable archives. But here’s the real question:

what do you do with those notes once you’ve got them?

The value isn’t in the transcript. The value comes from the next step—how you turn that output into better decisions, actions, and outcomes.

The Value Isn’t in the Transcript

Most people don’t value a transcript by itself. It does not generate your organization revenue or customers. However, the insight from what automatic note takers that highlight speech and style patterns, repetitions and even tones, can drive smart decision-making. But you have to ask what are we DOING with the information that is now provided through these tools?

Beware the “Shiny Object Syndrome”

Our teams can too quickly be overloaded with “shiny object syndrome” of being pressured to use artificial intelligence (AI) or whatever latest and greatest technology comes to market. But the idea that we “use it because everyone else is” normally does not provide long-term competitive advantage for any organization. In fact, this is often a sign you are lagging in your market positioning. And so just like fear of losing one’s job to AI – we need to shift the thinking process. It no longer is about whether or not you will lose your job to AI. It is the knowledge now that you will lose to the person who figured out how to leverage AI (and other advancing technologies).

Ask the Hard Question: “So What?”

So the question is to ask your staff “So What?” Push and drive to articulate the value of the output or the results to the organization. Just cause you can summarize meetings, so what? Just cause you have an autogenerated list of action items, so what? And this is where we get to the heart of the issue: it’s what you can now do given these insights and optimized processes.

Think about this – what would you do with an extra 20 minutes a day?

AI-thinking leaders are not just asking what AI-integrated applications can do for the staff. But take it further. What does AI technology free your staff up to be working on? If they are no longer busy taking notes and tracking action items, what can they be doing with that time? Where can their intellectual knowledge and intimate understanding of the organization or stakeholders be put to better use? What do your teams finally have time to focus on now that processes and basic decision-making can be automated? And so what skills do they need to step into those evolving roles?

Leaders: Create the Space to Explore

This is the space for my leaders. You have capable teams who are often WAY to excited to get to play with some of the latest and greatest technology. Let them play! Let them explore! Your challenge is to think about how does it expand the offerings of the organization. You consider how you can re-allocate talent to new initiatives and increased customer engagement that leads to longer term customers (and employees!).

Outpacing the Competition

If you can lead from this space – enable teams to explore, but you strategically focus now the energy, but the freedom that is created through the smart application of technology – then you will be the one that is outpacing and outmatching your competition. Not because you are an AI-enabled company, but rather, because you are an organization that is focused on the value produced through the new opportunities presented!