Award-Winning Builder Monique Howard on Meetings That Shoulda Worked Better - Ep 14

Kyle James (: 00:02

buffer buffer buffer.

Welcome welcome everybody here we are with another prompted builder stories with by h &ai and today I have Monique Howard with me on the podcast Monique welcome to the show

Moniuqe Howard (: 00:17

Thanks Kyle for having me, I'm so excited. I can't wait to talk about all things agents, so let's get started.

Kyle James (: 00:23

I love it. You and I have already been going back and forth laughing before we even started here.

Really excited to talk with you because we're celebrating, you know, one of the agent builders who won the very first Community Choice Awards for the most clever name category for your agent should have been an email. And I think it's powerful because actually, you know what, instead of me talking about it, I'm gonna shut up and let you talk a little bit about it. So tell us a little bit about it and then we'll kind of dive, we'll take a step back and kind of go into a little bit more of your background and things too.

Moniuqe Howard (: 00:42

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 00:48

You

Moniuqe Howard (: 00:59

Yeah, yeah. So should have been an email, catchy name. And I think we all think about that when we leave a meeting sometimes. We're in a long meeting or multiple meetings throughout the day. And some of those really should have just been in an email. And you would think from the name that that's what it's about, right? It's going to tell you whether or not that meeting should have been an email. But the goal really is to help you upskill your facilitation skills and make sure that your meeting isn't one that someone leaves a say

Gosh, there really should have been an email. Yes. So what's interesting is that I think about meeting transcripts in the world of AI as gold because you can do everything with a meeting transcript. My background is heavily in project management, release management, and we're always having meetings. We're always taking notes. And you know, as humans, even you try to multitask during a meeting and you're taking notes, it's kind of like,

Kyle James (: 01:31

It's so true.

Kyle James (: 01:42

It is.

Moniuqe Howard (: 01:59

like you missed some things or you misinterpreted some things. And so you really don't get the full context sometimes of what you're trying to capture. And so I was pitching using meeting transcripts as a way to build an intelligent PMO. So you start with a meeting transcripts, you brawl it down, you scrub the transcripts, and you use it to build artifacts. So if you're a project manager, you might build a scope statement or you might use it

Kyle James (: 02:01

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 02:29

to build your requirements list or you might use it for your raid log. And so I was thinking about that, but then something in my head say, wait a minute, well, what if you're not good at facilitating meetings? You can have these meeting transcripts and it can turn out to be quote unquote garbage because it really doesn't have the context or the really rich information that's needed to build an intelligent PMO. So that's what led me to

Kyle James (: 02:34

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 02:59

should have been an email. I writing a post, I thought about that. I started looking at some things Jamie Dimon mentioned to his executives, right? Make your meetings count. I started looking at data and how much money we lose every year to meetings that are not productive. And so I wrote that post, Kyle. And then at the end, I was going to put together some PDF to help people and say, Hey, these are some things that you can do to help you improve

Kyle James (: 03:17

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 03:29

improve your meeting facilitation skills. But then something say, wait a minute, you know, that is kind of boring. What can you do to make it a little bit more engaging and a little bit more real to that person? And that's what popped in my head. I should probably should make an agent.

Kyle James (: 03:42

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 03:47

And we're going to show some results that I got for some that I played here in a minute because...

you know, to your point, like these are funny. It's got kind of the, I don't know, what's the right, the sassy, like sister vibe or something. Maybe I just said that because it alliterated well, but like it's got this sassy punk to it that like really resonates and helps it stick better. But I think you're right because it feels like Call Transcriptions has been the low hanging fruit obvious win of AI that everybody's using that. I mean, there's what?

Moniuqe Howard (: 03:54

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 03:59

Yes, exactly.

Kyle James (: 04:21

a different services that do this now. And amazing how quickly we've all changed work. I remember not that long ago, I was like, I don't want gong or fathom or any of sitting on calls listening and recording everything I do. That's super creepy. To how fast that went like, you know what, these things are actually offering really valuable things, whether it's enabled me to like have somebody else to call and offer me tips, or now you're building agents, like everybody has this stuff, plug this in here.

Moniuqe Howard (: 04:24

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 04:33

yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 04:37

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 04:51

help make your meetings more meaningful and valuable. And we all have it, so it's super easy and accessible for someone to download that transcript and punch it in here and tell what was your supposedly agenda and get some good advice on how you can make it better.

Moniuqe Howard (: 04:55

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 04:59

Okay.

Moniuqe Howard (: 05:08

Exactly, exactly. And that's exactly what it does. It takes your agenda, it takes your transcript. And there are a couple of categories that I have where I am asking the agent to identify or at least analyze the transcript against the agenda and tell me whether or not you met the goals of the meeting. And it's very witty. I spent a lot of time on a persona because I wanted it to really kind of... When you're getting feedback, you don't want it to be dry.

Kyle James (: 05:26

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 05:37

but you don't want people really to point fingers, especially an agent to say, oh yeah, you got it wrong. So I was like, well, let me make a very witty, very sassy agent that can deliver a message to you that really sticks because there's so much personality in the agent. Even that's why I named it shoulda instead of should have, right? Shoulda been an email because it goes all with the entire persona. But the goal really is to help you re-skill or up-skill yourself.

Kyle James (: 05:40

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 05:55

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 05:59

Love it.

Moniuqe Howard (: 06:07

when it comes to meetings and that's going to be really important you know when we have like you said all of these agents taking notes it's going to be important for you to be able to facilitate and get to the meat of the meeting every time otherwise you're still wasting money.

Kyle James (: 06:22

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think it's a perfect example of a tool. Like, I talk to people all time, how AI is changing things, and the reality is...

All this busy work that we do is, a lot of it's getting picked up by these tools, but the thing that is becoming more more central and crucial for everybody is the relationship building. So meetings are gonna become more of the norm and less of the busy work I have a feeling in general for any white collar job especially. But if tools like this that can make you better at that thing that you're gonna be doing more of, it's a win-win.

Moniuqe Howard (: 06:52

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 06:59

It is, it really is. And one of the things I love in relationship building, also one of the posts I made recently was around, yeah, companies, their first thought when they bring on agents or AI is productivity wins. Yeah, we're going to cut out the repetitive and the mundane and free up this time. But then the second, and I call it day two, is that what do you have, what happens after that person has freed up 20 % of their time? Are you just going to give them more work or will you

Kyle James (: 07:13

Mm.

Moniuqe Howard (: 07:29

skill them up skilled them to do those strategic things that you want them to really do. And that's really important to me when I build agents because I'm thinking about, you know, what can this person really get out of it? And how much can it change the way that they interact in the the day to day life? It will make a difference because right now, if you can prompt your head of your colleagues, but soon we'll have a buffet of agents that will make that

Kyle James (: 07:34

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 07:54

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 07:59

everyone can choose from, make everyone productive. So what's going to set you apart? Those skills, those soft skills, know, those facilitation skills, those influencer skills, those relationship skills, those will be what will set you apart. And that will make a difference between someone saying, if they have to cut anyone, or if they have to change, you know, raise someone up to a higher level, they look at you and say, those are the skills of someone that can go to another

Kyle James (: 08:05

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 08:28

level.

Kyle James (: 08:29

I it, I love it.

And I want to circle back to something you said before we kind of lose focus on it. Like you mentioned kind of this whole idea started with a spontaneous LinkedIn post. And Jamie Dimon, for those of you that don't know, CEO of JP Morgan, one of the most powerful bankers in the world essentially. like double click on that a little bit. Tell everybody like, I know the comment he made that you referred to, but most people don't. Like unwrap that a little bit for people like, you know, like what he said and kind of how that,

Moniuqe Howard (: 08:36

Okay.

Moniuqe Howard (: 08:45

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 08:53

Yes. Yes.

Kyle James (: 09:01

really fired you up to like, uh-oh, we're gonna address this.

Moniuqe Howard (: 09:04

Yeah, yeah. So the quote is to his executives, and it was just really short. He was like, in turning to meetings, if one is required, make it count.

Kyle James (: 09:16

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 09:16

And this was to 400 of his top executives at JP Morgan Chase. And it's really telling because at that level you think to yourself, they obviously know how to run meetings. But what tends to happen is that we get settled in this kind of repetitive thing. And sometimes we don't really look at how we facilitate meetings. So that really got me to thinking, if this person at this level is telling his 400 executives that they have to make their meetings count.

then what about the rest of us? And this is really hitting on something. So it definitely kind of helped me understand and also supported what I was thinking. You know, we can use transcripts, but if you don't know how to, one, if there's someone in your meeting who's monopolizing all the time and you don't know how to pull or rein them in, then that's something that you have to practice. You know, if you have an agenda and you don't stick to it, or maybe you

Kyle James (: 10:12

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 10:16

lose focus then you have to address that or maybe there are people that are in your meeting that have things to say but they don't get that time you know maybe you don't call or you you set aside time in your meeting to allow them to speak then that's something else you need to practice so for me that Jamie Diamond quote just solidified the fact that we all should be looking at our skills right over time we kind of keep the same ones but we have to keep them fresh and we have to have a new perspective which is what the agent

Kyle James (: 10:39

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 10:46

gives you kind of a different perspective or something maybe you hadn't thought about in a while.

Kyle James (: 10:50

Yeah, and I've always believed in if you're not growing, if you're not learning, you're dying, right? So this is like, you can be good at it, but it's still worthwhile to have something that's like sassily giving you little feedback and advice how to get better. And I spent a bunch of time in kind of project management, product roles similar to you, and I'm curious, I've always said and told people, being respectful and mindful of people's time is super important, right? And yes, you want to build relationships

Moniuqe Howard (: 10:56

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 11:01

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 11:21

and do icebreakers and small talk in meetings too, but like, you don't need to have a meeting, like make sure you cover what you're intended to do and come with an agenda. So I know that that's kind of a big core focus of you with this too. So you had kind of four key areas that you built this thing around. Like expand upon that a little bit just so people understand.

Moniuqe Howard (: 11:31

exam.

Moniuqe Howard (: 11:37

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So the first thing is around clarity and structure. And that's really around the purpose of the meeting, your agenda topics, how do you introduce those topics, and whether or not you have transition between them. A lot of times, and I know maybe later we'll talk about the next agent I'm building on, but we suffer from proximity bias. In other words, when we talk, we unconsciously omit some things and don't realize that we're making

assumption that people are going to fill in the blank. And so that is really important that you have to be clear on you know what you're doing and making sure that you're giving the right information and enough information so that everyone's on the same playing field. So that was the first thing and the next one is time management and focus. We all have meetings that have run over or you know we have where like I said maybe there's individuals in the meeting that take very long.

Kyle James (: 12:14

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 12:41

time and they take up all the time or maybe they get off a topic. You know, we need to make sure that we have time management within a time, but also the focus, making sure everyone understands exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, we'll have time, like you said at the beginning, maybe icebreakers or chit chat here and there, but everyone's time is important. So that was really key. The next thing is collaboration and inclusion. And this is where we

have those runaway conversations by one person who monopolize all the time or maybe there are people that are in the meeting who are very important to the project but don't quite speak up all the time and so we really need to make sure that it's balanced otherwise you know we still don't get the context and the rich information that's needed in every meeting and then lastly decision-making and outcomes we need to make sure that you know if you're there to get a decision that you get the decision if you're looking for specific

outcomes, you get those outcomes. And so that's what the agent also does. It makes sure that based on your agenda, it's assuming that you're going to address those certain things and that there will be certain outcomes. And from that, it decides whether or not you've met that particular criteria or not. So those are the four areas that I looked at. And what's interesting is that when I build agents, I don't just give it a prompt. I could have just been like, okay, people,

users gonna give us a transcript and the agenda and you Analyze it and come back and let them know if they were on track or not That's not how to really build a rich agent. You have to put thought into what you're building and what are some of the Key things or key points about what you're building that will give back information. That's helpful So that took me a while along with a persona that took me a while to really sit down and think about okay when I'm

running a meeting, you what are, as I learned how to become better at it, what are some of the things that I had to change? What are some of the things when people ask me to sit in their meeting and critique, do I give feedback on? And so that's what those four categories come from. And it's important because you don't just want, like I said, an agent, I mean, the AI just to generally say something because then everyone doesn't get the same rich experience. You have to have a threshold and those, I don't want to call them KPIs because

Kyle James (: 14:54

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 15:11

are not, but they are markers that help you become better facilitators.

Kyle James (: 15:16

I love it how scientific it all is. And I guess this is probably a good time. You wanna see, I haven't shown you this, but you wanna see a couple of the ones that, so I've got two of them. One, it gave me a decent score. The other one it kinda beat me up a little bit on. But like you said, it does it in fun way and we so often heard about, what is it called, the Oreo way of giving feedback, of start with good, bad, good. Nah, this'll just let you have it even when it's good.

Moniuqe Howard (: 15:23

Yeah, I would love to see it. I would love to see it.

Moniuqe Howard (: 15:31

god.

Moniuqe Howard (: 15:41

Yeah, yeah, it goes right into it.

Kyle James (: 15:46

So let me see if I can tab this one. Let me know if this comes up.

Moniuqe Howard (: 15:56

Yeah, I see it.

Kyle James (: 15:57

awesome so this is my first and I'm gonna show you my good one first to kind of keep the off the wild one I have to even remember

Moniuqe Howard (: 16:01

Okay.

Kyle James (: 16:05

77, thinking about attending again, right? So even if it's telling you, know, high level summary, well, you didn't quite hit that this should have been an email, Mark, but you're flirting with it. The meeting had purpose and a plan, but it felt like a family reunion for all those, with all those intros. Time management was more of a suggestion than a rule. So let's tighten that up next time. You did a good job including everyone, but let's make sure the quieter folks get a word in too. You know, all things we just talked about.

Moniuqe Howard (: 16:08

you

Moniuqe Howard (: 16:30

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 16:31

And then kind of clear, I think this is one that I have that's a weekly meeting. So no, actually I think this one was an intro call with a client and a project I'm working on. Which is good about this too, for this kind of purpose, I could share something like this and it's not gonna show like.

Moniuqe Howard (: 16:44

Okay.

Kyle James (: 16:51

you know, private information in it, you know, it doesn't get into specifics, but it gives you general advice for the person running the meeting or anybody on the meeting about, oh, how could we all kind of do that better? Let's see if I can find some other, you know, funny statements in there. Let's aim for a little less who's who and more what's what next time.

Moniuqe Howard (: 16:53

No, it won't.

Moniuqe Howard (: 17:03

Yeah, exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 17:11

and why you look for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle James (: 17:18

The meeting started on time, but it meandered like a lazy river. And because it was an intro call, it absolutely went around and made sure everybody told who they are and what they were doing on the project.

Moniuqe Howard (: 17:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah

And then look at the end, says, remember time is money. it's, it's, it's, and you know, I think that as one of the things I would love to do, because I built it on a whim to give, like I said, to give more meat to my LinkedIn post, instead of just a PDF. And one of the things that I'm talking with people, I'm getting the feedback. I want to go back in and make some changes because some of the things, you know, it doesn't really ask for all of the context, but maybe that is important for someone. You know, maybe they want to go a step further after they get this.

Kyle James (: 17:35

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 17:57

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 17:59

an option to come back and give more context and get a different, you know, another analysis of it. And so I love hearing the feedback and you talk about it, you give in context. It's always funny to read because every time you don't get the same, you always get the same words.

Kyle James (: 18:07

Sure.

Kyle James (: 18:18

This one's great. Key points were summarized, but decisions were clear as mud. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's great. Like, it's great how it kind of...

Moniuqe Howard (: 18:29

Yeah.

and to give the improvements. And that's the other part that I want to work on because even though I didn't tell the agent to just kind of come up with it, I gave it sites to reference. Some areas, some companies that are leaders in this area and they have posts and they have information and for it to use that. I want to expand that a little bit, but I did this in three days because I wanted to get my post out. So I made sure that at least in each case,

Kyle James (: 18:41

Mm-hmm.

Moniuqe Howard (: 18:59

agent isn't just coming up with it on its own, it has reference.

Kyle James (: 19:02

Yeah. Well, I can tell you personally, like, I'm a big fan of something like this. Give me one or two suggestions. Don't give me 20 suggestions because I can work on one thing at a time for the next meeting. But if you give me 20, it's analysis paralysis, right? And this is great because, all right, here's two things to work on. Choose one or both, but it's not overloaded of stuff. All right, this is my other one where it beat me up a little bit.

Moniuqe Howard (: 19:11

yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 19:18

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 19:22

Mm-hmm.

Moniuqe Howard (: 19:26

Exactly, exactly.

gosh.

Kyle James (: 19:31

55 guilty of a calendar crime and like I said, this was a weekly meeting that I actually did have an agenda on that we kind of covered but Well, this meeting was a little bit like a road trip without a map lots of stops, but not quite sure where we were headed The collaboration was decent was a good team vibe, but the clock was more of a suggestion than a rule

Moniuqe Howard (: 19:46

Mmm, good.

Kyle James (: 19:53

Next time, let's aim for a clear agenda and some solid action items to avoid those lost stock decisions. Keep encouraging those quieter voices and you'll soon be on your way to a symphony of success. And you could probably even tell this for this, because it's kind of a weekly meeting, it's one that a lot of times there's a certain CEO on the call that kind of just takes over and kind of runs a lot of it. But, you know, and kind of delegates stuff to certain people and asks for their input, but it's not always, you

Moniuqe Howard (: 19:53

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 20:02

I love it.

Moniuqe Howard (: 20:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle James (: 20:23

It's not every single time we're on everything.

Moniuqe Howard (: 20:24

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that's good feedback as facilitators. Even though you are the one that's in charge of it, it's good for you to, if you get something like this, you may say, I would like to have more engagement instead of me pulling it out of people. So how do I change that? Maybe you don't, you may call the meeting, but maybe some person takes a part of it or whatever part that is for them, have them speak up.

Kyle James (: 20:43

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 20:56

builds a level of confidence, shows trust and confidence in the other person. But also those voices kind of come up because sometimes, I know you've been in meetings before where you ask a question and it's like crickets and you know that there's more information out there. And you have to keep trying to ask it in a different way or maybe call, you hate to call someone a name like you're in school, but you might do it.

Kyle James (: 21:02

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 21:13

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 21:26

I love the fact that it gives you an opportunity to kind of see yourself if you are that facilitator that runs the entire meeting.

Kyle James (: 21:34

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point too. Like this helps you identify, oh, maybe there is a different role for me to play on this of making sure everybody's included where the CEO is gonna do more of the orchestration. Yeah, that's a great call. But once again, you know, kind of get some actionable items. like, cause this one I kind of got beat up on a little bit of everything. You know, it gives you kind of three things to like focus on here. But it's super witty and the response is all throughout.

Moniuqe Howard (: 21:41

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 21:59

exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 22:02

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 22:04

which I love. And I know as a builder you always kind of love seeing like, all right, look, this is useful stuff that someone's getting.

Moniuqe Howard (: 22:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 22:11

I do,

Someone asked me whether or not I go back to it and I was like, you know, I don't want to say I've mastered it, but I try my best to be mindful of those four key areas. But I love going back to see just what it's going to tell me because it's kind of like, it's a laugh, a chuckle that you get, but also a meaningful, you know, critique that you can then run away with. And it doesn't, I mean, there are some cases where she may come back and I forgot what the title is for those who get like 80 or above, because I think I get

Kyle James (: 22:21

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 22:35

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 22:42

for like certain thresholds. You you may be one of those that she may say, hey, listen, you're doing a great job. I would love to see one of those. I may have to put the call out because I haven't gotten one yet.

Kyle James (: 22:45

I didn't get the good threshold.

Kyle James (: 22:58

Now I'm gonna have to feed more meetings into it to see what happens. call out anybody out there listening, I'll make sure the link to the agents in the show notes and all, but if anybody scores a higher than 80, please share it with us, because Monique hasn't even seen one yet.

Moniuqe Howard (: 23:01

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 23:10

Please do. No, I haven't seen one. I'm still in the 70s. There's still things that she tells me that I need to work on, which is great because we're always striving to be better.

Kyle James (: 23:22

Yeah, yeah, I love that too. There's always room for improvement. There's always a better way to do anything. just, is the juice worth the squeeze? And you're never gonna know unless you get feedback like this of things you could change. So you kinda mentioned earlier something that was, that you got kinda, what's coming next?

Moniuqe Howard (: 23:26

Thank

Moniuqe Howard (: 23:34

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 23:41

yeah.

Which is really interesting. So when I build agent, I mentioned before, my focus is really on upscaling, rescaling day two, right? Productivity part is always going to come. I think they're very close at getting all those things done, but I love the two acts, you know, management and you know, even, you know, VPs, you know, when you say you want your people to do more strategic work, what is that work and how do they get

Kyle James (: 23:50

Okay.

Kyle James (: 24:11

Mmm.

Moniuqe Howard (: 24:12

there. A lot of, especially I'm going to speak from project management. Project management is a profession and it has standards and over time you get stuck in these repetitive tasks. You always create a schedule, you always, you know, you always have to have a read log and things become mundane. All of it. Yes, exactly. So it's kind of a repetitive thing that you do all the time and work like that,

Kyle James (: 24:27

Yep.

Kyle James (: 24:31

Gantt charts, road maps, yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 24:42

some of those skills, know, those soft skills and those higher level thinking skills that you need to do only because those repetitive tasks consume a lot of your time. You're just meetings all the time, you're doing that all the time, everyone's asking you where's your schedule, where's your re-log, where's this, where's that, and so sometimes you do get those things dulled down. So like I said, my focus is on upskilling and re-skilling. My next agent is around

Kyle James (: 24:53

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 25:12

decision making, specifically using the mental model first principles. And so first principle thinking, what it really does is it helps you to look at whether or you're working on a new process, rebuilding an old one, have an idea. It takes you through the process of, this is what I'm thinking. And then we want to address any assumptions, any biases, anything that has been there for a long time and you're following.

but you don't know that you're following it helps to break those down and identify those areas so that you move those out of the way and you get to the bare bones and see if you can rebuild from the ground up because we we have a lot of experience a lot of knowledge but it does get in the way of sometimes our creativity sometimes you know we can't see another path because we've always done something some certain way and so that's my goal

Kyle James (: 25:48

wow.

Kyle James (: 26:07

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 26:11

is to build an agent based on the mental model first principle thinking and it's not for the expert. So I don't want anyone out there who's an expert to come after me once I build my agent and say wait a minute you know these things need to change. It's really for someone who wants to get into a different way of making decisions about a process that they're building. And so what's really interesting is that I'm not as with should have been email I'm not just giving the

carte blanche and saying okay you're going to get this information go out and see if it's first principle thinking you know identify assumptions yada yada I am taking it step by step by step breaking it down for the agent so that you get that more rich experience and that's why I say we're the new person because not everybody knows about this mental model and how to use it and I want it to become a part of their arsenal

Kyle James (: 27:00

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 27:09

I love that. I think first person principles is so important because it challenges everything. But if you would, it's probably useful if you wouldn't mind for the audience, because I'm sure not everybody's familiar with that. Explain what first person principles means.

Moniuqe Howard (: 27:15

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 27:24

Yeah, so like I said before, it's really about...

breaking down your assumptions and your dogmas and the norms that you have built up over time as you are addressing exactly decisions and as you're addressing and making new processes. If you've been in it for a long time, you don't really identify or even know that you have these. And so the principle around that is, I'm going to the agent is going to pull out what are those assumptions.

Kyle James (: 27:36

biases.

Kyle James (: 27:50

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 27:58

that it sees based on how you describe what you're doing exactly and and challenge you through a Socratic questioning that Forces you to answer questions that you may have never asked yourself before Right. And so those are the things that's really important because sometimes you don't have another person or sometimes you may not have someone in your circle that knows about this that can challenge you in that way and This allows you to have a thought

Kyle James (: 28:01

challenge everything.

Kyle James (: 28:12

I love it.

Moniuqe Howard (: 28:28

partner that whose goal is to help you get through that not to give you the answer because my agent I told you your goal is not to give the answer but to lead them through the process so that when they get to the bare bones and they see everything that they have that's left then let's help them rebuild give them examples of how someone else did it or you know point to this use case or give them that extra information

Kyle James (: 28:52

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 28:58

so that they can step back and say, aha, okay. And a lot of people cite Elon Musk, right? When he was doing, I think it's with the rockets that they're reusing before, you know, that was a question, right? Well, you know, what's the problem, you know, exactly why can't we reuse it? And no one had actually asked that question before. And so that's where, you know, his thing with SpaceX came about in terms of them

Kyle James (: 29:11

Right, reusable rockets.

Kyle James (: 29:16

He's like, why couldn't they reuse? Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 29:27

capturing or recapturing those rockets. And so, you know, it's one of those things that I think it's critical because, like I said, at some point everybody's going to have agents to help them be productive. But what sets you apart are those soft skills and decision making is one of those skills that will set you apart from everyone else.

Kyle James (: 29:43

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 29:48

Yeah, I'm curious from you. One of the things I've noticed that I've had a lot of conversation with people about just kind of using GPTs in general.

is their confirmation affirming, right? Like you ask it to do something and it's always like, that's a great idea, da da da da da da da. And in a lot of ways, I'm curious, are you having a lot of success getting it to break that? Of like, I don't want you confirming and affirming anything. I want you to pick apart all the reasons this is wrong every single time and getting it to like position that way. Like how is that going along?

Moniuqe Howard (: 29:59

Yes.

Moniuqe Howard (: 30:02

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 30:13

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah that is like you say it's a problem, but you have to be intentional

Kyle James (: 30:26

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 30:27

And that's where it comes in. Do you want it to just give you an answer or do you want it to be your thought partner? A lot of times when I'm working with and I do work with it when I build my agents, I work with Chad GPT and I work with Claude. They both have different personalities and I get different things from them. But I also I'm always asking them a different question. So for instance, you may give them a prompt. They give you a response and then they give a suggestion. Do you want me to do this? Right. Appeasing.

Kyle James (: 30:42

They do.

Moniuqe Howard (: 30:57

I say no and then I interject something else, you know, I something I said before I want to change because based on your results I'm Rethinking how I want to do it and I give it back and then it comes back to that so I'm leading the conversation more than they are and Sometimes I take their suggestions and sometimes I don't I find that that's really helpful Because then you're in the driver's seat and you don't get that. I mean, I don't need anyone to champion me

Kyle James (: 31:08

Sure.

Kyle James (: 31:19

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 31:26

Right, right.

Moniuqe Howard (: 31:27

why it becomes, I don't want to say annoying, but I understand what it's doing and why it does that. But I have to be in the driver's seat when it comes to this, otherwise I won't have an agent, like I said, that does give some really meeting information and some really constructive information that someone can actually take and do something about.

Kyle James (: 31:50

love it. I'm the same way. I don't need you to like pat me on the back on this. need you to critically devil's advocate it. Tell me what's wrong with it or justify your reasoning why you think what I'm saying is right or wrong. And I'm okay with either. And yeah, there's a...

Moniuqe Howard (: 31:57

Exactly.

Moniuqe Howard (: 32:04

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a difference between chat GBT and Claude, right? Claude right now is straight to the point. You know, no fluff for me. It's kind of like that. I go to chat GBT when I want to be a little bit more creative. You know, when I'm working on a persona, I use chat GBT, but I don't use Claude to make my persona.

Kyle James (: 32:15

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 32:23

Yeah.

They've changed, I think five is a little bit more neutral, logical maybe, than four was, but it's not all the way.

Moniuqe Howard (: 32:31

Yeah, but I still have to poke it and say, you know, come on back because I need that distinction.

Kyle James (: 32:36

Yeah, you're right. It's a little better, but yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 32:39

Yeah, I need that distinction and I think recently, I don't know if it was, gosh I forgot who it was from OpenAI. mentioned, they didn't realize how much people use the different models in different ways to do certain things, right? And so that was, they said that was a miss on their part and that they started to reopen that back up, which I'm glad because I do need that creative wittiness that comes, sometimes does come out of chat GPT.

Kyle James (: 32:55

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 33:09

Like Claude is very straight to the point. You know, my professor and you know, that business person that is there to kind of give me the data and the information without all the fluff.

Kyle James (: 33:12

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 33:21

Yeah, I'm even gonna say something a little controversial here, maybe, but it's 30 minutes in, we'll see who's actually listening to us this far in, but.

Moniuqe Howard (: 33:27

gosh.

Kyle James (: 33:29

No, it's like with you saw all the pushback from four to five and a lot of it had me concerned. It's like you people are depending on this thing too much to pat you on your own back. Like I'm sorry, like do your job. Like this thing's here to support you, not like, you know, tell you how wonderful you are and great. you know, get a backbone.

Moniuqe Howard (: 33:48

But you know...

There is there I mean obviously we're spectrum of people some people need it some people don't like you say we don't need it I can understand that in some cases, you know every now and then if they're not getting it from work You may have that boss. It doesn't ever really say anything good Or maybe you're just a person that needs a certain level of support that you can't get anywhere else I personally, you know when I saw when I use five I was like I see

Kyle James (: 33:56

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 34:05

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 34:11

It's fair, it's fair.

Moniuqe Howard (: 34:22

little bit of difference but unless you are a mathematician, a researcher, you I mean outside of companies who use the API who get you know that cost break you know a everyday person yeah maybe the personality but it to me it feels the same in terms of the outcome and you know for me five is okay I wasn't excited so I'm waiting for the next one.

Kyle James (: 34:40

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 34:48

Yeah, I mean, it's the real reality is they did it because it's a huge cost savings and energy and CPU. Like, let's be honest, like, because it could switch models, but yeah, and to me, that's a big step up, right? The fact you could do this without like burning the entire power grid down is actually a pretty good step. Keep doing that.

Moniuqe Howard (: 34:54

Exactly. Exactly.

Oh yeah, it definitely is. Exactly. It definitely is. Yeah, yeah, it really is. I'm glad that they are still thinking about those things because that's one of the things you definitely worry about. Yeah, we're having the time of our lives right now with AI, but at what cost? And so I'm glad that they are actually looking and focusing on those things.

Kyle James (: 35:15

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 35:20

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 35:24

100%. Alright, I've enjoyed all the stuff we talked about, but I wanna make sure we come back and talk a little bit about some of the other stuff you're doing, because I think that's super cool and impactful. know, kinda looking into your background, kind of what you built with color together.

Moniuqe Howard (: 35:28

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 35:33

Okay.

Kyle James (: 35:40

Would love for you to tell that story a little bit and just share with the audience kind of some of the stuff you do with smarticle and kind of the story there because I think it's such a personal and Powerful story that I want to make sure that like that gets out there to people too

Moniuqe Howard (: 35:55

Yeah, thank you for that, Kyle.

I got into building agents because I have two children who are on a spectrum. I say children, but they're younger adults right now, but they exactly always they're on the spectrum. And at the time my son had language regression, so he lost his language and my daughter did not have any language at all. They didn't start talking until around four. And then my daughter, she progressed well, so she was able to have full sentences and every coherent and people can understand her.

Kyle James (: 36:04

They're still your babies.

Moniuqe Howard (: 36:28

My son had language, but it was very choppy. You had to still kind of ask questions to get the meaning of what he was saying. And that's very difficult because, you know, four is fine, but as you get older, then it becomes a challenge. And while I would say the school he went to and the kids that he was around were very helpful, but once he got to fourth grade, where that fourth, fifth grade, that's where that transition happened for every child.

Kyle James (: 36:57

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 36:58

you know, they are going to adolescence and things are changing and the way that they interact with each other are changing. And so I knew that there had to be something or there must be something, you know, that could help him actually improve his language. Going through many years of therapy, all the therapists and teachers were great, but there was still something missing. So I was into Alexa. I was thinking, OK, what can I do to help him and kids like him with their language?

I hadn't put my finger on it yet. I had a bunch of Alexas in the house one day he took one and into his room and started talking to it and the wonderful thing about Alexa is that she does not judge whatever you ask she responds to and it made me think about myself and teachers and therapists we want the best for the children, but what tends to happen sometimes is that

Kyle James (: 37:44

Right.

Moniuqe Howard (: 37:57

we we do on some level they feel a little bit of judgment they feel a little performance anxiety but Alexa that was not the case and so after about six months I could tell his language was changing because she would not correct she would not make any assumptions the only thing she would come back and say is I don't understand

Kyle James (: 38:18

Please be clear. Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 38:20

Exactly. And so he had to think, what are the words and what are the other words that I can say and put in this sentence to help her understand? And it didn't matter whether or not it was syntactically correct or whether or not, you know, there were propositions in it. It didn't matter. As long as he could pull together some words, she was like, okay, I know what you want and give him what he wanted. And so that continued to build and to build. I can see a difference in his language. So it made me think there's really something to this.

So then I decided, okay, I'm going to work on a project and I built Color Together. And what Color Together does is it allows the child to have a back and forth conversation about a picture that they're coloring. So the child, and it's a physical picture, the child prints, the parent prints out the picture for them.

Kyle James (: 38:56

you

Moniuqe Howard (: 39:11

And Alexa has her picture and it's just a back and forth conversation about what you want to color. So maybe they printed out the house and Alexa will say, well, what part do you want to color? I want to color the door or they might say door one word. She'll ask what color do you want to make it? Red or however they see it. She understands. And it's a back and forth conversation that they have about this picture with no judgment. They can use their language as they have it.

And over time, if it's used with the parent or with the therapist or a teacher, they can help them increase their language. So maybe this time they only say red and maybe the teachers say, why don't you say, I want the color red or add more words to it. So it was one of those things that I was definitely happy that we were able to build. actually won second place in a hackathon.

Kyle James (: 40:04

Yeah.

You're just an award winner all over the place.

Moniuqe Howard (: 40:10

But you know, that's what's really important to me that it's that I build something that makes a change in someone's life. And so this was one of the ways for me to do that in a child's life. I'm sorry that has the same issue that my son had. And I continue with smarticles to get it into schools and to introduce it to therapists. Obviously with the school system, there's always some restriction around technology, so we couldn't get it fully in.

but we could get it to parents and to others so that they could actually use it. And that was really, you know, part of what I did for a couple of years just to make sure that everyone knew that it was out there. So that was the first thing that I did.

Kyle James (: 40:53

I love it. I love it.

anybody out there that knows somebody like this like there you go I'll make sure the links in the show notes to all this but like talk about a powerful story about like you saw a problem and I think that's that's just a you're just a builder you're just a problem solver and and you see stuff and like how can I fix this and and start putting these pieces together which is which is this is a builder story right like it all ties together how do you balance all this go ahead please

Moniuqe Howard (: 41:15

way.

Yeah, exactly. And then just to let you know, well, I think that that's one of the things for me. I don't take on everything. What's most important to me. So SMARTICLE is very important to me.

I'm changing a bit, so I'm coming up with an intelligent SLP. So SLP is a speech language pathologist. And what we want to do is build something that not only takes in the language, but analyze it. So after you analyze it, then the AI can tell the teacher, OK, this child is having issues with verb tense, or this child is having issues with preposition. Or it gives them really rich information that they can use and that they can put

Kyle James (: 41:55

Mm.

Moniuqe Howard (: 42:04

back into the way that they teach the child or the way that they provide therapy. So we want it to be a full circle around them so that it's not right now is subjective. And only reason why is because someone has to listen every time and identify what the problem is. Depending on the level of the teacher or the speech language pathologist, they may miss some things. But with AI, just like we talked before about meeting transcripts, it's the same thing. We're using that actual interaction

Kyle James (: 42:30

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 42:34

and feeding it back through whatever the goals the child may have and giving the teacher some actionable or speech without some actionable things that actually can take place to help improve their conversation. And so like I say, I balance, I only work on those things that I'm passionate about. So I'm still working on that for should have been an email that was my first one on on agent AI. And I'm only building, I may build out the series of

models around decision-making but I may not do any more. It's one of, like I said, I make sure I work on those things and I'm passionate about so I can put everything in it and when it's left out I'm proud of it.

Kyle James (: 43:19

But wow, I think that's such a powerful, important story. don't want to go into a bunch of other stuff to ruin that.

Moniuqe Howard (: 43:25

You got it.

Kyle James (: 43:28

How could people help you? Obviously, anybody that knows a child that's run any of this absolutely will make sure they can find you, but are you looking for collaborators? When is this dropping, this new agent? Do you want feedback, testers? Obvious, but how can people help you and how can people connect with you out there that are listening to this?

Moniuqe Howard (: 43:50

Yeah, like I said, those who have children or even if you're educator that's willing to pitch in and to work on it.

I don't want to suffer from proximity bias myself because I have my own experience with my child, but there are other experiences. And so that's what I've always reached out to community to say, Hey, am I getting this right? Is there something else I need to think about? And this agent will be built on, on, AutoGen, it's another platform. It won't be built in agent AI because I need a little bit to be a little bit more robust, but you know, yeah.

Kyle James (: 44:25

They might be able help you with that. should have a conversation. Yeah, yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 44:28

I reach out to them about that. But yeah, it's one of those, like I said, if you have a child or if you know of someone that I can connect with and then just talk these things out to make that agent better, then that's who I would love to connect with. And I'm giving myself some time with this one because there are, if I think, if my mind serves me correctly, is the orchestrated agent swarm with, I think about eight different agents. And so just like I do with my agent AI agents, I go through

meticulously what is it doing and making sure that it has it doesn't just come up with it on their own its own that it has instructions on what that output should be so it's gonna take me a little bit of time maybe about six to twelve months to really kind of get what I want out of it but yeah thank you for asking that yeah those are the people that I'm looking to connect with

Kyle James (: 45:04

Right.

Kyle James (: 45:16

You leveled up, yeah.

Kyle James (: 45:21

Love it, love it, awesome, awesome. Well, Monique, I'm so glad that we had this conversation and got to share this with everybody. for everybody out there that listened, thank you for making it all the way to the end. And until next time, keep building, keep growing, ageing away.

Moniuqe Howard (: 45:34

Yeah.

Moniuqe Howard (: 45:40

you