Do you want to lead an intelligent response to AI?
Many leaders’ response to AI is to pursue the obvious efficiency opportunities it can provide to achieve increased profitability. But leaders in intelligent organizations are focused on how AI can help their organizations become more efficient. They understand that focusing on the efficiency opportunities that AI offers is short-sighted and can cause long-term damage to the organization. They know that efficiency is just one of many important outcomes for building and maintaining a highly effective organization.
A holistic and integrated approach to AI
Intelligent organizational leaders have a holistic, holistic approach to ensuring their organizations remain highly effective in the AI era, including:
1. Clarify your purpose
Intelligent organizational leaders clearly explain why their organization exists – what exactly its worthy purpose or cause is. We ensure that each employee understands and is aligned with the importance of their role and how they contribute to the organization’s important mission. This clear and worthy purpose is the basis for capturing the discretionary efforts of all staff and serves as a compass to ensure that the organization does not veer off course in the face of AI-induced disruption. The key is to leverage AI to provide the clarity needed to ensure that an organization’s performance systems are designed, aligned, and iterated to consistently and effectively achieve valued objectives.
2. Introduce systems thinking
Intelligent organizational leaders use systems thinking to understand exactly how the organization works as a whole to achieve the organization’s mission. They are acutely aware of the interrelationship of both operational delivery and human engagement systems and how these two systems must be aligned to work in sync. This allows organizations to quickly contextualize the value-add opportunities presented by AI and integrate new ways of thinking in building organizational capabilities, rather than relying on AI as an external resource.
3. Create operational headroom
Leaders of intelligent organizations are focused on how AI can help them create operational slack. Creating operational slack is the deliberate act of building excess resources (time and capacity) beyond what is currently needed. They are well aware that key suppliers may take a short-sighted efficiency-enhancing approach to AI, and that operational margin is essential for the uncertainties and unforeseen events that AI can cause, such as supply chain disruptions. To explore new and better ways of doing things and make time to collaborate. And given the reality of AI, we need to ensure that we manage the uncertainty and stress that AI can cause for people, so we have time to engage and help them find new futures.
4. Enable open communication
Leaders of intelligent organizations understand that in times of uncertainty, transparent, consistent, and regular communication from leaders is critical to building and maintaining trust with employees. Importantly, leaders in intelligent organizations share the rationale for making important decisions and are transparently accountable for these decisions.
5. Building collective internal intelligence
Intelligent organizational leaders foster the building of collective internal intelligence. Specifically, leaders in intelligent organizations are articulating how to overcome reliance on AI and foster internal learning. Encourage your team to use free time to learn. Learning and development professionals are tasked with creating opportunities for teams to develop collective intelligence through social learning. This involves engaging in dialogue and discussion to find better ways of doing things, develop better ways of working together, and solve complex operational problems. Teams can upskill and reskill their members to stay relevant and effective in the face of the changes and disruptions that AI brings to their operational environments. Teams must test the new thinking provided by the AI source, and once it is proven, document it and implement it as a new standard best practice.
6. Ensure ethical and transparent use of AI
Leaders of intelligent organizations contract with their employees to be transparent and ethical about the sources and use of AI. This means that people need to figure out how to use AI and carefully test new ideas in an organizational context in an organizational context, before applying AI to iterate or improve existing practices. In this way, relevant information sources from AI are responsibly transformed into collective organizational intelligence that resides (as an institutional capacity) within relevant structures and systems.
7. Encourage a growth mindset
Leaders of intelligent organizations understand that mindset plays a vital role in how employees think and behave. They promote a growth mindset so that employees and organizations are resilient and able to respond positively to the opportunities and challenges posed by AI. They expose and encourage us to challenge the assumptions and beliefs that influence how we see the world and behave. They foster language and dialogue that builds healthy thinking and challenges unhealthy thinking.
The conclusion is
Intelligent organizational leaders use AI to create operational headroom and ensure that they dedicate the right amount of time and effort to systematically and continuously evolve their organizations and remain relevant in the face of the massive changes and challenges that AI brings to their operational environments. Leaders of intelligent organizations see AI as an opportunity to systematically advance the long-term effectiveness of their organizations, not just short-term efficiency gains. This can leave your organization exposed and vulnerable.
