empowerment

Picture of people learning in an impoverished region of Kenya

Empowering the Disadvantaged: AI as a Catalyst for Change

by

What if a simple AI tool on a battered smartphone could transform livelihoods in the world’s poorest regions?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

picture of women selling vegetables in the market place

AI represents the greatest opportunity to address the inequality afflicting many areas of the world, from the favelas in Rio to the increasingly arid farms north of Nairobi and the slums of Delhi. Years of neglect and disinterest have left over a billion people economically and educationally disadvantaged, struggling to survive.

The Struggle for Financial Independence

To support their families, they try to generate subsistence-level income through small-holdings and micro-businesses—the only viable alternatives to crime or charity dependency (where available). However, many struggle due to a lack of basic financial understanding. Some even confuse income and profit, leading to the rapid depletion of microfinance loans.

some even confuse income and profit

A Training Programme That Sparked Hope

people in Dalanzadgad learning about microbusinessFifteen years ago, I created a basic training programme for such situations in the Katwe slum in Kampala.

At the time, it was the only free, cascaded training available without electricity, and it worked surprisingly well.

It spread to Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, South America, India, Nepal, and even Mongolia. However, it required translations, paper resources, and its examples were somewhat fixed.

AI in Action: Transforming Lives in Kenya

Recently, I took it to Kenya. While there, I visited several cooperatives in the semi-arid region east of Kiritiri.

While they wanted basic business skills, their biggest challenges were related to their crops: irregular rains and increased pests due to climate change. man talking to a group of farmers in KenyaTheir limited income was being spent on pesticides.

I am not a farmer, but I gathered details and input them into ChatGPT. It provided useful suggestions on interspersing and crop rotation.

When I translated the information into Kikuyu and shared it, they were amazed. They had learned farming from their parents but were unaware of these strategies.

Three of them had basic, battered smartphones. I set up ChatGPT on them with appropriate warnings and left them enthusiastically exploring all sorts of questions.

Unlocking AI’s Potential for Learning

Later, in Thika, I met a group of 40 young adults who had come up through a care charity. All had smartphones, but only one or two had used ChatGPT before. After a brief explanation and some basic guidance, they quickly grasped it.

I soon realised that all the training material I had spent months developing could be recreated within ChatGPT by feeding it a business plan template and the right prompt. It regenerated the entire training, using their examples, in their language, and at their reading level.

From Experiment to Scalable Solution

As you might expect, once back in the UK, I began developing a GPT (a tailored instance of ChatGPT) based on the business training framework. This is now being evaluated by friends in Nairobi.

Why ChatGPT? At present, it is the only personal AI that allows you to create publicly accessible GPTs via a URL. But perhaps this misses the point, should I really be limiting them to business answers? Should I be limiting them at all?

Shouldn’t my GPT be training them in how to use ChatGPT for anything—how to craft the right prompt for each need, whether in business, farming, carpentry, welding, crafts, or even for their own education by acting as a coach and mentor.

my GPT should be training them in how to use ChatGPT—how to craft the right prompt for each need

The Accessibility of AI: Breaking Down Barriers

ChatGPT has a robust free version, though I initially worried about data costs. However, I recently downloaded my entire chat history—over 450 days of discussions, over fifteen hundred A4 pages in PDF form. The entire file was under 10MB.

As long as smartphone access continues to grow and ChatGPT or another provider maintains a free tier, AI has immense potential to close educational and economic gaps, empowering people worldwide to reclaim their potential and reconnect with systems, services, and society that others take for granted.

Bringing AI to Those Who Need It Most

Screen shot of AI mastery GPTI have now created two prototype GPTs. One is tailored for disadvantaged communities, but since many people here at home lack the understanding of how to access the full potential of personal AI, I also developed a version for business professionals and Western users. My hope is that it will:

  • Help people realise the immense untapped potential of personal AI. Many of us barely move beyond asking it to write things or check what we’ve written, missing 98% of what it can do.
  • Provide direct, objective feedback on how the GPT might be improved—enhancing both versions and ensuring I receive critical insights from users.

If you’re interested, click this link: Prototype AI Mastery GPT. Share it widely and explore new possibilities. I hope it expands your skills in using AI and that you will provide feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

And if you know networks in disadvantaged areas that would benefit from the simpler version, please share this link: GPT for areas of disadvantage. Encourage them to provide feedback as well.

AI has immense potential to close educational and economic gaps, empowering people worldwide to reclaim their potential and reconnect with systems, services, and society that others take for granted

Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?

Enthusiastic meeting - illustrating better meeting design Design meetings to empower mental health and reduce meeting stress

Better meeting design to empower mental health and reduce meeting stress

by
Well designed meetings are a vital and powerful tool for transforming the negative effects of stress into positive energy and excitement
This article is part of our series on stress resilience and mental health at work..
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Is stress inevitable?

Challenges are always present. They are what provide us opportunities to add value, to pull together, and to shine. It is challenges that provide us with learning and fulfilment and rewards. But they also involve stress.
So how do we prepare our people to work with that stress so that it doesn’t adversely affect mental health at work? In other words, how do we equip them to use it as a motivator, and not be overwhelmed by it? And how do we ensure the stress is a positive influence and not a negative one.

The need for better meeting design

Typically, the biggest factors in how our people approach challenges depends upon:
  • Their understanding of the challenge and its context
  • Their skills, capabilities and confidence to rise to that challenge
  • The level of support they can expect in tacking the most difficult bits
  • The sense of purpose and meaning the challenge has for them
  • The insight, ideas and creativity that they can bring to the challenge
  • Their attitude and beliefs about themselves and their team in relation to the challenge
  • The appreciation and acceptance they feel in tackling the challenge
Greater levels of these things help reduce stress. But where the levels are low, stress grows, and has a negative impact on mental health at work.
So how do we deliver these factors to the individuals who are tackling the challenge? The answer to that is most likely the meetings that take place around the challenge. Big meetings, small meetings, one-on-ones. To good effect or bad.
The greater the positive influence of these things, the greater the likelihood of success, and the more the challenge seems like an adventure. But if these things are missing, or badly handled, the challenge can seem overwhelming. As a result, its impact on us and the organisation can be damaging.
Meetings are key. However, this is somewhat of an irony, because many of us don’t see meetings in that light.

Meeting stress

image of frustration in non inspirational meetings - source Engin Akyurt via PixabayThere is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that people see meetings as an obstacle rather than an enabler. All too often, and for too many people, meetings seem (and perhaps have become) a distraction to simply getting on with their work.
Instead of meetings being a means to handle and reduce stress through the means defined above, people find that many meetings add further stress. And this meeting stress is totally unnecessary, and the result of lack of meeting design. Such meeting stress is a major cause of issues in mental health at work.
And there is good reason for this. We have somehow lost sight that the value of a meeting is the difference it makes to those who attend it. We couch meeting objectives in terms of inanimate deliverables. But the only thing a meeting CAN change is how people act as a result of it. All that it can do effectively are deliver the bullet points above.

the value of a meeting is the difference it makes to those who attend it

A decision is sterile and impotent without the understanding and commitment of those required to effect it. The fact is, if your people do not need to change, even in a small way, then you don’t need a meeting. And if they do need to change, then that is what the meeting needs to deliver. The content is simply a means to achieve that. In a well-designed meeting, the people do not so much work on the content, as the content works on the people.
We need to begin to see meetings as a means to change people to what they need to proceed. Then we will start to design meetings as journeys in which we address what is missing (from the bulleted list). Our objectives would reflect skills, attitudes and shared understanding. And people would not only see their value, they would eagerly engage with them to play their part in that journey.
The value of your meetings depends not only on the journey, but the extent to which people engage with that journey. Their adoption of what is needed is much more likely if they are actively involved in developing it. For that reason, your meeting (especially if it is virtual) should use participative tools wherever possible.

Steps to better meeting design

So for your meeting design, here are some practical things to think about:
  • Do you know what they need in respect of the above bullets? If not, can you talk to them to find out?
  • How much of what is required can be delivered through interaction with their colleagues in a well designed meeting?
  • What did they feel about the last meeting in this regard, and why? Can you raise the bar for this one?
  • How will you use participation to build personal and team ownership and support?
  • How can you better engage their insight, ideas and creativity in the plans that you want to build?
  • Where can you authentically express your appreciation and acceptance for what they have achieved already?

expectations on people are not getting any easier

The expectations on people are not getting any easier. The challenges to which we refer are increasingly frequent, perhaps even daily, occurrences. Better meeting design is all about systematically rethinking our everyday meetings until they better equip people for those everyday challenges.  If people in our organisations do not like meetings, it is a very clear indication that they are poorly designed. And if they are poorly designed, we are handicapping ourselves and our people in a competitive race for the future.
Share this on Linkedin –   |   Follow Culturistics insights on Linkedin –

Relevant Links:

Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?
Glass orb of Girl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

#015 – Facilitating Adventure in Others

by

Building confidence in our ‘voice’ and the ‘voices’ around us – Using structure to draw out insight and self-discovery in peopleGirl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Benefits of facilitating adventure in others

Why take this challenge?

  • To think through what it might mean to find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs
  • To develop a picture of the changes we want to see for ourselves and those around us
  • To provide a context for using structure to inspire creativity and self-discovery

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

In Leading by Adventure, our first 12 or so adventures might be best described as adventuring in leadership. They have been largely about us, and who, how and why we are.

They have hopefully been an exercise in moving our perspective out, and seeing things a little bit differently.  Partly in the hope that some of those perspectives we might find helpful, and want to use again. But mostly with the intention of developing a habit of deliberately taking time to test out new perspectives and whatever they may or may not bring.

But what about the adventure we lead in others? How do we facilitate attitudes and habits in others to adventurously adopt new perspectives? After all, the stated aim of our adventuring is to help equip people for a future that is increasingly all about change.

So, as leaders (and we are ALL leaders – ‘Leadership is a choice, not a position’ – Stephen Covey) how are we helping those around us to explore new perspectives? How are we helping them to develop the skill of shifting their view points? And how are we developing confidence in them? That they too are adventurers in change and not the victims of it?

Over the next 12 or so adventures, our focus will be on leading (facilitating) adventures in others. Whatever our relation to them might be. In doing so, our own adventure will be into Covey’s vision for us: To find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs. (See the pack)

We will be using tools and techniques (some of which may be familiar) that ‘draw out’ from people, rather than ‘push in’. Tools that offer people a path to self-discovery of insights, rather than passively receiving  them from others. And to keep it real, and make it sustainable, these are all things that you will be applying within your ‘normal’ work. Your (and their) current needs and situations.

The purpose of this week’s adventure then, is to develop a perspective, a vision, for how you would ideally see their voices develop. You may already have solutions for each of the tracks in place. But if you do, then please take this opportunity to consider how they might be further improved.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links: