Easing into AI - First Things First
It can often be tough to know how or where to start when complex new tools like Artificial Intelligence become available.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to become an integral part of nearly every industry very soon. To successfully introduce AI, leaders need a well-planned strategy and a thoughtful approach like the one we’ll outline in this series. Taking a step back to plan for the “people side of things” will help you maximize the benefits of early adoption while ensuring your team members have what they need to adapt and succeed.
Let’s start by ensuring you have a solid foundation of Knowledge for your AI journey.
Consider these four must-haves:
Verify you have a shared understanding of what you’re getting into with AI
Check your technical ability to implement & support your chosen AI tools
Establish initial roles & responsibilities for AI
Define your overall AI strategy
Let’s dig deeper into each element of establishing your initial AI Knowledge baseline:
1. Knowledge: Build a Foundation
• Educate Leadership and Stakeholders: Do your homework: research and share basic concepts and strategies through workshops and training sessions to ensure everyone generally understands AI’s potential and limitations. Then include specifics that apply to your company and your industry vertical as appropriate.
• Assess Current Infrastructure: Identify gaps in your technical infrastructure, security footprint, data maturity, and skill levels. Be honest about this assessment and avoid rushing to judgement in either direction. (“Panic vs Pollyanna”) Be ready to potentially limit or accelerate your early rollout pace and information exposure based on this assessment.
• Establish a Governing Coalition: Put roles and responsibilities in place for the engagement of AI in your organization. Decide how you’ll do research, engage various parts of the company, make decisions, communicate, and enforce AI guidelines. Ensure there’s representation from the areas most impacted by AI - including those who own the data and those who understand areas you might target for “early win” use cases.
• Get Aligned on a Unified Strategy: Ensure that all stakeholders – from executives to front-line managers - are on the same page about what AI is, what it means to your organization, and what benefits you’ll seek. This alignment lays the groundwork for a cohesive AI strategy.
In our next post, we’ll get into how you can prove that AI is actually a good fit to your business and to your culture through the execution of a “Proof of Concept” inititiave.
-Steve
Reach out to theBigRocks if your team is considering a rollout of artificial intelligence tools like Microsoft Copilot(c), ChatGPT, Watson, Einstein, or Google Cloud AI. We can help you walk through this model and plan for success.
