Dan
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has suddenly moved from science fiction to science reality. And ChatGPT has been on the forefront of ushering this discussion topic into the mainstream media and executive suites.
In the past few months, our team has received a few dozen emails/calls from clients that are asking for guidance around their AI Strategic Initiatives. If you’re not thinking about it or planning for AI becoming a part of your business, you may end up being late to the party.
But have no fear, you can catch up quickly. Here are the three “Must Do’s” if you are just beginning to architect your AI strategy and key strategic initiatives.
#1 Upgrade your corporate education
The most common problem that we hear about in most organizations exploring artificial intelligence is that most of their colleagues aren’t well informed on the basics of AI let alone the possibilities of applying AI to your business challenges. And while many organizations are beginning to hire individuals who have an expertise in machine learning and AI, the expertise often remains with just a select few people.
And as the African proverb goes, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. This aphorism is very apropos when it comes to accelerating understanding and adoption of artificial intelligence in your organization.
The companies that are actively upskilling and informing their employees, are the ones who are getting ahead.
To that end, I encourage that organizations start by introducing “coffee talk” sessions that introduce the basic concepts of AI and arouse the interest of their employees. By demystifying artificial intelligence, it removes many of the intrinsic doubts that we widely hear repeated in organizations.
- “Are they trying to outsource my job to robots?”
- “Will they replace me with machine learning?”
- “Why should I train a machine to take away my livelihood?”
I encourage periodically hosting sessions and including outside experts to participate in those sessions. By including those who have already been experimenting with this technology your people will quickly learn more about the different use cases and applications.
By meeting people who are at the forefront of this technology, it will open their eyes to how you can build an AI Strategy as well as safeguard against the misuse and abuse of AI.
#2 The digital readiness audit
As the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland said:
Understanding your organization’s current state of digital readiness is a prerequisite to building an AI strategy.
A digital readiness assessment is an important first step for any company committed to the process of digital transformation, whether it’s narrowly focused on daily operations or an enterprise view. This assessment allows companies to know where they stand, prompting them to increase their digital maturity level before attempting to achieve a successful, continual digital transformation. So how do you do it? Three steps:
Step 1 – Digital Climate Survey:
The survey is designed to uncover important facets of the digital infrastructure and culture. The survey should focus on areas such as: Leadership, Infrastructure, Digital Attitudes, Accountability and Resources. The survey will provide baselines for comparisons within, and outside, of your company.
Step 2 – Gap Analysis:
Identify the potential gaps and barriers that may be impeding your progress. The survey is a starting point of spotting gaps. Conducting internal interviews to validate the findings and put more qualitative insight around the survey will ready you to take action.
Step 3 – Current to Future State Exercise:
Prioritizing the areas of greatest opportunity and risk is the starting point for this exercise. Once you have converged on these priority areas (which will have been uncovered in the prior steps), the job is to bring together an eclectic group of experts and creative problem solvers to ideate on how to take action against the biggest pain points AND opportunity areas. This will provide you strategic roadmap for digital readiness.
#3 Design Small, “Hackable” AI Experiments
Last month I decided that rather than just read about AI, I would run my own mini experiments. I asked Open.Ai, a ChatGPT site, to help me solve a small business challenge that I was personally facing. For example, I was struggling with understanding how to improve the SEO for my website. By framing the right questions to ask, I was able to run a tiny experiment where I could apply AI to help me with an everyday challenge.
Once you’ve scratched the surface of AI, I recommend designing a workshop or think tank to explore how you might integrate AI into your day-to-day operations and your business objectives. By assembling a variegated group of thinkers and experts, you will find yourself accelerating your AI Strategy and use of ChatGPT.
Furthermore, once you’ve identified a few small and fast experiments that you can conduct to see how your AI strategic initiatives pan out, the next step is to take a cold and dispassionate view of your AI initiatives. And for that, I strongly urge you to apply the Killer Assumptions methodology and template.
The Killer Assumption method helps you to rapidly assess “What must hold true for the experiment to be a success?”, “What will have the greatest impact on the outcome of the experiment?” and “What do you know the least about and holds the greatest uncertainty?” By using this method of testing your hypotheses, you will be ready to go out and run your first batch of AI strategic initiatives.
Conclusion
Getting started with artificial intelligence can be daunting. But the benefits are significant. Just remember, the best place to plan for the future is within your business. By increasing the general education in the organization, understanding your own digital maturity, and designing thoughtful experiments with AI, you can accelerate your learning curve and stay ahead of the competition.
Sometimes, getting started can be just as big of a challenge as the actual process itself. But remember, the journey of a thousand miles always begins with that first step.
For more information, you can always contact us to discuss how to get started: deliberateinnovation.net
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