Learning How to Think Before Applying AI Tools

As a Veritus coach, it seems like leadership and fundraisers are obsessed with speed. How can we make the research go faster? How can we get the data faster? How can I find information faster? This all translates to a focus on “How Can I Ramp Up to GET TO THAT GIFT!?”

If you read the tone of that last sentence, you’re picking up on the anxiety and fear that is often present in relationship fundraising.

Now there is nothing wrong with working quickly. But there is something to be said for taking a bit more time. There is solid learning to last a lifetime by taking a step back and digging in yourself to learn the full process before applying AI tools.

At the very least, you need to do this to test if the AI assumptions and conclusions are interpreting the information well and giving solid direction. (How many times have you plugged an internet rage statement into Snopes just to find that it was false?)

At Veritus, we talk about focusing on being effective versus efficient in the path to results. (We didn’t invent that concept, obviously; it’s called Pareto’s Law.) When you do that, efficiencies come over time. Your brain trains to know what to look for and know what is meaningful. In essence, you’re building “prompts,” much like what is needed to use an AI tool well.

The Growth of Skilled Incompetence

This came to mind when I read a recent NPR story on a high school English composition teacher who turned her classroom into an AI-free zone. This quote and explanation from the teacher stood out because it relates so well to the work a gift officer is doing in the process of building a relationship of trust and understanding with a donor:

‘They didn't know the material because they had outsourced that level of thinking and they didn't have to come to a conclusion or an argument about the text they were studying on their own.’

She realized her students couldn't always discern whether what AI generated was valuable or not, and they still needed to build foundational skills, like how to write a thesis and construct an argument. (emphasis mine)

Back to Pareto’s Law. I distinctly remember a team exercise circa 1998 that focused on this effective/efficient conundrum. It was based on learnings from Chris Argyris’ 1990 book “Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning.” I have referenced that book from time to time through the years, but following an office renovation last year, I have lost where it is stored.

Enter AI. With a quick question, I not only retrieved the full title of the book, but the Google AI Overview refreshed my memory of the key points. But I had to have that knowledge that was instilled in me three decades ago to be able to write a good prompt to get to what I wanted.

The key point that jumped out is skilled incompetence, which, according to Argyris, “is a condition in which people excel at doing what they shouldn't because it seems right. These managers are ‘skilled’ because they act without thinking. They are ‘incompetent’ because their skill produces unintended results.”

Results Take Trust and Time

Back to fundraising and results. If you’re valuing speed or efficiency here as you’re learning about your donor because you think it will get you there faster, you’re missing the point.

Building real trust in a relationship takes time, with deep, rich rewards of that work. And the result is: helping a donor realize the greatest joy when they transfer the value of what they care about in this world to the work your organization is doing.

That is the Veritus Way in a nutshell. It takes a system and structure, learned skills and developed behaviors that support knowing the donor and focuses on realizing joy.