Your New "Artificial Intern": Unlock Your Authentic Genius with AI | Monica Marquez

On this episode of Right About Now, I'll talk to Monica Marquez.

She is the co-founder of Flip Work.

What is that?

AI teaching AI.

Look, we've got an older generation, a lot of people being told to use AI, but they don't know how to use it.

They're scared of it.

They're not sure how to leverage it.

And is it cheating or not cheating?

A lot of insights here from Monica about what this AI revolution means and how you can help companies adapt it, get ROI, and pivot into the new world.

Right here, right now.

You hear this thing where people kind of get scared that AI is gonna replace people.

The truth is, AI is not gonna replace people.

People who leverage AI are gonna replace people.

They're gonna outpace people who aren't leveraging AI.

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Welcome to Right About Now.

We're always talking about what is right now.

You know what's right now?

It's Monica Marquez, co-founder, Flip OS Flipwork.

I mean, you got an operating system, Monica.

I mean, you must be a big deal, you know?

Yeah, no, definitely.

It's all about Flipwork, right?

Our new company, Flipwork, is all about AI, AI adoption.

So my background in leadership development, change management, you know, most of my clients that

I used to work at, right, at Google, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, the feedback I'm getting from a lot of the senior leaders is

that their AI pilots are failing, but mainly because there's low adoption rate by people.

And so our company, we decided to pivot.

I basically exited my last company and have been in stealth mode with Flipwork, which is all about an AI adoption change management system platform that we've created.

And we're going to be launching that officially in the next couple of months, probably by end of October.

So we're in stealth mode pilots at places like Intuit, Uber that are doing really, really well.

And so with all that will come the launching of the new podcast and all that kind of stuff.

So you guys are getting in on the early kind of like, hey, we're going to be launching all this.

stuff, but we're really trying to close the gap that no one is addressing about people and adoption.

And how do you help people flip the way that they do work?

How do they reinvent themselves with new workflows that, you know, the old way of working is obsolete?

But, you know, in this day and age, AI is disrupting work faster than people can change.

So we're all about getting people to flip and change the way they work.

I love it.

After that description you gave us, you know, here's what I'm thinking.

Number one, I'm going, this is really meta.

Because as I understand it, we're using AI to help adopt AI.

Did I hear you right?

Yes.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, I think what people are missing, and the latest research from MIT that they released is that 95% of AI pilots are failing.

And it's not because of the technology.

The technology is great.

What's failing is that it's people, right?

We're not adopting it the way that we should be.

We're kind of layering AI over the way that we do work.

And really, what needs to happen is people have to flip the script on the way that they do work.

They have to reinvent themselves.

They have to reinvent their workflows with AI.

And so you hear this thing where people kind of get scared that AI is going to replace people.

The truth is, AI is not going to replace people.

People who leverage AI are going to replace people.

They're going to outpace people who aren't leveraging AI.

How do you leverage AI to reinvent the way that you do work?

And not really focusing on the output.

It's really how do you amplify the impact that you have leveraging AI?

You know what?

I'm going to give you a freebie here.

Thinking headlines and copy.

I'm a marketer.

You may love it.

You may hate it.

You can tell me you like it even if you don't.

we've got all this mlm going on right yeah machine learning and all that you guys flip os is the hlm human learning model all these tools have come out and we kind of created a tool without really telling everybody how they need to use it what it means and you guys are reverse engineering that yeah absolutely i mean i think part of it is that There's lots of things that are kind of tugging at people, right?

I mean, there's certain things where they're hearing all this thing that AI, like, it's hallucinating, it's, it's wrong, it makes things up.

And I mean, it's evolved in the last two years that, you know, it got released and things like that.

But that really should give people the confidence that AI can't replace humans.

Humans are the ones who have the discernment, the judgment, you know, your lived experience, the empathy, all of these things that we have to go in and make sure that these outputs that AI is spitting out are legitimate, right?

And so that's the problem where some people fearing it.

And so they're kind of like putting their head in the sand and saying, Until my company figures out or tells me what to do, I'm not going to do anything.

But unfortunately, by the time they pick their head out of the sand, they're going to be left behind.

And so, it is this idea of you can't just give someone all these tools and tell them, okay, go do, because they don't know, they're waiting for somebody to tell them what to do.

And the reality is, is that it's a little bit of trial and error.

You've got to create this safe space for people to just go try the AI and pivot and figure out how things are working.

And really, what flipwork is all about is flipwork is going to turn AI into ROI by reinventing how people actually work.

And an interesting thing that's been coming out is that some people are saying, well, if I leverage AI, I feel like I'm cheating because I've always equated effort equals success.

But if I'm leveraging AI and it takes me 30 minutes to do something that used to take me three days, it's undermining my value.

And so people are having to even rewire those and flip the script on these values and these unconditioned beliefs of effort equals success.

And now we need to flip the script on that and say, no, it's impact equals success.

How much more impact can you have with AI so that you can be successful?

Fascinating.

Look, I gave a couple analogies.

If you're a contractor and 100 years ago, whenever it happened, you didn't use the tape measure.

It came out and you said, I'm not going to use that tape measure.

Well, you'd probably go out of business.

People are measuring things faster, moving faster.

And I think if you break it down like that, people will start to get it.

You know, this is still a machine.

This is still a computer.

Yes, they're really smart and it's advanced.

It's happening faster than any of those things I just described, probably.

But it's like these are tools that can be utilized to generate better outcomes for you and for your employer.

And those who adapt these things.

quicker, faster, better, and learn to use the tape measure of today.

Sometimes you just got to like put it in those simple terms, but I feel like that's what we're talking about here.

Monica, just thought of something.

Look, I have several companies.

I'll tell you how I navigated this, and I'm curious what you see from like leaders, because I think maybe some of the challenges are, like you said, okay, scared I'm cheating, scared I'm doing whatever.

I told my people point blank the moment, you know, like this started proliferating in the last, I mean, it's been fast, 12 to 18 months, you know, like where they're really usable tools.

I'm like, if did you use AI to do this?

Because if you didn't, you need to, because I need you doing these other seven things.

And it's like I attempted, whether successful or fail, we'll see, but to empower them and to make them feel comfortable that, look, I used AI 15 times yesterday.

You better have used it 20 times today because your job's more down at the level that could use it than mine.

And so I'm curious from you working with companies, is our leadership conveying that?

You're exactly right.

I think there's a misalignment of like who's supposed to be in charge.

And like you said, there are team members who are waiting for permission.

So you've done the exact thing that leaders need to do of enable and give permission for people for trial and error, right?

It's like, use the AI, like, let's check it, let's test and learn, let's pivot, let's do these things.

And that's what leaders need to do of really kind of getting people to say, hey, I'm testing out this tool too.

You test it out.

You may use it in a very different way.

way than I do, but then let's come back together and see where AI actually amplified the work for us.

And the other issue is that what they're not doing is really thinking about how do we do work differently, right?

Don't just take your old workflows and say, this is how we do work, A, B, C, and D.

And then let's see where AI, it's just like, no, let's step back and think for a minute and say, how might we delegate or have AI do all of these other things so we can focus on our zone of genius, right?

Like we all have this area of expertise that it's like, let AI do all of these things that can be automated so we can focus more on the strategy, on the creativity, on all of these things where we really could then free up and do more of the high impact work.

I'm glad I am built for this.

I mean, personally, I don't, but, but I'm just saying, like, because I like change.

Yeah.

And I'm a good pivoter, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, but I don't mind it.

Like, I don't, and I don't have to take attachment in many things, except my wife, my kids, luckily.

But I'll say this, just pivot.

You know, it's pivot.

Change multiplier is what AI, you know, and it's not because it's changing business models.

It's changing, you know, the outputs that you could do.

And you got to embrace, if you can't embrace that, then I'm telling a lot of people, you need to just become a skill, like a skills trade or

like something.

Just a hands-on, yeah.

Hands-on is not because this genie is not going back in the bottle.

No, it's absolutely not.

Talk to me, Monica, as we, in this final segment here, you know, specific, like.

What does Flipwork do for a company?

Yeah, so Flipwork works with companies to help their people shift in three different ways, right?

First, you know, you can have the tools, but we're people of habit, right?

And so what we have to do is activate your talent.

We have to really help people reinvent their identity, right?

Transforming your people into leaders who drive AI adoption with rituals, cadence, and accountability.

Then we help.

We go in.

Once you kind of like say, okay, I understand I've got to like embrace AI and now I'm going to be using, kind of like you told told your team, using AI 15, 20 times a day to help me get through my day.

Then you stop and you step back and you say, now let's elevate our workflows.

How do we reinvent the way we're doing work?

So we help, you know, teams redesign high-value workflows that reduce kind of cycle time, accelerate revenue, and prove ROI much, much faster.

And then we've developed a, what we call our flippy, the AI change agent, to work with you daily to constantly be that artificial intern that's constantly telling you, how do you sustain this type of adoption?

How do you constantly keep changing, right?

Because most of us like to change and then we want to kind of stay there and then, you know, you're forced to change later.

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