For Powerdays 2023, the Augury team came together to seek inspiration in the company’s recently updated vision: “a world where the combined work of people and machines makes life better in every way.’ In this post, we look behind the scenes at how the new strategy was brought to life to empower the team for the year ahead. It worked. Now it’s time to get to work!
Aligning The Team
“Powerdays are all about what we want to do, and how we’ll get there with each person on this team,” says Adi Shaul, Augury’s Creative Manager Marketing and one of the event’s organizers. “This year it was about predicting a better future. We wanted to create an experience that enabled creative ideas and perspectives, strengthened relationships, and had us working together towards our shared vision – so everyone not only knows what the strategy for 2023 means but also how it feels.”
“I see it as a day to fill your battery for the year,” says Yael Shalev, Augury’s Learning & Development Manager and one of the many others who organized the internal event. “As you learn more about our objectives, you charge yourself with power. So, it’s about team- and motivation-building: building excitement around the company and making sure everyone is aligned in the same direction.”
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Future Starts Now
Once a year, Powerdays brings the company together to take a deep dive and brainstorm around a particular theme – may it be as ‘Product-Market Fit’ or ‘Customer As Hero’. For 2023, it was “Imagine a Better Future”, which is an apt subject since Augury has transformed over the last year and is now able to take on a much more ambitious vision and mission.
But the event did come with its challenges. “When aspiring to create a deeper connection between a company’s mission and purpose and its employees, face-to-face encounters are great enablers,” says Shanee Kraus, another co-organizer and Augury’s Head of Employee Community. “We only had the option of bringing the team in Israel together, while the rest of the company is scattered across the US and EU. So the whole company only came together virtually for the afternoon. In this situation, we really needed to come up with a challenging task that got everyone’s attention.”
Augury’s Vision: A world where the combined work of people and machines makes life better in every way.
Augury’s Mission: To provide insights into the health of machines, processes and operations to transform how people work and what they can create.
Augury’s Purpose: Where the predictive power of AI transforms the world so businesses, people, and our planet can all thrive.
The day began with two introductory sessions. CEO/Co-Founder Saar Yoskovitz presented ‘The Future Is Already Knocking On Our Door’ inspired by his recent trip to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. Afterwards, Augury’s VP of Strategy Artem Kroupenev gave an overview of existing trends and predictions on the impact of AI in years to come – before connecting this to Augury’s own mission.
Predicting A Better Future For All
Artem’s presentation set the scene for the day’s main event: a collaborative challenge whereby teams imagined how AI and Augury technology could impact our society over the next five years.
Teams were assigned one of three focuses: ‘The World’ (sustainability and climate), ‘Our Ecosystem’ (Augury’s future customers and users) and ‘Augury and Our People’ (the future workplace and how Augury and the people within it will evolve). Teams then had to choose a persona, do research and brainstorm, before discussing their findings with a conversational AI (ChatGPT) and then summarizing and presenting their findings in a creative way.
‘AI will not replace you. A person using AI will replace you.’
“It really struck me how everyone came together even though they came from different departments and walks of life,” says Yael. “When I witnessed the unleashed creativity, I felt so proud and privileged to be part of this organization.
“It was so cool to see people really dive into this,” agrees Adi. “They were really using ChapGPT to ask the right questions around imagining what the future will look like, and then use other AI technologies to create the presentations,” says Adi. “The results really resonated with Artem’s main theme about how ‘AI will not replace you. A person using AI will replace you.’ In other words, we shouldn’t be scared, but we do need to figure out how to use it.”
The Future… Still Needs Some Work
“I was most impressed by the completely AI-produced interview between Saar and Sean having a conversation about the future that was believable,” says Adi. ‘Of course, they still come across as aliens and it’s all still very creepy and crunchy, but you can really see the potential – even for the short-term.”
“I really saw the potential in bringing a persona to life. With marketing, we’re always creating personas to be more accurate in how we engage and connect with customers. But it’s usually a list on a PowerPoint slide. Now I can really imagine actually speaking and interacting with these AI personas to help me understand our customers even better. This is definitely something we can use!”
‘It’s all still very creepy and crunchy, but you can really see the potential – even for the short-term.’
A Positive Future
Whether it was how Augury’s AI can further streamline a customer’s operations via expanded human-machine interactions, or expanding Augury’s technologies for whole new sectors beyond manufacturing such as agriculture, the teams created their own bright future scenarios.
“I was most impressed with the fact that the teams – small and with little experience using these technologies – could come up with such high-quality deliverables in just 90 minutes,” says Yael. “It reflected the power of the group and the power of AI. We were not only able to put ourselves five years into the future, but also step into our future customer shoes. We really got to better understand what our products and technologies mean to our ecosystem.”
In short: Augury as a company attained alignment. Onward and upward to next year – and the future!
