How can you use data to make a business runner better, faster, with less friction? With Alexis Kingsbury, AirManual

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by serial entrepreneur, business simplifier, and podcaster, Alexis Kingsbury. Alexis is the co-founder of AirManual, a company that helps businesses document their processes, onboarding, and training so that employees can take on new responsibilities and deliver high quality work more quickly and efficiently.

Indeed, on Alexis’ LinkedIn profile, he says that he saves “thousands of hours of time for business leaders each year, reducing stress, and unlocking business growth”. He’s been business savvy since before he became a teenager, and founded his first business while studying Management Science at university. From the ‘using data smarter’ mindset, making better – business-focused – use of data is precisely what Alexis does to empower all sorts of organisations to grow faster, with less pain, while at the same time avoiding the common mistakes everyone seems to make.

Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 9 August 2023.

Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.

Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.

Voice over by Samantha Boffin.

As a pioneer of working out what works in business processes – and then using validated, road-tested checklists to accelerate, simplify, and automate them – Alexis tells us that he is now able to spend most of his time working on the business and less and less actually in the business. And, in a classic case of no “cobblers’ children’s shoes”, he’s applied this approach to his own companies.

Business leaders – particularly founder-entrepreneurs – who he works with often find themselves stuck working in rather than on the business, over-relied-upon, and stressed out. But even a simple intervention with AirManual can save a leader 15 hours a week. This removes bottlenecks to growth and at the same time drives down stress, in this way enabling leaders to lead – AND secure – a more meaningful life/work balance.

Alexis is a big champion of taking time out – real time out, not just working next to a pool for two weeks – and offers all his globally-distributed team 40 (yes, forty) days holiday per year. He also puts measures in place to ensure that his team don’t under-take their holiday allocation – and fortunately means not nearly as draconian as Sam suggests (fining them a day’s pay for every day’s holiday not taken!).

To make a business run more efficiently, Alexis advises identifying the data that matter, summarising these in a regularly-updated dashboard, and the whole team discussing them at regular, at-least weekly meetings. This includes taking a weekly pulse of employee happiness. He also has a daily, ten-minute huddle for his global team. “Just because we are remote, it doesn’t have to feel like that,” he observes.

Alexis is excited and terrified by AI in equal measure, but more importantly his businesses have started to use it – for instance ChatGPT – and his team is guiding clients through smart use of AI to accelerate laborious, repetitive processes.

EXTERNAL LINKS

The AirManual homepage – https://www.airmanual.co

Alexis’ LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexkingsbury/

The Business Leader’s Guide to Using AI and ChatGPT – https://discover.airmanual.co/resources/ai-and-chatgpt

The De-Stress Your Business podcast, hosted by Alexis and his business partner, Paddy Mann – https://www.airmanual.co/podcasts/de-stress-your-business

To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.